Teabagging and Mad Hattery
The Tea Party is many things at once, but one way or another, it almost always comes back to a campaign against that unsafe urban hellscape of godless liberalism we call our modern world.
[Matt Taibbi, "Tea & Crackers", Rolling Stone, 28 September 2010.]
Is teabagging — that pitiful longing for the "Leave it to Beaver" idyll of the 1950s that never really existed — the death rattle of white hegemony in America? As a godless liberal embedded in a socio-cultural sea change, it's tough for me to tell but that seems to be what's going on, that this is the strangled sound traditional conservatism makes when, to appropriate Grover Norquist's metaphor, the Republican party is reduced to something of a size that can be drowned in a bathtub.
P.S. to Obama & Biden : talk about whiney liberals all you want but the best way to re-energize the liberal wing of your party, and the liberal faction of independents, is to do something liberal.
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on Thursday, 30 September 2010 at 04.02
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Teabagging–this from someone who spends a lot of blogging energy on semantic accuracy. Thanks for the dis.
that pitiful longing for the "Leave it to Beaver" idyll of the 1950s that never really existed
The Tea Parties are foremost about fiscal discipline in government, but thanks once more for elucidating the thing that most threatens your Gay nihilism.
the death rattle of white hegemony in America
Okay mr. language man, I notice that "white" here is not capitalized. QED
America installed a racial spoils system at the expense of Whites, and is currently spending its infrastructure and social programs to subsidize its demographic replacement by low achieving immigrants from south of the border. I'd say the death rattle began long ago, with such things as the cancellation of the Super Conducting Super Collider and the demise of our space program.
on Thursday, 30 September 2010 at 12.01
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Gay nihilism, female nihilism, black nihilism, asian-american nihilism, hispanic nihilism — lots of nihilists! It shocks me that the country is still here when, according to 23% of Americans the other 77% of Americans want only to destroy! kill! annihilate! it for reasons that no one seems quite able to explain but is painfully obvious to 23% of Americans.
"The Tea Parties are foremost about fiscal discipline in government". This makes me think of the number of times I've listened to football fans, hockey fans, basketball fans, whatever-sports fans, talk in interviews about how much they enjoy their favorite sport because of "sportsmanship" all the while they're yelling "kill the bastards! rip their balls off!" from the stands. I guess it's politically useful, though, to have a few popular cover phrases for marketing even if it's not what's motivating the troops.
p.s. I was never a big fan of the SSC. Nice of you to mention it but I'm not sure I see how you're using it to sharpen your image of "fiscal discipline in government". It was, after all, non-defense spending.
on Saturday, 2 October 2010 at 07.08
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You were chortling about the demise of "white hegemony" and I was pointing out that the replacement demographic won't be spending much on physics research.
I find it galling that past,, present, and future expenditures are spent to fund the installation of a new majority demographic that won't sustain such research, either fiscally or culturally.
Maybe White people have lost the drive to reproduce both culturally and bodily. Okay, fine. But to subsidize the more "vibrant" seems to me the height of fiscal irresponsibility.
on Saturday, 2 October 2010 at 07.17
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… according to 23% of Americans the other 77% of Americans want only to destroy! kill! annihilate!…
And that's just abortions.
I was considering travelling across Yemen yelling "Allah sucks!" at every opportunity and seeing how many times I get killed. For what we are willing to kill and die for determines the course of human events.
on Sunday, 3 October 2010 at 11.01
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Or not willing to kill and die for. I don't know whether this is the big advantage to being an atheist, or its big loss, but I don't myself see the attraction of killing lots of people and risking my own death to appease and inscrutable–not to mention non-existent–invisible god in the sky. Is does suggest the interesting anthropological idea that the urge to kill is so strong that gods had to be invented to give humans a reason it's acceptable.
on Tuesday, 5 October 2010 at 01.29
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rightsaidfred wrote, "The Tea Parties are foremost about fiscal discipline in government."
Carl Palladino, for example, is a hot prospect for that. See: Paladino Took Government Tax Break By Pledging To Deliver Jobs, But Instead Pocketed The Money.
With her dodgy record of paying off college loans and sticky-fingered approach to using campaign funds, Christine O'Donnell stands out as a beacon of sound money management.
I'll say one thing for your political opinions, RSF: they're consistent.
on Wednesday, 6 October 2010 at 09.21
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I don't deny that there is plenty of misspending by those who proclaim fiscal conservatism. Part of it is embedded in those who seek public office.
Things are worse on your side. There is no glory in going to Hell pointing out that the other guy did bad things too.
on Friday, 8 October 2010 at 08.34
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I don't myself see the attraction of killing lots of people and risking my own death to appease and inscrutable–not to mention non-existent–invisible god in the sky.
I would argue for an over all ameliorating effect of religion on our mass killing instinct. I don't see where Atheists have any immunity to such.
You claim a personal exemption from the kill-or-be-killed sweepstakes, but killing is implicit in much that has established your station in life. Others have killed/will kill on your behalf to build/maintain our society.