The Tea Party has done us all a favor. It has pointed out how absent we've been in building a common narrative about modern American citizenship. Their candidates are fascinating -- like watching campaign season through beer goggles. But every time I hear one of them speak in public, I realize what an advantage the rest of us have -- real stories, real characters, real democracy.
The Tea Party is taking a joyride through the world of American ideals. Along the way, it has grabbed the best revolutionary symbols, the cinematic frustration of the masses, and an irreproachable sounding plan (Fiscal responsibility! Constitutionally limited government! Free markets! Yay!)
But it's all emotions and fantasy. Despite the symbolic appeal, Tea Partiers don't really speak to tradition. They speak to nostalgia. These signals resurrected from the past are not representative. They are kitsch.
Their problem is that they actually prefer Bill O'Reilly to the Bill of Rights. Judging from the demographics, the Tea Party is the last act of the cynical Boomers, hence, a vision of government that doesn't go beyond shouting and a soundtrack. Their story has no characters or plot. It ends with the Winnebago driving off the cliff. How romantic and awesome! And then what?
Its time to take what they have started -- a participatory impetus for change -- re-brand it, and run away with it.
The argument is basic, and drawn in stark relief. Is there an US in the USA? Do we have a common purpose? Will we be able to evolve our collective identity to meet the needs of the modern era?
They have the "what" but we have the "how". Last week, I attended the Reinventing Governance conference in Colorado. Everyone there had an example of citizens taking the initiative, solving problems at the local level.
The Tea Party is the crowning achievement of the conservative rise in American politics. Who needs evidence when you have good optics? The right is not required to meet the challenge that the rest of us face -- that of governing ourselves. They are in eternal opposition, even when in office.
Conservatives have achieved this public relations coup because, on the right, the intellectuals and the propagandists are the same people (Gingrich, Rove). In contrast, those who defend the public sector -- public intellectuals -- have gone missing for years. We do have more civic firepower. Its just that our academics and operatives disdain each other. One group is polishing their footnotes and the other group is dialing for dollars. They rarely meet each other.
Moreover, conservatives prioritize communication as much as subject matter -- the right's mother ship Heritage Foundation spends nearly half its money on marketing. Meanwhile, those who believe in the common good work under a myth of omniscience. We believe that because an idea is right it will be obvious and because it is obvious it will be implemented.
These connections are fallacies. They don't exist. To be influential, ideas need a long-term infrastructure behind them. For example, "Islamophobia" is not an accident, it is an outcome. "Ground Zero Mosque" "Jihad Jane" etc. Conservative operatives have in place a network of relationships and one-liners that can surge to meet the needs of the day's headlines. If it is politically useful for them to marginalize Muslim Americans, they do it.
I worked on Capitol Hill in a progressive office during Republican reign. It was like fighting a well trained army with a pickup team. My side was always in the library and in the streets, but never in the room. This is not the same for conservatives today.
The Obama administration certainly could have communicated more consistently and forcefully over the past two years. But our president lacks the philosophical audience to back him up. Where are the people who can explain governing? Who empathize with institutions? Lots of us do, but we are not intentional about it.
Hope and Change still remain to be translated into a story about the rest of us. The path forward is staring us right in the face. Our greatest strength is our immense ability to connect with others, including those in power. Over the next decade, we will create new norms of democratic participation in which -- by definition -- corporations cannot preempt citizens. DC will be the last stop in this movement for change. You act on behalf of the common good dozens of times a day and don't even think about it.
I would argue that we have not even begun to assess our own power. Speaking as a former Hill staffer, the relationships forged on behalf of ideals are viewed differently than the purchased relationships beholden to private commercial lobbies. As Craig Newmark says, "Trust is the new black". We have that in our corner.
Government is changing rapidly. There are dozens of new transparency requirements and rules for openness. But information without interpreters is just more noise. To be politically useful, it requires a civic filter. Every Member of Congress went to High School. You long-time friends, make an appointment with the local office and ask. What are some basic public interest issues that you vote on? What do you need information about? How can we support you? You will be amazed at how many topics have no constituent input.
This kind of individual initiative -- citizens putting a stake in the ground on behalf of the collective -- is powerful. Telling your leaders what you're doing in your community will provide the characters and plot for our narrative.
The American people long for a novel, not a sitcom. We want a good story about who we are and where we're going in the world. Most of all, we want the happy ending, the one where nobody gets left out. Whoever tells this story best will win.
