Regular Folks

One of my readers likes to argue that teabaggers are just regular folks who believe strongly. She still hasn't answered what, exactly, it is that they believe, and why. But she does claim they belong to no particular party.

Because I'm a helpful guy, here's the latest bit of info that might help her to clarify her thinking:

Republican Tea Partiers just can't seem to get enough of those Obama/black people/chimpanzee jokes

This is the image e-mailed to her friends by Orange County Republican committeewoman and Tea Party activist Marilyn Davenport

Republicans seem to have a really, really narrow idea of what constitutes racism -- which is how they're able to claim that the Tea Parties aren't riddled with racism throughout.

But then little stories like this one from Orange County keep bubbling up to the surface of their fetid little Tea Party cesspool:

The Weekly has obtained a copy of an email sent to fellow conservatives this week by Marilyn Davenport, a Southern California Tea Party activist and member of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party.

Under the words, "Now you know why no birth certificate," there's an Obama family portrait showing them as apes.

As always, the "sweet little old lady" who sent the mail had no idea that anyone might possibly construe the mail as racist, even though comparing black people to various kinds of apes has always been a stock feature of racist denigration in America. Why, some of her best friends are black! ...

Point one: Central committee of Republican Party.

Point two: Teabagger.

Point three: ..... do I really have to spell it out?

Related question: how many "isolated incidents" does it take to confirm a pattern?

Dystopia

In case there's still anyone out there who thinks the teabaggers are about limited government and love of democracy, they'd do well to read this (from that noted left-wing rag, Forbes):

Perhaps lost in the Wisconsin shuffle is the story of what exactly is happening in Michigan. Newly elected Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is set to pass one of the most sweeping, anti-democratic pieces of legislation in the country – and almost no one is talking about it.

Snyder’s law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed “Emergency Managers” in their stead. But that’s not all – whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn’t get much more anti-Democratic than that.

Except it does. The governor simply has to declare a financial emergency to invoke these powers – or he can hire a private company to declare financial emergency and take over oversight of the city. That’s right, a private corporation can declare your city in a state of financial emergency and send in its Emergency Manager, fire your elected officials, and reap the benefits of the ensuing state contracts. ...

.... The Tea Party movement talks a good game about democracy and limited government, but in practice its elected leaders are crony-capitalists and union-busters. There is nothing limited about a state government that can erase entire cities or take control of school districts and local governments with the swipe of a pen. Manufactured crisis and a litany of politicians and power-brokers talking about how broke we are is all it takes to rob us of our democracy.

Read the whole article, including the update at the end. And watch the video.

Then, wonder: is this really what democracy looks like? American democracy? Cut taxes to the point of ruination, declare emergency, void elections, turn towns over to corporations. Really? Self-described patriots, teabaggers: this is what you want of our country? It doesn't bother you, not even a little?

Pawlenty Of Trouble

Without paying enough attention, evidently, I'd been of the impression that, among potential Republican presidential candidates, Tim Pawlenty was one of the more reasonable. Guess I was wrong. (I'm still having problems embedding Daily Show videos, but it's at the link.)

Now, I'll say this: Jon Stewart, of late, has seemed a little too talky on his side of his questions. Nevertheless, his point wasn't impossible to apprehend: are we really heading toward "tyranny" since the election of Barack Obama; and how is it different from the reign of George Bush? (Arresting US citizens without charges, holding them incommunicado, warrantless wiretapping, undeclared wars, taking over education. Stuff like that.) Try as he might, Stewart couldn't get Pawlenty to admit it might be a bit overstated; in fact, the ex-gov seemed unwilling even to address the question. He preferred the current "I know you are but what am I" approach to the issue. (The tax/spend discussion was a little more reasonable, but, again, he steadfastly refused to consider what pretty much everyone else recognizes: ultimately, the deficit will only be solved by a combination of increased revenue and decreased spending, including defense. That, at least, is standard right-handed stuff. But his unwillingness to reject claims of tyranny says a lot. None of it good.)

Having been thus disappointed by the interview (well, not disappointed, really: brought back to reality -- there are no R candidates who wish to appear reasonable at all, lest the teabaggers undip them) this morning I read the guy wants to reinstate DADT. (And let's not ignore to whom Timmeh chose to make his pronouncement.)

