Tea Party Poses Threat to Democracy

[Coroner]

Tea Party Poses Threat to Democracy

There have been ugly incidents at Tea Party events as well as openings for progressive dialog

The Great Recession has yielded at least two unexpected paradoxes. First, the nation's leading right-wing movement draws its name and inspiration from the anti-corporate Boston Tea Party in 1773, which was actually a guerrilla action to destroy the property of the world's first multinational corporation, held in response to the Tea Act, under which the British government granted East India privileged access to the U.S. market at the expense of small importers and shopkeepers. Nonetheless, the "pro-free market" Tea Partiers of today glorify this early blow against corporate globalization. Second, the most vociferous and visible protest activity hitting the streets of America has emerged not from those most victimized, but from a stridently right-wing Tea Party whose base is relatively affluent, well-educated, overwhelmingly white, and racially resentful.
Chip Berlet, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America and a long-time student of rightist movements for Political Research Associates, notes, "They grew up in families and social clusters where these ideas are considered common sense and what America is all about. Their ideas are based on what they are hearing from inside their 'information silos.'"

However, stressed Berlet, "Many in this group are white middle class and working class" whose real-life experiences with corporate power could potentially make them receptive to progressive appeals so the left cannot afford to wish them into non-existence...


Full text: http://www.zcommunications.org/tea-p...by-roger-bybee

[iamdrgonzo]

Tea Party is just another word for useful idiots.

[PomonaCA]

The original tea-party was an anti-tax abuse movement, not an anti-corporate movement. It's aim was at government, not private citizens.

[hippifried]

It was just a Dick Armey bamboozle, with a little help from bug-eyed Becky. The whole thing was a ripoff of a hippy movement in the '70s, with the same name. That was a tax protest. This was never anything but an attack on that thar Kenyan Muslim negro socialist anti-flag baby-killing fag-friendly Hussein usurper in the WHITEhouse that was comin' to take everybody's guns away. Armey followed Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" to the letter. It worked, just like it always does when it's unexpected.

[south ov da border]

I've reads about Alinsnky and the whole Nudge principle. Soetero is going back to Indonesia, maybe he'll stay. I was never sold on him and knew he was just a tool. If we get to another election, I don't see it getting any better.

The tea party ppl will probably just split the vote anyway...

[hippifried]

Prior to all this, hardly anyone under 50, other than the poli-sci junkies, had ever heard of Alinsky. More people know his name than ever before now. That's because his name was dropped in every bogus story, robo-email, & blog silliness about ACORN or community organizing in general. Misdirection. All the teabaggers know who he was, but none of them have a clue that "Rules for Radicals" was their roadmap to the successes they had in 2010.

Soetero is going back to Indonesia, maybe he'll stay.

To be replaced by whom?

[iamdrgonzo]

Don't for get about David and Charles Koch:

Corporate Billionaires Funding the Tea Party
By ThosPayne


Real Americans are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who.

There’s just one element missing from America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the Wall Street sugar daddies who are bankrolling it and who have been doing so since well before the “death panel” days.

Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch, who owns - among other things - Fox News via it's parent company, NewsCorp.

The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers really are.

Please click the link for full story:
http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/163962.html