Thursday, July 29, 2010

Mean Town Blues

It's a mean old town
To live in by yourself
-Johnny Winter, "Mean Town Blues"
The teabaggers have succeeded in one area: Without making much of an effort, the MSM and even much of the progressive media calls the 'baggers a "movement." Not Citizen K.

William Lloyd Garrison led a movement to abolish slavery. Susan B. Anthony formed a movement so that women could vote. John L. Lewis and Samuel Gompers helped lead movements that allowed millions of Americans to work in safe conditions for a decent wage. Martin Luther King led a movement that brought social and political equality to disenfranchised black Americans. The student leaders of the 60s helped end a costly and divisive war and created the moral climate for lowering the voting age to 18 and including young voters in the political process. ("Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.")

In each case, the movements in question enabled millions of people to seize political and economic rights from a system unwilling to give them up.

The teabaggers, though, represent nothing that I think of as a movement, unless a movement is a hysterical zero sum game in which I have mine and screw the rest of you. They are certainly not interested in living peaceably. Nor are they interested in any sort of equality: In fact, they're all about keeping what they have and denying it to everyone else. Their vision of the country -- the one that they keep saying that they love and want back -- is brutish and cramped, a struggle between races while their betters among the elite look on. And laugh...


7 comments:

Roy said...

Bowel movement comes to mind. Otherwise, nope, nothing there of any substance whatsoever.

Leslie Parsley said...

When people can't even get organized under one leader with similar goals, they can hardly be called a movement. Such paranoid and narcissistic groups usually step in their own muck - sooner than later.

K. said...

Roy: On a nuclear laxative.

tnlib: They wallow in it, but they think it's a river of righteousness.

Darlene said...

You certainly have the Tea Baggers pegged. A bunch of selfish sour heads can hardly be called a movement just because they make a lot of noise.

Anonymous said...

Amen K ! Near here there's a multimillion dollar spread owned by a pissant 20 something who cheated investors and bought the place with ill gains from a hard working guy who built his cheese factory up from the ground and sold out. The lawn of the place has a sign for a local teabagger running for governor featuring the not so clever slogan I'm Mad As Hell Too Carl! Mad that you stole your fortune ? Mad that you made the newspapers when you stiffed on your last 2 million dollar mortgage payments ? Mad that the people you screwed in Texas followed you to Buffalo and let all know how you got so rich at such a young age ? As you said I got mine and screw you I don't want you to get yours because if I play my cards right I can get yours too !!! It's not a movement in any dignified sense of the term.

K. said...

Darlene: Thanks! That's definitely how I see it.

Rasta: Be easy on the poor guy: He was probably driven to it by black racism.

Frank Partisan said...

Teabaggers in essence are only the Republican Party rebranded. It was a lobbyist creation.

I expect the GOP to dump them, after they lose.

OT: I'm happy Breibart is going to court.