The Tea Party wants a knife fight and we've been showing up with chop sticks. This has to change.
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People live lives, they experience things -- like that elephant stare my Dad had, that I knew came from something sad and terrible because he was gone, not there, not available to me. I never knew it came from combat in World War II until the PBS series but I knew it was bad; there are ghosts all over the place; my great grandma was a Cherokee but I never knew it until I was an adult because my great grandparents had to tell the Texans she was French (her accent) as they hated Indians! We are chock full of what happened to our parents and grandparents, the good and the bad, and you cannot make up a bunch of lies and win anything. Much of my life has been about trying to find the truth about what happened to my family.
It's the same old Republican party infected with an assortment of evangelical Moral Majority throwbacks from Reagan's era, Ron Paul's 1-dimensional tax complainers all mixed in with an unhealthy dose of good 'ole boyz who are terrified of both a black president and 2010 being the first year more minority babies are born than white babies.
That, and I'd imagine you'd probably like Paul's anti-war stance; most on the left do.
"The American people long for a novel, not a sitcom. We want a good story about who we are and where we're going in the world. Most of all, we want the happy ending, the one where nobody gets left out. Whoever tells this story best will win."
I don't want a novel or a sitcom. I don't want a good story (narrative/propaganda) and the only place we're going in the world right now is the poorhouse. I want a happy ending, but not a socialist utopia where everybody has healthcare whether we want it or not. I hope nobody gets left out, but that's up to each person themselves. Maybe a lot of them WANT to be left out. Like me.
What I DO want is government to spend FAR less money, even if that means it has to spend less on "services", or even defense (which at least is constitutionally mandated). I also want government at all levels but especially the federal level to LEAVE. ME. ALONE.
As far as I'm concerned, whoever manages THAT will win. And I think THAT is what the tea party thing is all about.
Why is health care for all Americans "socialist", any more than Medicare or public education? It can easily be argued that these are constitutional rights, which is supposedly a big part of the "tea party" message.
As for progressivism...well, it didn't even really exist in the US until the 20th century. But what a success story, huh? It's grown government, taxing and spending by orders of magnitude since it really took root in the 30s or so, and this with nothing really positive to show for it! I'm impressed by that success, if nothing else.
I agree that you should not be forced to purchace insurance for your self. If the Democrats would not have surrendered to the will of the Republicans,you would not have been forced to do so !
I would rather suffer from the indignities of a ''socialist utopia'' than live through the nightmare of a corporate orchestrated,survival of the fittest rat race to the demise of civillization.
1994 to 2000. People like me walk precincts and work phone banks telling our fellow citizens that a Republican government will be smaller, more cost-efficient, and it will give us greater freedom.
2001 to 2006. Republican government proves to be the exact opposite of what we promised. Government size and spending increase, just as they have for decades. America pulls the plug on Republican control of Congress.
2008. America pulls the plug on Republican control of the White House.
2008. The Tea Party erupts in fury over government spending and an imaginary socialist takeover of the country. The Tea Party rejects the GOP establishment and swears that they are for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and more freedom, which is the same platform the GOP offers. Tea Partiers pretend they are the only ones who *ever* noticed that government is wasteful. They begin stacking modifiers when discussing the left, e.g. "liberal socialist marxist communists." They memorize several quotes so they can pretend to have "read the Founding Fathers."
This is why I can't get behind the Tea Party. They pretend to be a revival of American patriotism, but in fact they're just Republicans who don't want to take responsibility for what happened under Bush and a Republican Congress.
I don't view the tea party as being about a revival of American patriotism, though they certainly are patriotic when they show public dissent against political issues that are important to them. But I view them more as a group of people who have noticed the financial cliff we're rushing toward, and have noticed that both parties have their foot on the gas (dems much harder than repubs, but still). And nobody seems to care where the brakes are, never mind the reverse gear.
The tea partiers don't know exactly how the train works, but they know it can't go on like it is for long. So they're trying to figure it out enough to help stop it.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, argued that corporations should never be allowed to exist beyond 50 years, and advocated breaking up the East India Company as an example of a corporation that had "captured" the parliament which had created it.
Smith argued that a corporation's charter should spell out the task the corporation was chartered to accomplish to achieve it's contribution to the "wealth of the nation" and should be disbanded after accomplishing that task or for wandering from the goal of providing for the "wealth of the nation".
