I'm at the airport in Detroit heading back west, I'm about to board my flight when I catch a couple minutes of the CNN GOP/TP debate playing on the monitors at the airport.
This was the only part of the debate I watched, no in flight entertainment on the plane, but I think it was all I needed to know (courtesy Youtube and TYT):
Now, I am pro death penalty, the teachings of 4th Century BC Chinese Legalist scholars Lao Tzu and Shang Yang work well for me, but this assumes a working system of justice, and not the mockery of one the US system has become (to be discussed below), and even then, I can't tell you how much I was embarrassed to be an American seeing this.
It was kind of both reassuring and funny and sad wrapped up all into one, when my favorite ex-congressman shows up on Countdown and says what I was thinking that day at the airport:
Now, KO and Grayson discussed a different part of the debate, but the meanness of the crowd was surreal...like something you'd see at a professional wrestling match, or
maybe 2000 years ago at the Colosseum:
OLBERMANN: All right, when see sadism, I’ve noticed a dearth to some degree of anger. I felt it within, but even sitting here now, it’s hard for me to express my reaction to this in terms of anger. And you and I have both gotten angry on this very subject. Is it more sadness or horror that these are people who live among us or that this is something we have to contend with to make a society that isn’t handing out bouquets and gold bricks to everybody, but is just keeping everybody alive for a couple of extra months or a couple of extra years or as long as they possibly can be? What is the appropriate response? What is the functional response to this?
GRAYSON: Listen, 2,000 years ago, it’s the same people, the same kind of mentality that was cheering when the lions ate the Christians. It’s always been with us. There’s always been a dark side to us. But we have to fight it. We have to make sure that in the end, we are decent human beings.
I mean, all that was missing from the debate was Leslie "Wolf" Blitzer asking the crowd, "Were you not entertained?"
Here's the biggest problem with the Tea Party. They are primarily a bunch of marginally educated, working class whites who have been put into serfdom by the feudalistic GOP economic policies they support, and still continue to vote this way, because they have been brainwashed by Corporate Media into believing that:
1) homosexuality is evil (even though many of the GOP pols they support are deep in the closet)
2) anyone who is Muslim is a terrorist (even more impressive was 70% in a 2003 USA Today poll believing Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11)...as evidenced by this memorable Glenn Beck interview:
3) Our President is a socialist because he wants everyone to have affordable health insurance (Obama isn't even a liberal-ask any liberal here-he's somewhere between Clinton and Nixon on the spectrum-center to center right).
4) It is more important to support a multi-trillion dollar war we shouldn't have fought in the first place than to provide infrastructure for the country and it's citizenry, no matter if it bankrupts us in the process.
5) We pay too much in taxes, we need to pay less (even though tax rates are at a 50-year low). Which reminds me, consider that Bill Clinton was really impeached not over inappropriate conduct but because he dared to surtax the wealthiest 1% of Americans. That's what you're dealing with.
The entire Tea Party scenario is a Franz Kafka wet dream. It's the GOP's "Southern Strategy" on steroids, where working class whites will let the Ruling Class and oligarchs hijack them for every last dollar in their wallet as long as they will keep their neighborhood lily white. The scenario, of course, is created by fear, fear of anything which isn't equally lily white:
It's amazing how far a little properly marketed fear will take you.
The Tea Party will not realize, before it's too late, that the joke was on them the entire time.
The Tea Party is funded primarily by two brothers who apparently believe the Renaissance, let alone the American Revolution was a mistake. As for the TPers, remember when they tried to convene in Vegas, and had to cancel it because not enough people had the dough to travel for a holiday? And they say ignorance is bliss...
My question to the TPers would be this....what happened to your lily white neighborhood once you can't pay your mortgage anymore because you don't make enough money, and your house gets foreclosed on? Hint: if you were too gullible to believe Rush Limbaugh how bad you had it during the Clinton years, as you drove to your new tract home in your brand new SUV to your wife and 2.6 children, chances you are will still believe Rush now that things pretty much suck and you have to work twice as hard for the same amount of money you made in 1998 and are underwater in said tract home.
Many TPers are marginally literate, yet support cuts in education. What happens when you cut state spending on education? Hint: California spends more money on incarcerating its citizens than educating them. I thought it was like 51-49, but the numbers have become more exaggerated recently
Moreover, our system of justice has become broken and corrupt. It's not about seeking justice, it's about getting the W, no matter the cost. I have seen convictions won in criminal trials where the prosecuting attorney should have been disbarred for trying them. Jury trials are supposed to protect minority interests, but how can they when the judge, who is almost always a former prosecutor, is covering for the DA's office, who is covering for the police? A couple of years ago, the California State Bar found a local prosecutor guilty of 22 counts of misconduct, andmerely gave him a four year suspension. What the prosecutor did is no different than in any other prosecutor's office, his greatest offense apparently was getting caught doing it. He'll be back in 2014 doing the same stuff he did to get suspended.
Like I said earlier, I support the death penalty, and am a big believer in punishing light crime severely (compare the "broken windows" approach of a few big city PDs in reducing crime). But I can't support it when I can't trust the court system to get to the truth when a defendant is on trial. It has become about the win, about punishment before justice, and justice be damned. Consider Nancy Grace, she's could care less about the truth, she likely never did as a prosecutor, it's always punishment before justice with her. So, when you hear a crowd applauding 234 executions, and I assure not all were guilty, it doesn't surprise you that someone like Grace, who should really never be allowed to practice law anywhere, has such a following.
My final point, is one I've known all along...is that your basic Tea Partier is somebody all Dems should reach out to. They have a lot in common with you and me. They have the same values, the same concerns. They are going through the same hardships you and I are going through right now. The problem is in how they get their information, and how trusting they are of it. If you could deprogram them, if you could make them see the light, we'd all be a much better country for it. I just don't have any answers on that one. Except, I think we are culturally changing in how we get our information. I ceased getting my information from television news over 15 years ago. The Internet is playing an increasingly larger part in how we get our information, and for better or worse, we're all more intelligent and better informed because of it. In the 90s, when a lot of TPers grew up, the icons were professional wrestlers and Beavis and Butthead. So, it's kind of no surprise that this generation is pretty much in the toilet intellectually. But those icons were replaced by the coming of the Internet, and people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So, while I still feel like we have some more pain to go through (the riots in Europe this summer will probably migrate to our shores here next year, unfortunately), I feel optimistic things will improve eventually, either by hook or by crook.
I've studied politics my entire life, and have never seen anything like the GOP Presidential field for 2012. There have been many jokes on Dkos about "Where's Caligula's horse in this race?" and I have to concur. The good news is that it's pretty much foolproof for Obama to be elected.
Every TPer should be made to watch this video. Even if the scary non-white folks in the video terrorize them. It's not about the 9/11 mantra of never forgetting, it's the mirror image of always remembering: