Saturday, August 06, 2011
Joe Biden has compared the Tea Party to terrorists. Maureen Dowd compared them to cannibals and vampires. Then having run out of mythical monsters, or monsters they believe are mythical, there was nothing to do but roll out a few more articles about the Republican Party being taken over by Dittoheads from Outer Space.
What's interesting about all this Pravdaesque bile is that the focus of liberal rage and terror is aimed at the grass roots. The left dismisses the Republican party as an organization of bankers and capitalists counting their money in between making orphans sweep their chimneys, but then when a populist wave sweeps across it-- they pen dismal articles longing for the days when reasonable country club republicans ran things.
Say what you will about the closeted northeastern establishment which donates to gay rights in between golfing sessions, it knows how to be reasonable. Sometimes it's so reasonable that it scares itself. But in between listening to Chamber of Commerce lobbyists explain why America needs illegal aliens and why their chosen industry needs subsidies-- a different element crept in. A strange creature known as the American voter showed up and demanded to be heard.
The left has looked over the two Republican parties, the party of smokestacks and Pedro clean my kitchen, and the party of less taxes and less government interference. And decided that the smokestack party looks pretty good after all. It's easier to deal with liberal capitalists on the hill than with libertarian visigoths at the gate.
On MSNBC, pretend journalist Martin Bashir, interviewed a pretend doctor who explained that Tea Party members were pathologically addicted to "getting their own way". The Communists claimed that religion was the opiate of the people. Now freedom is the new addiction. "They Can't Stop Doing Their Own Thing-- on the next Phil Donahue."And the only cure is a 12 step UN and EU program to put your faith in Hope and Change.
Addicts, terrorists, vampires, zombies and cannibals. So many names for people who are tired and angry of being at the tail end of a nation run for the benefit of the Bashirs and Bidens. Who aren't looking for a handout, a subsidy or a government job-- but are addicted to the opiate of freedom.
How do you please voters who just want to be left alone? It's a frightening question that no politician wants to confront. The political establishment runs on doling out favors. In their absence there is nothing but the sounds of a country getting back to work.
At the heart of America's economic problems is a corrupt political establishment that goes on making the same mistakes year after year. They are the vampires, the cannibals and the zombies sucking the life out of the country and cracking the bones of the economy to get at the juicy marrow. They are the ones hopelessly addicted to taxpayer money and regulatory power.
Look at the name that someone else calls you and you know what they are. The left's vituperation is also its self-identification. The massive system they have built up is the vampire. Its bureaucracy is the senseless shambling zombie without a mind of its own. In its cannibal frenzy it devours its own future in a rotting pile of debt. And when the money isn't forthcoming, it holds the country hostage acting like the terrorists they sympathize with.
Unfair? So is a system where everyone is forced to subsidize an out of control government whose crony corruption has created a monopoly on power. Where everyone pays and pays to be lectured, policed, ordered about, brutalized, investigated and ruled over by one political machine or another. And when the public cries enough, the vampires, cannibals and zombies point and cry, "Cannibals, Vampires and Zombies!" Not realizing that they are actually describing themselves.
If the Tea Party were really a wholly owned creature of the Koch Brothers, as tame as Soros' left wing grass roots movements, then it would be far less objectionable to the commentators shrieking their fool heads off about it. But it isn't tame, it isn't the pet poodle of some billionaire, the way its counterparts on the left are, and that is what makes it dangerous.
The professional edifice of government that we have now works so long as everyone plays by the rules. And the first rule of Government Club is, "You can spend money, if I can spend money." And the second rule is we never talk about the first rule. When a grass roots movement of amateurs, that is built on rejecting the first rule and organizing against the second rule, comes into its own, it's the scariest thing to hit Washington D.C. since the Porcine Virus.
In the time of a highly exploitable crisis, when the left had its moment to prove that government is the solution, and free enterprise is the problem, it did the opposite. It convinced large numbers of people that government is the problem. Not that they took much convincing.
Americans are naturally distrustful of government-- but it isn't just a local reaction. Harper's win in Canada and the rise of the right in Europe are warnings of a coming storm. The wind of history is no longer blowing at socialism's back. Quite a few people in the developed world think they would do better with less regulation and more flexibility.
The god of government has failed the people in the hour of their greatest need. But the Europeans at least avoided doing what their American cousins did. Turning a man into the embodiment of their movement, unwilling to realize that messiahs are a double-edged sword. If they don't succeed, they will take you down with them. It's the lesson that Obama's mad scientists should have learned before unleashing their little monster on the global village. No one will care about your intentions, when the monster runs amok.
Like electromagnets and raising the dead, the physics of politics can be an interesting thing. There might be no Obama without Bush. And there would be no Tea Party without Obama.
The left expected a transformative moment in history-- and they were right. But it wasn't for them. The oceans didn't settle down, any more than usual, and America didn't become Sweden. Instead a sleeping giant woke and remembered its power.
The Obama Moment with its encompassing godhead of government intervention became the shorthand for everything that the traditional voter hated about the system. It wasn't racism, it was worse than that. It was heresy. The left had erected its idol in the middle of an economic meltdown, and it was stunned to discover a mob headed their way with picks and axes.
The media hailed Obama's victory as nothing less than the supernatural and transcendent force of history. But historical forces tend to attract their opposites. The left had turned a man into a symbol. And that symbol works both ways. For the left, Obama was the best of them. For the right, he was the worst of them. And economic conditions and public anger is not on the side of the idol makers, but on the side of the idol smashers. The side of the mobs who gather to torch windmills with monsters in them.
The fear and anger works both ways. And the establishment is just as angry and afraid as the people they have been stepping on. The mask of benevolence keeps slipping and underneath is a greedy smirk, a vicious snarl and a frightened ogre.
As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear. What it fears most of all is a populist movement that does not depend on them and that has no use for them. It has few illusions that its interests run counter to that of the public. And that given a choice the public would toss them overboard in a minute and keep just enough government to fix the roads, put out the fires and bomb the enemies. The establishment has only gotten the taste of unlimited power, it isn't ready to be forced back into the crypt, to hide during the day time, and only to sneak out at night to drink the taxpayer's blood.
The Tea Party movement is the closest that an organized group of anti-government populists have come in some time. And that is terrifying enough. But the thought of the Tea Party as a permanent force in national politics is what truly frightens them. They can weather the occasional populist storm, but not a full scale firestorm.
Change is a dangerous slogan. It indicates a dissatisfaction with the status quo. It can be co-opted by politicians, but it is a raw pulsing nerve indicating tension and anger below. Touch the nerve and the unexpected might happen. Obama came to power on change. But now faced with the prospect of real change, his supporters see monsters behind everywhere. Terrifying creatures coming to bring change. Real change.
Joe Biden has compared the Tea Party to terrorists. Maureen Dowd compared them to cannibals and vampires. Then having run out of mythical monsters, or monsters they believe are mythical, there was nothing to do but roll out a few more articles about the Republican Party being taken over by Dittoheads from Outer Space.
Say what you will about the closeted northeastern establishment which donates to gay rights in between golfing sessions, it knows how to be reasonable. Sometimes it's so reasonable that it scares itself. But in between listening to Chamber of Commerce lobbyists explain why America needs illegal aliens and why their chosen industry needs subsidies-- a different element crept in. A strange creature known as the American voter showed up and demanded to be heard.
The left has looked over the two Republican parties, the party of smokestacks and Pedro clean my kitchen, and the party of less taxes and less government interference. And decided that the smokestack party looks pretty good after all. It's easier to deal with liberal capitalists on the hill than with libertarian visigoths at the gate.
On MSNBC, pretend journalist Martin Bashir, interviewed a pretend doctor who explained that Tea Party members were pathologically addicted to "getting their own way". The Communists claimed that religion was the opiate of the people. Now freedom is the new addiction. "They Can't Stop Doing Their Own Thing-- on the next Phil Donahue."And the only cure is a 12 step UN and EU program to put your faith in Hope and Change.
Addicts, terrorists, vampires, zombies and cannibals. So many names for people who are tired and angry of being at the tail end of a nation run for the benefit of the Bashirs and Bidens. Who aren't looking for a handout, a subsidy or a government job-- but are addicted to the opiate of freedom.
How do you please voters who just want to be left alone? It's a frightening question that no politician wants to confront. The political establishment runs on doling out favors. In their absence there is nothing but the sounds of a country getting back to work.
At the heart of America's economic problems is a corrupt political establishment that goes on making the same mistakes year after year. They are the vampires, the cannibals and the zombies sucking the life out of the country and cracking the bones of the economy to get at the juicy marrow. They are the ones hopelessly addicted to taxpayer money and regulatory power.
