[lbo-talk] Analysis of Tea Party

[Wojtek S]

[WS:] That is not how I read the article.  I do not think that he argues
that people are "genuinely tired or angry."  Au contraire.  His argument is
that people are delusionally over-confident in their own selves and what
they can accomplish "on their own" - and as a result see the institutions
and society as an impediment of their own will and capacity.  Consequently,
they tend to listen only to those who cater to their inflated sense of ego
(mainly right wing demagogues) and ignore other messages and even common
sense.  Reaganism is a product of that mentality, not the cause.

I also thing that this is something new - a product of consumerism on an
unprecedented scale.

Wojtek

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:07 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> [WS:] An interesting piece, indeed. It outlines the social changes
> that made left narrative unpopular. The only thing that I would add is
> that the change was not mainly cultural (shift toward individualistic
> culture) as the article suggest, but material. The phenomenal
> productivity of the capitalist system made it possible to satisfy more
> and more individual and idiosyncratic demands from housing and
> transportation to personal digital devices. Since being determines
> consciousness, cultural changes toward individualism that the article
> outlines followed.
>
> ^^^^
> CB:  The individualist-libertarianist political trend described in the
> article has been a major component of Reaganite coalition, and so part
> of the dominating political trend in the US for thirty years.  The
> current outcry may represent a crisis for them.
>
> This article's suggestion that these people are sort of righteously
> "tired" of intrusions into their individual lives reminds of the
> notoriously "angry white male" upsurge in the 90's.
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