After the president's speech last night I've thought I must be a little less, uh, colorful in some of my writings. But it's not inflammatory simply to point to the truth about people. (Well, yes, the hearing of truth seems to inflame some readers, but there's nothing I can do about that.) The fact is that, on the right, teabaggerism -- ie the need to believe the worst about the president, the need to lash out, the need to cling to discredited policy -- has won the day in the current Republican party and its potential candidates. The guy I mistakenly took for thoughtful at one time can't find it in himself to agree we're not heading toward tyranny just because a president wants to make health care more accessible.

Tyranny. Nope, can't deny it. Can't demonstrate it, can't differentiate it from what went on under the previous president. Can't deny it, though. Wouldn't fly. Not now, not with the RWS™ and the teabaggers pulling the strings and calling the shots. (Oops. There I go, using violent rhetoric.)

____________________

Added: true to formless, he's now hit the elitist button.

Reality's A Bitch

This isn't just about hypocrisy, or death panels, or Jan Brewer, but that's where the discussion has to start:

“How many people have to die before you are prepared to reverse your decision on the transplant operations?” seemed like the obvious question.

She said she thought that was unfair and started to explain how dire the state’s financial situation is. If people are so worried about the transplant patients then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money, she said.But she would not explain to me, or to any Democrats in the state capitol, what she has done with the nearly $200 million she was already given in ‘stimulus funds’ to spend on anything she liked.

Cut federal government spending/give us more federal money. Repeal health care/give us the money in the health care bill. End Obamacare because it's rationing/ration medical care to save money.

Sure, it's hypocrisy of the first order. Of course, it's completely dishonest and untenable. That much goes without saying. Or, rather, it's what I, along with everyone else with more than two neurons to rub together, have been saying: teabaggerism (ie, Reaganomics) simply doesn't work; can't work. Has never worked.

The larger point, though, is how tough it really is. The times are tough, the solutions -- if any -- are tough. It's easy to laugh (and I do) or cry (and I do) at people like Jan Brewer; but the fact is she's fighting the same battle as everyone else. She -- like the teabaggers of which she's a prime example -- simply has an empty quiver.

But she is a real-world example of what happens when you apply too-easy answers to too-hard problems. Naive, she may be. Crazy. In over her head. But she's just doing what a hell of a lot of people do when the going gets tough. Go into tilt mode. Resort to magical thinking. Sadly, it's human.

Probably because we weren't intelligently designed.

There's just no way to get from here (badness) to there (wonderfulness) without doing some really hard, really unpleasant things, really controversial things. Things that will require compromise, facing facts, admitting that there's no magic; in short, things that seem as far from teabagging Republicanism (as opposed to the kind that was around a generation ago: thoughtful, in a word) as Glenn Beck is from planet Earth.

Nor are Democrats above criticism: the idea of "belt-tightening," as in correlating social programs with need, raises screams from the extremes. As opposed to the Rs, however, they do recognize the needs we face and that they'll have to be paid for. That tax cuts aren't magic mushrooms.

So Jan Brewer is a microcosm. Sadly, she represents far too many of us -- enough that, looking below the surface of folly, it seems literally impossible that we're any longer equipped as a nation to do what needs doing. And pardon me for saying so, but I see it as of a piece with our (Foxoreillian cries of anti-christianism notwithstanding) ever-increasing national religiosity. Religious thinking (ie, relying on the unprovable, the not reality-based, believing whatever it takes to feel safe in a dangerous world) is fine when confronting the unknowable, like death. There, other than being the basis for wars and mass killings, for discrimination and hatred, it works well. But when the problems are in the now, and require workable solutions in real time, before the end times, it lacks a certain, well, functionality.

Teabaggerism is not just like religion. It is religion. The problem is that, with religion, whether one is right or wrong won't be determined in this world. With teabaggerism, with Reaganomics, it's already known. And Jan Brewer's dilemma shows it, as clearly as a mushroom cloud.

Saddest of all, when confronted with the impossibility, the response is to dig in deeper.

And this kind of crap hardly suggests any impending breakthroughs.

Socialist Agenda

Well, now it's official. Glennnn Beck was right: President Obama, in his Nazi-socialist-communist-America-hating-Kenyomuslim way, is wrecking capitalism. As planned, no doubt, in Bill Ayers' basement fortress:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world and because the government does not have a price index for individual companies. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Since the obvious question has been answered, what with the above, General Motors, and all, here's my remaining one, and it's to the teabaggers and their favorite (aside from birtherism, Reaganovoodoo economics, and re-writing the Constitution) theme: what is a more glaring example of "income redistribution" than what's happened over the last decade?

