Two reports that I find frustrating this morning: the idea that the Anti-War movement is essentially dead in the water and that the "tea partiers belong to a movement that, for better or worse, is likely to define the American political landscape for the next six years -- and beyond.
On the flip....
First, there is a very long article at Alternet Crazy? Stupid? Tea Party Supporters Are Neither, and I am unsure if I really buy everything the author is claiming.
There is a look at demographics (college educations, good incomes, nice homes) and a look at 'tea party political clout', which I'll include here:
In Arizona, John McCain, a four-term senator and the former presidential nominee of the Republican Party, is on the run in the GOP primary from the Tea Party-backed candidate, talk-show host and former congressman, J.D. Hayworth.
The Tea Party crowd is also backing Arizona's draconian new anti-immigrant law, which empowers local law enforcement to demand proof of citizenship from anyone an officer suspects of being in the country illegally. McCain used to favor comprehensive immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Now, he's running hard to the right, embracing the new law.
Or witness the fortunes of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the one-time golden boy of the GOP establishment as recently as June 2009, when he won the endorsement of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the race for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat. But the Tea Party was having none of it because of Crist's support of Obama's stimulus package. Tea Party supporters effectively forced Crist out of the Republican primary in favor of their candidate, Marco Rubio. (Crist announced last week that he will remain in the Senate race as an independent.)
Even so, some liberal and progressive analysts seem in a rush to write off the Tea Party movement, citing its lack of a charismatic leader, its often fantastical claims and the trouble it portends for the Republican Party as reasons not to take it seriously. Yet none of those reasons will undo this movement anytime soon.
I know a hardcore teabagger - I, for one, refuse to recognize these folks respectfully, for a variety of reasons - and we can only interact as long as we don't talk politics. The minute he opens his mouth and talks about his political ideas, I am simply appalled.
It's my estimation that liberals simply fear teabaggers for no salient reason and that some liberals like to write articles and make assertions that are off-the-mark because it seems 'nuanced' or like their keen eye is keener than yours: too clever by half is the usual result of this.
More disturbing is this report at Truthdig: No One Cares. The anti-war movement, per this report, is simply dead in the water. The author laments massive apathy as the killer of Iraq Vets against the War and Code Pink (which I suspect many kossacks will cheer)
The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.
Our passivity has resulted, however, in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics.
Now this I believe I have seen with my own eyes over the last 9-10 years, though it began during the Reagan years with the onslaught of rightwing talk radio propagandizing 2 generations of Americans, who now make up much of what I consider the teabaggers to be. Angry, filed with conspiracy theories, unable to spell coherently despite their alleged college educations and high-dollar salaries.
The author talks about attending a peace confernce in DC recently, hosted by Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman you might have heard about some years ago:
The gathering, held in the Rayburn Building, was a sober reminder of our insignificance. There were no other Congress members present, and only a smattering of young staff members attended. Most of the audience of about 70 were peace activists who, as is usual at such events, were joined by a motley collection of conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job or that former Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash, was assassinated. Scahill and Swanson provided a litany of disturbing statistics that illustrated how corporations control all systems of power. Corporations have effectively taken over our internal security and intelligence apparatus. They run our economy and manage our systems of communication. They own the two major political parties. They have built a private military. They loot the U.S. Treasury at will. And they have become unassailable. Those who decry the corporate coup are locked out of the national debate and become as marginalized as Kucinich.
Long and short, teabaggers are ascendent because they are media darlings and anti-war/peace activists have been totally marginalized and all of it accomplished by the very same media that is supposed to be "so liberal'.
Anti-war protestors get assailed by law enforcement from every angle and were ousted from public meetings for wearing Peace t-shirts while teabaggers can show up to public debates with large guns and cops PROTECT them.
Anti-war protesters are denigrated in the media (when not totally ignored) while teabaggers can't be covered by corporate media enough.
The same non-liberal media that has choked the anti-war movement has created the teabagger. They are 'real' and probably here to stay, as the author of the first article suggests, but they a fake creation of a corporate media.
This is why it doesn't matter if they can spell or even know which end is up, which I don't think they do.
They are literally tools of corporate media.