Monday, April 19, 2010

March of the Big Lie

The Big Lie is a time-tested technique used the world over to sell unpopular and insane political and religious dogmas.  And while the phrase was coined by the man who used it most effectively, the ingenious (and horrifically insanely evil) Adolf Hitler, it is an idea and philosophy that spans almost all political persuasions.  Sometimes, it's been the only way to shove shit down the throats of people.  

But it's when it veers from being a technique to pass garbage to being a tool to denigrate an entire segment of the population that it becomes something insidiously evil (Hitler? Jews? 'Nuff said.).
So let's begin examining the Big Lie about the Tea Party movement.

As I was not ready to jump on the Tea Party bandwagon from the outset, I got to question and look at their motives.  What I gathered was that it was conservative at its core, because there were lots of people who saw a castrated GOP fail to do a damned thing, fail to deliver on what they campaigned on, grow the government, and allow the Democrats to get free reign in Washington to grow the government even faster while coming up with every new way to tax us they could imagine (next year includes rolling back the bush tax cuts, the health care taxes, and maybe the VAT if they can cram it in early enough, not to mention the various pushes to "fix" the tax code to "properly" redistribute the wealth.  The early groups included a fair amount of the crazies, but crazies are usually some of the first to jump on the "our government sucks" bandwagon.

However, as we moved from the aftermath of big government "conservatism" of Bush to full-on Obama "change" (which was merely massive escalation of government growth), the Tea Party, alongside the people who increasingly see the problems with our bastard tax code, began to grow.  And merge.  And diversify.  And now we (yes, that includes me) are a collection of people of various political, financial, racial, social, and religious stripes (including the requisite few loony fringe kooks) who can agree that government is getting way too large, the tax system is fundamentally flawed and freedom-sucking, and both of the political parties are contributing to the problem.

But since the first two points are the basic principles of fiscal conservatism, and diametrically opposed to the agenda of big government liberals, pseudo-conservative Republicans, and the Democrat party leadership (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, specifically), it's time to unleash the Big Lie:

You start with some basics.  Call them teabaggers, since, to liberals, their ideas suck balls, so they must, in fact, suck balls.  Good for a giggle if you like to imagine Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin engaged in the aforementioned activity.  Their leaders are morons.  There's Sarah Palin Tina Fey Sarah Palin, who spouts dumb-ass catch phrases like a fourth rate Cheech and Chong, or Bill and Ted (or second rate Jay and Silent Bob).  She even has to write shit on her and.  And Glenn Beck, who is just nuts (he actually reminds me of me, just not as cute an ass).  And the gasbag Rush Limbaugh, who has been (fill in your slur) for decades, centuries even.
And it's all a BIG CORPORATE interest astroturf campaign run by same guys who propped up the retard Bush (even though most of the people really haven't gotten out to protest for more relief for BIG WHATEVER before) that lacks any genuine emotion or thought.

But those are just the memes that don't require articulate talking heads to vomit forth opinions.

Former president Bill Clinton weighed in, saying that the Tea Party rhetoric mimicked the crap that came from terrorist Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which was 15 years ago today.  Never mind the fact that no respectable leader of the Tea Party has EVER encouraged the violent overthrow of the government.  We're about LESS government.  NO government is an anarchist thing.  And the only reason you take up armed revolt is when the ballot box stops working, even in theory.  In practice, it barely works, although in theory we could replace 466 people this year if we all ganged up and voted the incumbents out.

From the White House comes cracks that the Tea Party should be thanking Obama for lowering taxes (through gimmicks and behavior-manipulating credits) (even though that's before the tax for health care comes in, other tax cuts are repealed, etc.).  After all, they're too stupid to know that their taxes went down. And the media accomplices riff off the astroturf meme as they gleefully report this condescension.

I could fill pages with more examples.  I've seen videos craftily (and well) edited that shows only the worst the  Tea Party has to offer.  I've seen post after post of pissed off rantings at average Americans who's crime against Obama is attendance of one of these events, including many fouling up otherwise intelligent liberal blogs (including many of the ones on the left).  And it's been getting more shrill and ridiculous since the movement began to pick up steam.

