I’ve mentioned before how many Americans believe the election of Barack Obama as president of the US should mark the end of racism in America. This notion generally comes up when talking to republicans defending the tea party movement as a legitimate grass roots movement. You see the tea party is, to them, a genuine outpouring of anger at the tone deaf attitudes the federal government has on their positions. They represent themselves as speaking from the heart of real America. They say the racist signs you see at rallies aren’t proof of a racist element endemic in the movement but are outliers. I’ve come to conclusion that the only way to survive the cognitive dissonance this perspective creates they must redefine and obfuscate the term racism. In other words the deniers of racism in the tea party have no idea what racism actually is! In their mind it’s not racist to portray the current president as a monkey denying the 200 year racist association, because for 8 years one white president was often portrayed in a similar way. To them it is not racist to do everything to paint the president as a foreign, Kenyan, anti-colonialist, Muslim, Marxist, Socialist, Anarchist, anti-Christ, who is also somehow Arab. Do you see what happened here? It is not that their racist, their scared shitless and blathering like idiots. It’s as if we are currently living guess who’s coming to dinner. Or perhaps we are watching the nation play Archie Bunker being kissed by Sammy Davis Jr. The village voice has an amusing article chronologically cataloging the steady descent into the truly racist environment that exists in this country right now.
But come on you hippie marshmallow, some of you might be saying, Obama is a least partially responsible for the environment that exists right now. If he didn’t try to radically change the country so fast people wouldn’t be so afraid and uncertain what shoe was going to drop next. There are many valid criticisms of Obama, from the right and the left, but swiftness isn’t one of them. A full year spent on health care reform, 18 months on financial reform, closing Guantanamo Bay and ending DADT oh yeah still waiting on those. By the same token it can’t be said that this president has been uncompromising. Healthcare went from the hope of a single payer system, to the hope of a single payer option, to the option to be a part of a pool of people buying private insurance in an open market.
So is the Tea party racist? Well their not George Wallace racist. They’re not a new incarnation of the Klan. The problem is their message is so incoherent and vague almost any label could validly be placed upon them and supported with evidence. The tea party is a group of social conservatives, social libertarians, fiscal conservatives, neo-conservatives, and yes racists. Under normal circumstances these people would not be caught dead in the same room together. What unifies them is marketing. I defy you to put a social libertarian in the same room as a social conservative and find a candidate they both support. Likewise put Dick Armey in the same room as Ron Paul and let’s see them put together a plan for Afghanistan. If there wasn’t an ever present drum beat telling these people that they are fighting for the same thing the group would spasm and spit into a convulsive mess the second any one of them voiced their specific opinions on the direction the country should go. This is the reason you never hear any plans at a Tea party rally. It’s like that old episode of south park with the underpants gnomes: Phase one steal underpants, Phase two…., well phase three is profit. Except for the tea party it’s: step one take over government, step two…., well step three is freedom.
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