I've written several diaries about the local teabaggers around Albany, NY, over the past few months.
I wondered who are those guys, where did they come from, and why were they evidently successful in turning out good-sized crowds (though always much smaller than they claimed) for their events.
By attending a few of their events and some town halls and reading their message boards, I was able to answer those questions. (In short, they are Ron Paul/Bircher government-haters who especially despise Obama and Democrats, and they use e-mail, social media, and right-wing talk radio to get people out.)
But in writing about them here, I've attracted a couple three trolls, the leader of whom believes that lots of troll comments will "shut them down."
He's evidently unaware of the hidden comments feature.
Details, below.
The first troll, and the leader, popped up last month under a diary about the violent revolutionary fantasies expressed on this teabagger message board.
Kevin McCashion is a whirling dervish of wingnut activity.
He's a diehard Paul/Bircher type who's a member/leader of various local teabagger groups (Albany Tea Party Patriots, Campaign for Liberty, 912 We Surround Them, Homefront Patriots, Oathkeepers, etc.); holds weekly Bircher educational meetings, with required readings; and is a several-times-a-day contributor to the teabagger message boards.
McCashion also was the prime organizer behind the Great Awakening in late September in Troy.
The issues that required this Great Awakening include treason, tyranny, socialized health care, income tax, national service plan, and others straight out of the Paul/Bircher paranoid playbook.
Despite all their usual tactics to turn people out (repeated e-mails to the few hundred on their list, daily calls to local talk radio simpaticos, etc.), the day-long event was a big FAIL, with only a few dozen people attending.
McCashion's latest project, aside from encouraging trolls, is resurrecting the Bircher TRIM Bulletins for NY-20 and NY-21.
Here at DKos, McCashion has made 16 comments, all under my diaries, most well after the comment thread had died out, none of them tipped even once. He generally argues that the teabaggers are here to stay, and that common ground between teabaggers and Kossacks should be explored.
His tone when exhorting fellow teabaggers is a good deal less kumbaya, for example:
C'mon guys! Stand up! Take Action! Get in the fight! Start putting all this reading and ranting to work!
snip
We should regularly have 50 to 100 comments on these blogs, that will shut them down!
Can we do it?
McCashion also recently educated the few dozen to the real story behind Markos -- he's a deep cover CIA disinformation agent.
One teabagger, so far, has responded here to McCashion's "shut them down" plea. Another has posted trollish comments at The Albany Project.
Valerie Doane, the newbie here, gets into the non-kumbaya spirit of this project:
Kevin I can see why you are looking at this as an opportunity. We can actually spoon feed the Daily Kos and others, with whatever info we want i.e. facts and reality, two things they don't seem to deal with very well.
Here's a little-known fact from her first comment:
When money is taken from those who have worked hard, and a president and/or politician decides where to put it (redistribution of wealth) well, it’s nothing short of loss of freedom for every American.
There's the essence of the Paul/Bircher/teabagger ideology -- all taxes are evil because they take away our God-given freedom.
It's really a waste of time trying to point out to teabagger trolls that taxes are, and always have been, necessary for civilization. As it's a waste of time to counter the many other teabagger absurdities -- that's just feeding the trolls.
Up to now, I haven't bother to troll-rate the trolls.
That bit of Kossack charity ends today.