Sounding The Alarm
by digby
Joseph Farrah, the Paul Revere of the Tea Party (and professional wingnut con artist) sounds the alarm. Oh my God, man the barricades, charge the hill, batten down the hatches and fire when ready Mama Grizzlies: the progressives are coming!
Did you hear the one about the Left’s plan to counter the tea-party movement?
It’s no joke.
“In an effort to replicate the tea party’s success, 170 liberal and civil-rights
groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement’s
political energy and influence,” explained a Washington Post report. “They
promise to ‘counter the tea-party narrative’ and help the progressive movement
find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.”The effort is curiously dubbed “One Nation.” Historically, of course, when that
two-word phrase has been used in America, it is usually followed by another
two-word phrase “under God.” But with groups such as La Raza, the NAACP, the
AFL-CIO and the SEIU joining the party, it is unlikely the deity will be invoked
by any within this coalition.You might ask: What’s their beef?
They’ve got Barack Obama in the White House. They have Nancy Pelosi as speaker
of the House. They have Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. They seem to have
Elena Kagan on her way to the Supreme Court.The answer, of course, is they see it all slipping away beginning this November.
The tide has turned against their causes. Something very predictable happened on
the way to their workers’ paradise an awakening in the American spirit that is
saying: We will slouch toward Gomorrah no longer!That spirit is illustrated by the tea-party movement the biggest and most potent
grass-roots political development in generations. People who never before
marched on Washington, carried a protest sign or rallied at a town-hall meeting
have done just that by the millions. They have no familiar household names among
their leaders. They have no billionaires bankrolling them. They represent no
special interests. They get no friendly coverage from the press. They demand
nothing for themselves from government except their freedom and to be molested
no longer. And this is what has the super-organized, well-funded,
government-subsidized, media-backed Left in a tizzy.Understandably so.
As I write in my new book, “The Tea Party Manifesto,” this movement represents
what might well be America’s last chance for a return to liberty and
self-government. If it fails, so does the uniquely American dream of
constitutionally limited federal power, the protection of God-breathed
inalienable rights, equal justice, the rule of law, the will of the people and
national sovereignty.So, you might ask, what does this new opposition movement demand? What will be
the rallying cry of its planned march on Washington Oct. 2?More government spending on job creation.
Yes, that makes sense. That plan is working so well. It has worked to perfection
with the biggest stimulus spending programs in the history of the world.
Obviously all we need to do is more of the same!Of course, no rational human being involved in this movement actually believes
that more government spending is going to solve the problem of unemployment. The
smarter and more devious elements of this movement know that more spending will
only make joblessness even worse. However, they also understand that it will
create more unsustainable dependency on government, which will inevitably lead
to chaos and the collapse of the nation and ideals they detest.With Washington already facing insurmountable, inter-generational debt, what
else could be on the minds of those within this movement who have any rational
understanding of economics? They want to push America off the cliff.Is there any other explanation?
They don’t want jobs. They want to complete the revolution. And they want to
complete it, if at all possible, before the new Congress sweeps in following the
tea-party electoral victory Nov. 2.This rogue, reckless movement of fundamentally anti-American ambitions bears
careful watching.
It’s possible that I might have fallen too far down the rabbit hole and may not be able to crawl out. The dissonance is getting so bad that I don’t know if I have the energy to fight it. All day long, on TV and on the intertubes, I’ve been getting a greater and greater feeling of disorientation.
Some of it is undoubtedly due to reading that piece about facts being meaningless, which I read first thing this morning and which has stuck with me all day. But part of it is just a slow growing sense of despair over the fact it looks more and more as if the party of Michelle Bachman and Darrell Issa are going to have subpoena power starting next January and that people like the raving lunatic who wrote that screed are going to be listened to by those nuts. (Nobody’s even pretending that “grown-ups” can contain them. There are no grown-ups.) That outcome is probably what the Democrats deserve. Maybe it’s even what all adult Americans deserve. But no kid ever asked to be born and they definitely don’t deserve to have their futures destroyed and their dreams shattered because some crazy people found their way into power in a crisis. It’s happened before and it can happen again.
Perhaps even more depressing is the fact that while the administration will veto the wackiest nonsense a GOP congress might manage to get through (assuming that Mark Halperin is right and that the freakshow Teabaggers running for the senate win too — omg), nothing that helps ordinary Americans will have a chance of passing. But the Big Money Boyz and the Military Industrial Complex won’t miss a beat — the things that benefit them will probably be signed into law — but only after bruising legislative battles which will further demoralize the Democratic base and empower the right even more. (If the economy has an uptick before 2012 and Obama is lucky in his opponent, perhaps he can retain the presidency, but he will only ever be able to govern as far to the left as a very rabid GOP congress will let allow.)
It’s an ugly scenario. I hope it doesn’t happen. But the Dems have got to make a better argument than they have been. And time is wasting.
(Farrah piece via email)