The final straw for me was Time columnist Joe Klein, with this gem:

"I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."

New York magazine's John Heilemann added Rush Limbaugh to the list, then suggested this group of people are the type that cause incidents like at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and said the only thing that had happened in the last 15 months was the election of Barack Hussein Obama.  To which Klein added:
"I think there are two things going on here.  One is certainly that, not just that he is African-American, but that his name is Barack Hussein Obama.  The other thing is that... we've had a very scary economic crisis, and when people get scared, they get defensive, and they get a little crazy." 
If you have doubt as to the accuracy of the above idiotic quote, here's the clip (it's crappy, so I'm not embedding it).  So with that quote in mind, as well as the endless mischaracterizations, let me strip the political niceties and doublespeak and politically correct phrasing and see what the Big Lie about the tea party movement is all about:

"The teabaggers (inbred hicks who like sucking sweaty balls) are hateful crazy pissed idiots who want to hang the 'ragheaded Kenyan terrorist nigger' in the White House and erect a oppressive theocracy based on feeding selfish Big Corporate interests and angry white guys."

With all the varnish taken off, the Big Lie is pretty damned harsh.  It's also bullshit.  And being that this is a group that I would consider myself a part of, I think a response in kind:

Fuck you, you ignorant sluts.  You know you can't win the intellectual argument, so you've fallen back on the classic tactic of dismissing your opposition as fucking morons who aren't deserving of life.  Anybody who sees what you cowardly shits are trying to pull should know better than to descend to the puerile lather you've descended to.  Not that this will stop you, but I'd advise not saying the above to my face.

For those of you who have tried engaging the Tea Party intellectually, thank you.  You're wrong as a family circle jerk, but at least you're standup individuals, and do America proud while trying to destroy it.  And for those of you who stand with me as a no-longer-silent majority, don't let the idiots get you down.  And when an idiot gets in your face with the crap outlined above, feel free to respond in kind.

Sometimes, you just have to punch someone in the mouth when they keep saying stupid shit.

9 comments:

Satyavati devi dasi said...

Patrick for chrissake I haven't seen yet one intellectual argument come forth from the vaunted TP. I've seen a lot of the 'government better stay out of my Medicare' shit, though. I've seen a lot of racist shit. I've seen a lot of 'all liberals are antiamerican communosocioMarxists' shit. I've seen a lot of Obama=Hitler shit.

Now, you may go on and claim this all represents .0001% of said TP, but like I said, all I ever see is Michelle Bachmann and the adored Sarah Palin mouthing off, and Glenn Beck with his cryptic anagrams and tears, and Limbaugh with his endless bullshit. And so far, no one's been able to convince me that this is much more than a very loud, pissed off group of confused people being herded about like so many unknowing political pawns.

So please.. can't win the intellectual argument? If the TP has one, it's come from you, because so far none of the others have put forth anything worth calling intellect.

Patrick M said...

Satyavati: Blah, fucking, blah.

You obviously haven't read or watched anything but shit produced by people I referred to as "ignorant sluts" above then.

OK, Give me a couple of minutes to Google....

....

Here we go with links:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=142545

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/15/morning-bell-the-tea-party-movement/

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/04/09/in-the-green-room-judge-andrew-napolitano-on-tea-parties-and-why-obamacare-is-unconstitutional/

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/27/video-why-the-tea-party-is-great-for-america/

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhsxmzm7_19fcdzskg5

The point is, if you want to look for the retarded talking point, you're going to find the retarded talking point. And if you want to use the retarded talking point to dismiss the intelligent ideas (including most of my recent posts), then you can count yourself in the ranks of ignorant sluts.

Toad734 said...

They may not openly encourage violence but they do release addresses of congressmen and leave coffins in their yards, spit on congressmen and break their windows...They aren't the typical right wing bomb throwers with the guns and pioneer costumes but its close. And no, the Teaparty isn't multicultural, its white people whose taxes have actually gone down under Obama.

And these same people don't want their social security taken away, they don't want their public schools taken away, they don' want their medicare taken away; they think the black president is going to give black people the same things they have been given. They think a black guy is going to give to other black people and that's what they are pissed about. They weren't out on the streets when Bush was giving away money to rich white people.

I guarantee when we no longer have a black president, this party will shrivel.

Bush increased both the size of the government, the strength of the government and debt of the government more than any president before him and where were these people when Howdy Doody was doing all this??

It's a movement based on a lie. These are the same people who think Obama is coming for their guns. Obama mentions gun control as about as often as Bush could name the capital of the country he was invading yet lies from the right propagate this rumor to the ignorant masses and so they rush to buy guns and ammunition even though Obama has actually expanded gun rights more than any Democratic president in the last 30 years.

Toad734 said...

No I didn't see those links but you said "We", in all those protester videos I see about 70% white men, and about 95% white....All of whoms taxes have gone down under Obama.

Patrick M said...

Which videos? The ones that contain all the worst the Tea Parties have to offer? The ones handpicked to show how "marginal" the Tea Party is?

And are you actually worrying about counting heads? White, white, white, 3/4 white, sort of whitish, white enough, token black, white...?

All of whoms taxes have gone down under Obama.

Let's deal with the Obama tax "cuts." First, they are some of those behavior credits that did drop taxes for the majority in 2009. But then you add back in the taxes coming for the unconstitutional Obamacare, the Cap and Tax legislation on the table, the insidious VAT that is being tossed around, and the elimination of existing tax cuts, and those "cuts" aren't looking so promising. And even every tax i just listed, if cranked to maximum pain, WILL NOT COVER THE DEBT WE ARE BUILDING UP!

The word of the day is "unsustainable." It's the point that my next post will outline, and a problem that has been building longer than I've been pissing standing up.

dmarks said...

SDD said: "Patrick for chrissake I haven't seen yet one intellectual argument come forth from the vaunted TP"

Go to a rally sometime. Both I attended were quite intellectual, and none had any "government out of Medicare" messages anywhere to be seen or heard.

"And so far, no one's been able to convince me that this is much more than a very loud, pissed off group of confused people being herded about like so many unknowing political pawns."

Now that sounds like the "anti-war movement" of the middle Bush years!

In actuality, this was truly grass-roots. From the ground up. No herding at all. I know several tea party activists and have watched them organize over the past year. There's no Fearless Leader at the top of it.

Toad said: "No I didn't see those links but you said "We", in all those protester videos I see about 70% white men, and about 95% white."

Hmmm. Sounds like you are racial profiling. So where's the other half of your racist argument?

Patrick asked: "And are you actually worrying about counting heads?"

Race matters mainly to racists. And you will see in this blog debate, and in pretty much all the others, that the only ones with the racial attitude and arguments are the people who bash the tea-party movement.

Arlin said...

Patrick M., there are many conservatives who have had genuinely intelligent arguments for ther views. But the vitriol that you spew is counter-productive. If you want to see your agenda come to be, your political discourse needs to have decorum. Otherwise you'll be lumped in with the right-wing crazies. The left is winning the debate because you (and others) resort to schoolyard vulgarities which ditract from an otherwise legitimate conservative argument.

dmarks said...

Patrick: You are right. Toad is referring to incidents that have been proven to be hoaxes.

Patrick M said...

thelospoher: I'm the one spewing the vitriol? This post is about the vitriol being spewed toward me. When someone is screaming at you about how stupid and racist and Nazi you are, do you calmly state, "I politely disagree with that assessment?"

I do my best not to fire off posts filled with invectives about how "evil/stupid/socialist/whatever" the political opposition is, and I try to stick to issues.

But there has to be a balance, and when someone is attacking you incessantly, sometimes you have to state it back in just as crude terms. Because you're certainly not addressing someone who wants to have a philosophical debate.