rssJuvenile Teabagging
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 9:42 am
- 4 Comments
Reading Weigel’s post about the fetishization that the teabaggers have with analogizing themselves to terrorists, revolutionaries and guerrilas represents an interesting devolution for the right. An earlier era of conservative thinking mocked liberals for being overprivileged dilettantes playacting at social upheaval. Think Tom Wolfe in “Radical Chic,” for instance. Now here’s a series of bleats from the overclass whining about the top earners returning to Clinton-era marginal tax rates as if the viability of the republic depends on it. Watching such a rapid descent into deliberate adolescence from some of the most privileged people on the planet is rather striking. It’s like if Will Ferrell’s character in “Old School” were a reactionary. It’s to be pitied, not feared, and certainly not respected.
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4 Comments
Comment posted April 15, 2009 @ 9:06 am
Pity, James Joyce tells us, is an appreciation of the inevitability of human suffering, and identifying with the sufferer; terror is what we feel, when we realize our identity with the cause of that suffering.
Perhaps “reviled” would say it more clearly? I can identify with the citizens who are being manipulated by this obvious domestic strategic disinformation campaign, brought to us by Karl Rove's own propaganda machine, Fox News; and I do pity them, yes.
I think the more important response is to look very closely and critically at this whole process of jacking our shared narrative with certain specific myths.
Myths aren't just lies, they are metaphors, *vessels,* for going from ignorance to understanding, into some of which we are much more easily lured than others. Like kittens into burlap sacks, Rightists fall easily for the fear-mongering, and that, of course, is the point: inciting violence while maintaining “plausible deniability.”
I agree, Ackerman: Pity the tea-baggers who are being jacked into a violent frenzy by Karl Rove's myth-making machine. And go after that master myth-jacker like the public health hazard he is.
Comment posted April 15, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
Pity, James Joyce tells us, is an appreciation of the inevitability of human suffering, and identifying with the sufferer; terror is what we feel, when we realize our identity with the cause of that suffering.
Perhaps “reviled” would say it more clearly? I can identify with the citizens who are being manipulated by this obvious domestic strategic disinformation campaign, brought to us by Karl Rove's own propaganda machine, Fox News; and I do pity them, yes.
I think the more important response is to look very closely and critically at this whole process of jacking our shared narrative with certain specific myths.
Myths aren't just lies, they are metaphors, *vessels,* for going from ignorance to understanding, into some of which we are much more easily lured than others. Like kittens into burlap sacks, Rightists fall easily for the fear-mongering, and that, of course, is the point: inciting violence while maintaining “plausible deniability.”
I agree, Ackerman: Pity the tea-baggers who are being jacked into a violent frenzy by Karl Rove's myth-making machine. And go after that master myth-jacker like the public health hazard he is.
Pingback posted April 21, 2009 @ 9:40 pm
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