Tea Party Activists

2010_4_18 Tea Party Activists
Ironically, the Tea Party supporters who have taken to the streets in protest are, strangely enough, not the people hurt the most by the Great Recession. A recent poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS NEWS showed that the Tea Party citizens are more educated and wealthier than most of the population, and therefore are likely to be much better off than their fellow Americans. Yet they are the pessimists and say the nation is going to hell in a hand basket. How do we account for this?
They see themselves in a different frame of reference than the government who, they think, represent people unlike themselves. From this sense of difference, which is rooted in past values, comes this overwhelming feeling that they must take their country back. The last election, which to them was some kind of aberration, be damned. For some reason they are able to see the votes of those who put Obama in office as somehow lacking legitimacy, when clearly that can’t be so, as their fellow citizens put him in office. As far as they are concerned the country has been polluted and misdirected by alien (non-American) forces and values more tied to big government rather than smaller government, and who pay more attention to the collective than the individual. The depth of the gap between these groups is huge and goes back as far as JFK, a time when the Democrats and the Liberal Establishment took hold over years of dominance led by Senator Bob Taft, President Eisenhower, and the young Dick Nixon, and the conservatism they embodied. Suddenly social issues rose in importance and a number of hurdles were overcome in civil rights and welfare during the LBG presidency. It was that combination of Big Government and controversial social issues that cemented the opposition and sparked the anger that went along with the big change.
Their dislike of Obama is passionate and irrational, beyond rhyme and reason. They feel he wants to do more for black people than he does for folks like themselves. They include poor people and immigrants in the same category as African-Americans. 30% of the Tea Baggers are ‘Birthers,’ those who discredit Obama’s authentic citizenship. I don’t think there is any denying racism is at the bottom of their attitude toward the president. It reflects an unresolved past in regard how things used to be. I would suggest that the Tea Party banner reflects a deep prejudice that echoes down through the years of slavery. It is racism in a thin disguise.
The birth of the Tea Party is more evidence of our culture war, which Pat Buchanan identified some years ago. The ideological battle between the Liberal Establishment and the Republican Establishment-cum-Tea Party Activism is as hot today as it was during the early years of the Clinton Administration, which culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. The Far Right sees it all as “creeping socialism.” “Better dead than red,” as they use to say. Most Tea Party Activists are white, over 45 or 65, and remember a time less diverse and multicultural than what prevails today. Many observers of Tea Party conservatives have perceived nostalgia at the heart of their feeling about values and patriotism. They lament what has passed and what has entered into the cultural and social mix. That’s the pollution they speak of. To support the poor, misbegotten, and the slackers is too much as far as they are concerned, the curse of the Welfare State. They worship self-interest, not empathy, a virtue that the president extols as primary in a democratic society, which puts all members at a premium. The Tea Baggers have a hardcore moral mission, which is why they are angrily against abortion, gay rights and marriage, welfare, the playboy, the addict, feminism, and socialism. And it is why they are for freedom, individualism (the more rugged the better), unregulated capitalism (let the market rule), every man for him or herself, let the banks fail, and “greed is good.” The evils stem from the disobedience of the Patriarchy that the conservatives of all stripes revere. In other words there are two narratives at odds with each other and they clash rather than exist on parallel lines of activity and principle because the Patriarchal principle tends to be absolutist and seeks to dominate the scene and if possible to obliterate the other, the “heretic’ for whom they have little regard. And that is the rub: the Tea Party moral imperative is too righteous, inflexible and intolerant. Liberals at least accept all comers under their democratic umbrella.