WASHINGTON — The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever....

....Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments.

In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them.

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Seriously: this is income redistribution of the most perverse sort, of the sort that leads countries to collapse. By definition, ANY tax change leads to redistribution of income; and let's agree that there's no formula which would be considered fair by everyone. Nevertheless, the current situation, deriving in large part from the Bush tax cuts, seems untenable in anything but a non-democratic society, one in which the upper crust ignores the needs of everyone else, except to the extent necessary to keep them alive and productive enough to provide the labor force they require. It's the sort of imbalance that in past times led to tumbrels, knitting, and baskets of heads.

Not now. Today, the people most adversely affected, blinded by constant news distortion, astroturfing, and the baiting of fear and hatred, are demonstrating in favor of the very kind of economic unfairness that, even in the darkest of ages, has led such people to rise up in their own defense. Now, they threaten violence in order to preserve the system that is grinding them into dust.

I mean, yeah, okay: they don't like having a black guy in the white house; they hate immigration, they're convinced the black guy is coming for their guns. But the tax thing, the health care thing, regulating banks? Really? They'd rather destroy their own futures than acknowledge the lies that Fox "news" and the RWS™ are deliberately feeding them; they'd consider an end to Obama worth the price, even if the price is the end of America.

How strange are the times in which we live. How disconnected from reality and from their own interests are those enabling the destruction to continue. Really and truly, it's absolutely remarkable, and entirely incomprehensible.

Dancing With The Metaphors

Despite my happenin' stance, I have to say I've never watched "Dancing With The Stars." But, as a faithful follower of the truths that pass each other in the night on the intertubes, I'm aware that Bristol Palin is on the show, and that she keeps getting voted back by hordes of people who proudly announce they voted hundreds of times to "make liberals' heads explode." This, despite the fact that the born-again virgin regularly receives the lowest scores from the judges. And since it came from one of my best friends, the one who introduced me to my future wife -- twice (same girl) -- when he requested that I comment on the situation (sly reference there), I obey.

Having watched clips that show her acting disability, I'm inclined to stipulate that Ms Palin is not a good dancer either. Evidently, experts agree. (I don't know anything about the show's judges, but I assume they know something about dance, much as the judges on American Idol know music: and I have watched that show.) So for the purposes of this highly important post -- and because my point makes no sense if it's untrue -- let's all get along, and buy the proposition that Bristol Palin dances like me.

In which case, it's a perfect microcosm of teabaggery and the whole Sarah Palin phenomenon: the voting onto the national stage of people demonstrably unqualified and untalented by folks proudly and resolutely refractory to fact. People who not only don't value expertise but actively reject it. People who, for reasons that sincerely escape me, feel a primal need for validation, and exercise it by supporting people who are vapid, anti-intellectual, vengeful, superficial, short-sighted, selfish, uninformed, and mean. Nasty.

The good news is I couldn't care less what happens on DWTS. The bad news is the phenomenon is not limited to meaningless TV shows. It's taken over all phases of political life and, without doubt, threatens to destroy our country.

So, let's keep dancing. You break out the booze. I've got the equivalent of a ball.

Empty He

Some stories are so perfect, you just can't get ahead of them on the intertubes. By now, pretty much everything that needs to be said has been said. But it's still worth a note over here. Because, after all, the stupidity, dishonesty, factlessness, gullibility, hypocrisy, superficiality, vacuity, laughability-were-it-funny, and over-arching unhelpfulness (to name only the first few appropriate adjectives that come most obviously to mind) of the teabaggers and those candidates supported by them, is a central theme of this blog, without which what'd be the point? Like sex without a partner. (Well, okay... )

First of all, let no reader of comments on this blog be surprised or fail to note that the shameless hypocrite in question, with no useful ideas, is an anesthesiologist from the Southlands. Just sayin'.

So this guy, who likes to appear on camera in the starchy white coat and pressed scrubs of the non-operational, campaigned against government-run health care, mischaracterizing as "government takeover" the plan that was sadly far short of and anything but a government takeover. "Market solutions" was his brilliant, original, and pre-failed proposal.