Semper fi
It's a lot like claiming you are pro law and order and running out to join a local street gang - but, then, you can't make sense out of nonsense!
You mean like calling Obama a communist and then painting a Hitler mustache on his picture? That always seemed kind of dissonant to me.
1. They claim to believe government should stay out of health care, while receiving government health care.
2. They believe we should create jobs by passing tax cuts, while forgetting that 'W' did that, and well we are still living with the effects.
3. They rail against large corporations and excesses, yet fail to understand that is the very thing that funds their "movement"...
4. They constantly speak about the financial burden that will be placed on future generations, yet so long as the government funds their entitlements, it doesn't matter how much it cost.
5. They are the same people who criticized Barack Obama for lacking experience when he ran for President, yet are throwing into office the craziest, least experienced candidates known to man, and worship at the feet of the quitter from Alaska known as Sarah Palin...
1) That's not a contradiction. I'm currently unemployed, and would LOVE it if they would cut off about 3/4 of unemployment benefits. They distort the labor market horribly. But hey, I worked for 25 years without a break...might as well suck up some of the newly-created money that progressives seem to think I deserve for not doing anything. Maybe I'll just keep doing it for the 80 or so more weeks of my eligibility.
2) Most tea partiers don't harp on tax cuts. That's mostly establishment repubs. The tea partiers are more concerned with cutting spending, getting the budget under control, and THEN cutting taxes, if possible. And they HATE medicare part D.
3) I have seen very little evidence that large corporations fund the tea party. And anyway, I have nothing against large corporations as long as they follow the law.
4) After those 25 years of work (and paying the max for SS for most of it), I would opt out of getting any benefits at all when I retire if they would just stop taking 7.5 percent of my salary off the top, and relieve my employer(s) of their 7.5 percent share so they can give it to me as a bonus instead.
5) Meh. The tea party didn't really take a stand on Obama's experience level. That was the repubs.
I am begging each and everyone of you, to get out and vote... be the change. I realize, Obama and the Democrat's haven't met every challenge with precision, they haven't ended DADT, they didn't pass a perfect health care bill, among other half-baked successes. If you want DADT to last another decade, if you want Islomophobia and Homophobia to define your generation, and if you want corporations running rampant with your future retirement funds, then by all means sit out and don't VOTE... but if you want a party in power that fights for you, if you want a prosperous future where your children will live in a more advanced, more civil and more diversified America then do your civic duty and VOTE....
We can't let secret money and socially divisive issues re-energize the uneducated right... stand up for what is right, show up for what is necessary and BE the CHANGE you want!
These two beliefs have made me a Republican, but as others have commented here, one disgusted with the recent performance of the Republican party on spending. Therefore I am a supporter (but not yet a member) of the Tea Party.
If you look at the demographics of who is actually "in" the Tea Party you will find that it is not just Republicans. It is people from the entire political spectrum who are united around the beliefs in constrained Fed spending, private sector growth and low taxes - and the belief that Obama/Pelosi/Reid have gone too far down the opposite road t the detriment of our economy and our county. I would venture to say that 60% of Americans are of this belief and it would be wise not to marginalize us.
The liberal idealistic society is unsustainable because equal mediocrity and huge federal government/bureaucracy cannot operate without taxes from those unwilling to settle for mediocrity. Eventually, ever increasing government/bureaucracy waste devours tax money faster than even scheming liberal politicians can collect it.
What the liberal Democrat-supporting columnists and not-so-objective (so called) journalists fail to recognize is that Conservatives will not sit back and let our free markets be destroyed. The continued deficit spending and failure to address private sector employment are factual records and abject failures that liberal Democrats cannot hide from no matter how much Obama, Biden, Pelosi and their pocket puppets try to deflect and re-route. Conservatives are involved more than since WWII, and now we have our own revision to "politics as usual" barreling down the track. There is infinitely more here than the Tea Party. If Lefties prepare for a "knife fight", know they will see pitch forks.
It's not some club that you join with two million of your friends so that you can vote the original members out. It's millions of dissatisfied voters who want the government to stop spending so much that our grandchildren will never be able to pay it off.
The only way you will stop this movement is by out-voting them on election day. (I don't see it happening)
Definition of ILK
: sort, kind
You seem to be of Ms. Kelly's ilk too.