{"id":30288,"date":"2010-10-31T04:24:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T09:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=30288"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:10:08","slug":"moscow-on-the-potomac-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/moscow-on-the-potomac-really\/","title":{"rendered":"Moscow on the Potomac? Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a0as\u00a0McCain’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\u00a0her\u00a0kind of na\u00efve nativism\u00a0is the will of the Founders, hence, real Americanism.<\/p>\n

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Although\u00a0we’ve tried for over a year to ignore them,\u00a0the Baggers\u00a0won’t go away.\u00a0They’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\u00a0nothing new, but the\u00a0demographics of a changing nation and the economics of a failing empire make them newly worrisome. Why? Because\u00a0they offer a natural home to everyone with a grievance, and\u00a0they’re very well funded.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0still provide rich fare, or used to.\u00a0Did you hear the one about the MoveOn activist that was thrown to the\u00a0curb<\/strong><\/a> 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\u00a0complained that it was she who should apologize for\u00a0provoking 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.<\/p>\n

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Those on the far-right express self-righteous\u00a0indignation\u00a0over America’s decline and consider\u00a0themselves the canary in the coal mine of a socialistic government takeover.\u00a0Oh, would that it\u00a0were so\u00a0simplistic, but, of course, it isn’t even close.\u00a0Bloated with their own self-importance,\u00a0emboldened by\u00a0their anger and limited by their\u00a0unyielding belief systems,\u00a0these folks\u00a0don’t\u00a0have a clue that they’re being shaped and used by larger, darker powers. It would be laughable, as we used to say in the Bush years, if the ramifications weren’t so painful and, might I suggest, dangerous.\u00a0This movement cradles its legitimacy\u00a0in\u00a0the Second Amendment and is pandered to by\u00a0an ever-eager press.<\/p>\n

As Adele M. Stan wrote in her highly\u00a0recommended article<\/strong><\/a> Tea Party Inc.,\u00a0“The armies of angry white people with their ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags, the actual grassroots activists, are not the agents of the Tea Party revolt, but its end users ….”\u00a0This movement is the product of a\u00a0conservative meltdown, an internal struggle for supremacy. With its intellectual leaders all but gone, the Republican brand is up for auction. The highest bidders, Libertarian billionaires David and Charles Koch,\u00a0have united with Rupert Murdoch, hiding in plain sight\u00a0under his FOX News banner and providing a 24\/7 megaphone for hate-speak, hoping to control the future.<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0a number of\u00a0regressives are\u00a0in line to become lawmakers, it should be pointed out that\u00a0they do not constitute\u00a0a populist movement. Even if you could excuse their paranoia and delusion, their drive to dismantle government and impose fundamentalist values defines them. Christine O’Donnell’s inability to find the separation of church and state in the First Amendment should be\u00a0clear warning of the extremism she represents. She is not alone in this supposition.\u00a0Colorado’s Republican Senate candidate, Ken Buck, agrees with her, as do most other Baggers. She represents\u00a0the\u00a0‘tenthers,’<\/strong><\/a> who want to dial\u00a0law back to the\u00a0Constitution’s original writing.<\/p>\n

O’Donnell is joined by\u00a0conservative regressives, fed on the isolation of Libertarianism and the exceptionalism of Christianity.\u00a0And\u00a0don’t forget,\u00a0to paraphrase a recent quote, all Republicans\u00a0may not be\u00a0racist, but we can rest assured that all racists are Republicans. Their corporate masters will\u00a0attempt to herd them, useful fools that they are, using Limbaugh and Beck as drovers, but they aren’t the same docile critters that Bush kept in line. These\u00a0wannabes stand close to the\u00a0Tim McVeighs and Eric Rudolphs of the world, urging them on, and if it all goes badly, no problem for their corporate sponsors. There’s profit to be made even\u00a0in chaos.<\/p>\n

Listen to\u00a0the extremists and please note who they are. Stephen Broden, Republican candidate from Texas, for example, says that he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections do not produce a change in leadership. Here are some quotes and more here<\/strong><\/a> from a speaker at the Rand Paul rally,\u00a0barely reported in the blogosphere.\u00a0Imagine the shock wave that would rock the political world if someone at a Democratic rally had this to say:<\/p>\n

It is the Soviet socialists that have occupied our Capitol. It might as well be Moscow on the Potomac. The question is: do we have the courage and the spirit of our forefathers? Our people do. Today we want to tell the Marxist control freaks out there, don\u2019t dare cross that bridge. But we know they will. We the militia, and hopefully with your support, stand ready with no apologies, ’cause what we have forced upon us is not from a legitimate government, or the American values of self reliance and independence…<\/p>\n

The Declaration of Independence says that when a government is no longer beneficial or responsive to the people, it is our right and duty to change it…\u00a0\u00a0Regardless, the founders made sure we had plan B (holds up his gun). You know what that is…<\/p>\n

The treasonous left wing socialist politicians, and their lapdogs in the press, have gotten a wedgie here recently in their underpants over the tea parties. And a little broken glass (wink, wink)…<\/p>\n

History it seems is ready to repeat itself. After a long and costly civil war that is imminent, and sure to be forced upon us, we are taking note of those who are responsible for the treason, and they will be held accountable. I advise the press to start getting it right from this moment on, and stop aiding and abetting un-American activities. Like the Tories of old, the worst shall be hung, most will be exiled …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is completely over the top. Even\u00a0in the\u00a0Bush years, this kind of hate-speech wasn’t tolerated.\u00a0Reading this screed, I’m reminded of a\u00a0friend who never mentioned\u00a0Dubya’s name without adding, “and his Brown Shirts.”\u00a0If the Tea Baggers win, this mentality is made\u00a0legitimate.\u00a0As it is, when I hear the press decry the extremism on both sides, I want to spit. If anything proves the right delusional to me, it’s their insistence that liberals are seething with communist\/socialist inclinations. Hell, we aren’t even seething with progressive inclinations any more, having been shoved to the right for so long that we\u00a0won’t even embrace\u00a0our liberal label proudly.\u00a0Perhaps we need this kind of goad to come awake again.<\/p>\n

The Uranus-Pluto smack down in the coming months will give us rebellion of some sort, shot through with adrenalin. If this is the anti-60s and the regressives are going to have their day in the sun,\u00a0how sadly ironic\u00a0that the ‘Greatest Generation’ died by the tens of thousands to beat back fascism in their youth so that they could\u00a0fall prey to its seduction\u00a0 in their old age. When liberal kids pitted themselves against militarism and government authority in\u00a0that decade, we saw political chaos\u00a0that\u00a0ultimately produced\u00a0social expansion. Will the antithesis produce political chaos and social contraction?\u00a0Is that even possible after all these years?\u00a0Or will the Millennials, just now coming into play, make the conversation moot by picking up the pieces of the coming explosion with a generational shift to the left?<\/p>\n

Are we looking at\u00a0a revolution or an evolution?<\/p>\n

I only know this for sure:\u00a0our two political narratives have\u00a0little in common, and only one\u00a0is loving. We’re choosing\u00a0our future at a critical moment in history. Vote your heart this week and and let the evolution\u00a0begin.<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0as\u00a0McCain’s folly. Yes, before there was a Tea Party, there was a Palin. She was our first … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}