by Judith Gayle | Political Waves
We should have pinned every problem of the last decade squarely on George Bush and his allies. Dubya was still eating pretzels in the White House when the revisionism began. It came along as McCain’s folly. Yes, before there was a Tea Party, there was a Palin. She was our first glimpse of repressive, regressive anti-intellectualism in this new century, and she represents a demographic that thinks her kind of naïve nativism is the will of the Founders, hence, real Americanism.
Although we’ve tried for over a year to ignore them, the Baggers won’t go away. They’re the train wreck we can’t turn away from, now that they’ve jumped the track into serious politics. Entrenched in a kind of existential despair, they represent nothing new, but the demographics of a changing nation and the economics of a failing empire make them newly worrisome. Why? Because they offer a natural home to everyone with a grievance, and they’re very well funded.
The shine is off the wing-nuts these days. Don’t get me wrong, I know everyone loves a circus, and if I were a humorist, this topic would still provide rich fare, or used to. Did you hear the one about the MoveOn activist that was thrown to the curb at a Rand Paul rally? No punch line here, just a Paul supporter stepping on her head. No joke and no apology until a day later, grudgingly, even as she was taken to the hospital. For these folks, politics is war, and the MoveOn member was in the wrong camp. One righty pundit complained that it was she who should apologize for provoking violence at the event, and now the stomper is demanding an apology from “the professional left.” If you can follow that line of reasoning, there’s a Tea Party calling your name.