Announcing for everyone to see (those that hadn't figured it out or read this blog, that is) that he and everyone who campaigned on the falsehoods and simplicity of the teabag variety weren't serious at all, he arrives in D.C. and demands, I tell you, DEMANDS his free government health care. A one month wait, he says, is intolerable. Even though it's two months shorter than for the average American new employee in, y'know, market-based private business. Then, when reaction is, well, exactly what you'd expect, he tries to say he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government sponsored care. Yeah, by demanding that he get it right away. Convincing. (It's all in the preceding links.)

Yep. And Mitch McConnell climbs clumsily on board the anti-earmark haywagon, pitchfork in his ass, after requesting a billion dollars --A BILLION DOLLARS -- of his own.

Y'know, I've criticized Congressional Democrats roundly for their fecklessness, for their weak-kneed wobbling on their own principles. But at least they've been trying to get things done, and they haven't been presenting themselves completely as people they are not. Not completely, anyway. But these guys, these new majority Congresspeople, and the ones already in place whom they're joining? What a bunch of disingenuous and empty-headed deceivers. How transparent is their selfishness, their dishonesty, their goals being only about personal power and preserving wealth for the richest while ignoring everything and everyone else.

This guy, this anesthesiologist from the South who, like our favorite commenter, probably sucks a little too much nitrous at home, in his clumsy and instantaneous dropping of tea party pretense almost makes it funny. But really, it's not.

I can only wonder, trembling (mostly with fear), what disasters they're about to wreak upon us (and embarrassments on themselves); and whether even the self-centered and unthinking people who put them in Congress will wake up in time to undo the damage. Or, since it'll be too late, at least to recognize what they've done.

After putting this post to bed, as it were, I got an email linking to the following, by Sam Seder, cleverer and much better known than me:

The Price We'll Pay

As teabagger Republicans work their will, refusing to pay for anything including (maybe starting with) education, America will accelerate its slide from relevance. India, among others, is more than ready to take up the slack. They already are.

BANGALORE, INDIA - In a futuristic lab on a leafy information technology campus, an inventor showed off a power strip that calculates a household's carbon emissions for the environmentally conscious U.S. market. In a research center nearby, rocket scientists worked on designs for lighter, more aerodynamic wings for Boeing fighter jets...

...In the latest phase of globalization, some economists say, Silicon Valley is in danger of losing a sizable piece of its knowledge-based industry to India in much the same way Detroit lost its lead to Japan in the auto industry.

While the United States is still the innovation leader with global projects such as the iPhone, thousands of high-tech jobs with iconic companies like IBM and Accenture have been shipped to India.

My guess is it's already not just about money. But, clearly, the day is coming when it'll be only about locating the best talent. Our schools are failing, running out of money. Teachers are being laid off, measures -- as in my state -- to raise money for education are being rejected by the "I got mine, screw you" brand of America-love that now passes for so-called patriotism.

Prideful and selfish know-nothingism has prevailed, doubling and redoubling and destructive as Asian carp (no offense intended to Asians, our soon-to-be callers of the world's shots.) Here, as failed schools propagate cluelessness (by design?), teabaggerism will achieve a critical mass, crowding out all others until there'll be no room left for those willing to sacrifice, if only a little, for the common good. Once there are enough teabaggers, the end of education, at their hands, will see to it that the only thing we can produce will be more teabaggers. Ironically Darwinian, for people who don't believe in it. Our fate, already sealed, will be, at best, to be the consumers of the rest of the world's innovations.

Assuming we'll have any money left with which to buy them.

Here They Come

Flush with their victories (and, of course, blissfully uncaring about how they also blew it for their side), armed with certainty that god and history are on their side, proudly ignorant, teabaggers are on a roll. Give us garbage, or give us death. (Or, maybe, "we'll give you death.") The city wants to go to a single trash hauler (and, worst of all, to begin recycling!) and the teabaggers see... socialism. Of course. Never mind the cost savings to government, the peace and quiet in the neighborhoods: we're talking principle here. The principle that, as of now, it's our way or the (trash-hauler clogged) highway.

...Fountain Hills Town Manager Rick Davis... said the effort against the trash collection change appeared to be very "organized" and "orchestrated." He said that although there were some loud voices speaking out, he received a considerable amount of backing for the proposal -- including from people who were self-proclaimed Tea Party supporters.

