Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Apr 9, 2010, at 4:01 PM, brad bauerly wrote:
For later referecne in a post (or posts) on Teachers I am working on:
The chaaaarge of elitism isd stupid (Note: The _charge_ is stupid, not
the people who make the charge; hence I clip this part of Brad's post).
But the part I quote below is worse than stupid, it is isgnorant of the
structure of u.s. society.
>
> > the people beating us . . .
> > But I guess that would take something
> > more than just saying look how dumb and hickish these people are, as
> > they do things and have power in ways that you only dream of ever
> > having.
"They" are not beatingf "us," and "they" have no power at all except as they are given crumbs of it by the people who are for the time being (and for the last couple centuries most of the time) beating us: The Obamas, the Clintons, the Boards of Directors of Citibank and Ford and Toyota, Wall Street, the usuual suspects in fact: the capitalists and their willing flunkies.
People who have power don't get hysterical and confuse who their enemies are as the TPs do. They are being. They are out there making fools of themselves (and incidentally serving the pruposes of their enemies, not their own) precisely becasue they feel and for the most part ARE powerless. They know vaguely that someone someplace is denying them the pleasures and rights they so long for;, and they fantasize (led by the nose as it were) that that someone is government and taxes. And this is true even of a number of their leaders. If Palin does get to the White House she is going to be frustrated as hell by her inability to cchange the things she ignorantly things she wants to change. Some of their other leaders (and particularly those who finance them) are probably among those who have been beating us for 200 years but that is another topic.
And if the Tea Partiers do turn into a fascist movement (which is not really imminent at all), and if that Fascist Movmement seizes power, the Tea Partiers themselves, the dumb troops of the Fascist *Elite, will still be losers.
> Ok, go recruit some Tea Partiers and let us know how it goes.
>
> Doug
Probably not bad advice.
Carrol