``Stop thinking about elections and party victories and start thinking about how the TP Movement already is pulling the Republicans AND Democrats to the Political Right. And think about how this will play out in society in terms of legitimizing racism,xenophobia, anti-immigrant aggression, and homophobia.
http://tinyurl.com/teapops-10-26
-Chip
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I read the article. Yes, of course TP tries to mobilize a white male identity movement on the basis of fear. That was apparent from day one. I also agree it's good practice to empirically demonstrate that conclusion.
On the other hand I think lot more has to be said.
Is it transient? I think yes and no. The feelings of a threatened majority identity and the general mood is not transient, but the `politics' are transient. The latter are driven by money coming from Wall Street and internal Democrat and GOP sources. The rightwing rhetoric is deliberately fabricated and has all the look and feel of the mind of Newt Gingrich et al. Obama as socialist has that inside out sort of logic, Gingrich and others perfected in 90s and beyond. Their goal was to cripple the Clinton administration and they did a pretty good job. Clinton managed to do plenty himself, but his version of triangulation was evidently not good enough for Wall Street. Phil Gramm was more their style. The same general forces managed to foul up the 2000 election and get Bush installed.
I consider Bush_2 was a whirlwind success story. All his official opposition disappeared which had been a voter majority. He got every bill and law passed he wanted, and sailed through re-election in the middle of the Abu Ghraib expose.
On this round, it's Obama who managed within months of taking office to alienate his base and defang any political opposition comming from the Progressive Caucus, with calculated and coordinated work from the Senate and House majority leadership.
Below is a clip from the Chris Hedges essay that Nicholas Ruiz posted:
``The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class' flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.''
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_opportunists_made_20101025/
I think this is mostly correct, except it too is missing the economic engine, where the money comes from and why. I think we are looking at a fight between two wings of the corporate elite. We are locked into the mind frame of the upper class which buys its government in two flavors. The John Kerry flavor and the George Bush_2 flavor. These used to be much closer and it was much more difficult to tell them apart. Think George Bush_1, the Rockefellers, Harringtons, et al,
I am sure we all know this, but I want names of individuals, their corporate links and corporate name, not just words like corporate elite or upper class or Wall Street. There are obvious ones like Goldman Sachs and their former managers like Paulson, and Geithner as think tank neoliberal clone as the US Treasury secretary, Summers (former) as Chair of Economic Advisors. I can't keep them all straight in my mind and what their relationships are to money, power, and the institutions of the political economy. I need a map.
Long ago it was very helpful for me to read Domhoff's Who Rules America. We need a series of simple graphics to show the same system with current names, positions, and corporate ties. A sort Geography study, USA INC with diagrams that show the relationships like the overlapping Venn diagrams with unions and intersections between the executive branch agencies, the wealthy elite, the education institutions and think tanks that creat the foreign and domestic policy parameters, and money flows that end in the Tea Party phenomic expression, where Obama comes out a socialist.
Domhoff is still around and doing great. Go here:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/class_domination.html
I already have a crude picture of various economic sectors by thinking about the list of crisis that are being ignored, worsened, and covered up. For example, global climate change forces's main enemy is the obvious energy/carbon/chemical industries. The obvious enemies of financial regulation are banking and real estate industries. Why are we in endless, meaningless wars with an ever worsening and paranoid security state? Because all of the industries that make up the military industrial complex are grown and prosper under imperialism, war, and a prison state mentality---now institutionalized by DHS, Patriot Act, and War on Terror propaganda.
Just pick a issue, figure out its corporate friends and enemies, and you get such a picture.
However, it is very difficult to get most people to listen to an explanation of capitalism, class war, and the state of the world. We need to show people in simple terms. Michael Moore is pretty good at this kind of approach, but he is too unsystematic. Well his an artist, not a theoritian.
Here is a nice example:
``October 23rd, 2010 4:46 PM The DeFazio Congressional Race: Stop Wall Street Before It Kills Again By Dean Baker
After wrecking the economy and putting themselves at the edge of bankruptcy, the Wall Street gang had a few bad months. But now that profits and bonuses are again at record highs, they are back on the offensive. With their bank accounts overflowing and Congress now officially up for sale following Citizens United, Wall Street is looking to buy the few congressional seats they don't already own.
Naturally Wall Street is outraged by such outlandish suggestions [taxing financial transactions]. Robert Mercer, the co-ceo of one of the largest Wall Street hedge funds, has spent $300,000 on independent contributions in support of DeFazio's opponent...''