Look at the name that someone else calls you and you know what they are. The left's vituperation is also its self-identification. The massive system they have built up is the vampire. Its bureaucracy is the senseless shambling zombie without a mind of its own. In its cannibal frenzy it devours its own future in a rotting pile of debt. And when the money isn't forthcoming, it holds the country hostage acting like the terrorists they sympathize with.
Unfair? So is a system where everyone is forced to subsidize an out of control government whose crony corruption has created a monopoly on power. Where everyone pays and pays to be lectured, policed, ordered about, brutalized, investigated and ruled over by one political machine or another. And when the public cries enough, the vampires, cannibals and zombies point and cry, "Cannibals, Vampires and Zombies!" Not realizing that they are actually describing themselves.
If the Tea Party were really a wholly owned creature of the Koch Brothers, as tame as Soros' left wing grass roots movements, then it would be far less objectionable to the commentators shrieking their fool heads off about it. But it isn't tame, it isn't the pet poodle of some billionaire, the way its counterparts on the left are, and that is what makes it dangerous.
The professional edifice of government that we have now works so long as everyone plays by the rules. And the first rule of Government Club is, "You can spend money, if I can spend money." And the second rule is we never talk about the first rule. When a grass roots movement of amateurs, that is built on rejecting the first rule and organizing against the second rule, comes into its own, it's the scariest thing to hit Washington D.C. since the Porcine Virus.In the time of a highly exploitable crisis, when the left had its moment to prove that government is the solution, and free enterprise is the problem, it did the opposite. It convinced large numbers of people that government is the problem. Not that they took much convincing.
Americans are naturally distrustful of government-- but it isn't just a local reaction. Harper's win in Canada and the rise of the right in Europe are warnings of a coming storm. The wind of history is no longer blowing at socialism's back. Quite a few people in the developed world think they would do better with less regulation and more flexibility.
The god of government has failed the people in the hour of their greatest need. But the Europeans at least avoided doing what their American cousins did. Turning a man into the embodiment of their movement, unwilling to realize that messiahs are a double-edged sword. If they don't succeed, they will take you down with them. It's the lesson that Obama's mad scientists should have learned before unleashing their little monster on the global village. No one will care about your intentions, when the monster runs amok.
Like electromagnets and raising the dead, the physics of politics can be an interesting thing. There might be no Obama without Bush. And there would be no Tea Party without Obama.
The left expected a transformative moment in history-- and they were right. But it wasn't for them. The oceans didn't settle down, any more than usual, and America didn't become Sweden. Instead a sleeping giant woke and remembered its power.
The Obama Moment with its encompassing godhead of government intervention became the shorthand for everything that the traditional voter hated about the system. It wasn't racism, it was worse than that. It was heresy. The left had erected its idol in the middle of an economic meltdown, and it was stunned to discover a mob headed their way with picks and axes.
The media hailed Obama's victory as nothing less than the supernatural and transcendent force of history. But historical forces tend to attract their opposites. The left had turned a man into a symbol. And that symbol works both ways. For the left, Obama was the best of them. For the right, he was the worst of them. And economic conditions and public anger is not on the side of the idol makers, but on the side of the idol smashers. The side of the mobs who gather to torch windmills with monsters in them.
The fear and anger works both ways. And the establishment is just as angry and afraid as the people they have been stepping on. The mask of benevolence keeps slipping and underneath is a greedy smirk, a vicious snarl and a frightened ogre.
As the virulence of the establishment grows, so does its fear. What it fears most of all is a populist movement that does not depend on them and that has no use for them. It has few illusions that its interests run counter to that of the public. And that given a choice the public would toss them overboard in a minute and keep just enough government to fix the roads, put out the fires and bomb the enemies. The establishment has only gotten the taste of unlimited power, it isn't ready to be forced back into the crypt, to hide during the day time, and only to sneak out at night to drink the taxpayer's blood.The Tea Party movement is the closest that an organized group of anti-government populists have come in some time. And that is terrifying enough. But the thought of the Tea Party as a permanent force in national politics is what truly frightens them. They can weather the occasional populist storm, but not a full scale firestorm.
Change is a dangerous slogan. It indicates a dissatisfaction with the status quo. It can be co-opted by politicians, but it is a raw pulsing nerve indicating tension and anger below. Touch the nerve and the unexpected might happen. Obama came to power on change. But now faced with the prospect of real change, his supporters see monsters behind everywhere. Terrifying creatures coming to bring change. Real change.
Daniel Greenfield
is a columnist at Front Page Magazine, Canada Free Press and Israel National News, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center