"What Tea Party people believe in is lower cost for municipal services, governmental services, and this certainly fit the bill," he noted.

... Davis also ... [said]... that all companies -- including local ones -- were allowed to bid to be the single hauler. The company that received the contract, Allied Waste, submitted a bid that was significantly lower than the others. Schlum said that the process to change the trash collection issue began in 2005 and involved significant public input.

"The main issue -- we have five haulers on our street, so if you're on a residential street, there's a good chance you're going to have five different trash companies, five different trash bins on your street throughout the week, with pick-ups two-three times per week by each individual hauler," said Schlum, adding that the town was looking for a way to ensure that trash collection was less noisy and resulted in less wear and tear on the streets (which costs taxpayers more money to repair).

Overplay your hand, much? Feeling a rush from pushing people around? Losing your final and already tenuous grip on reality?

I can't wait to see the excesses of Congressional teabaggers and those afraid to point out their idiocy. Because there are problems way bigger than community trash-hauling waiting to be teabagged. The main problem is that by the time the fantasy-prone who elected them come to their senses, it'll be too late. Once the house falls over the cliff, those who gave it the final push -- even with the brainwashed-best of intentions -- can't wish it back up. Like the theory of evolution, there's also the theory of gravity.

I'll bet these people got picked on a lot in school.

[Update, 11/11: but wait, there's more.]

Penny Foolish

Okay, okay, I'll say it in advance: bad metaphor. Still, I find it more than mildly ironic that the party and its various surrogates and propagandists who find the killing of Jesus such a motivating force for everything they believe are symbolically crucifying Barack Obama at every opportunity they get. The one man in the political arena who seems to have clear vision of what this country needs, who can see beyond the present tense, is being thwarted at every turn. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? Psychiatrically speaking.

It's Tom Friedman's recent column that stupefies me yet again, over the idiocy of our congresspeople and the voices to whom they seem to be listening. In it, Friedman writes about discussing, with an academic from Singapore, Obama's plan...

... to set up eight innovation hubs to solve the eight biggest energy problems in the world. But ... the program has not been fully funded yet because Congress, concerned about every dime we spend these days, is reluctant to appropriate the full $25 million for each center, let alone for all eight at once, so only three are moving ahead.

“You mean billion,” he asks? “No,” I say. “We’re talking about $25 million.” “Billion,” he repeats. “No. Million,” I insist....

Welcome to Tea Party America. Think small and carry a big ego...

...So let’s start with the good news: a shout-out for Obama’s energy, science and technology team for thinking big. Soon after taking office, they proposed what Energy Secretary Steven Chu calls “a series of mini-Manhattan projects.” In the fiscal year 2010 budget, the Department of Energy requested financing for “Energy Innovation Hubs” in eight areas: smart grid, solar electricity, carbon capture and storage, extreme materials, batteries and energy storage, energy efficient buildings, nuclear energy, and fuels from sunlight.

In each area, universities, national labs and private industry were invited to put together teams of their best scientists and research ideas to win $25 million a year for five years, to, as Chu put it, “accelerate the normal progress of science and technology for energy research” and thereby “discover and commercialize the energy breakthroughs we need” and thereby spawn new jobs and industries.

So far Congress has appropriated partial funding — “up to $22 million” but probably less — for three of these hubs for one year. ... Chu is now trying to persuade Congress to finance those three again for 2011, as well as at least one more: batteries...

...“We don’t want incremental improvements,” said Chu. “We want real leaps — game-changing” breakthroughs — like a 75 percent reduction in energy used in a commercial building through affordable design and software improvements. “America has shown we can do this,” concluded Chu. “The scientists and engineers see the problem; they see the opportunity; they see what is at stake, and they want to help.” That is why we should fully fund all eight now.

Isn't this exactly the sort of thinking we need and ought to want from our president? (And, incidentally, ought this not incinerate the still-heard cries of Obama as America-hater?) Isn't this the sort of thinking that might still save us from ourselves? Yet discussion of such policies -- discussion? Hell, even mention by our fair and balanced media -- is virtually unheard in the din of campaign season. In the deluge of anonymous and opaque money funding the most dishonest and self-interested ads, successfully deluding teabaggers into acting against their own (and their country's) needs by convincing them of what is not, such thoughtful and far-sighted policy is drowned.

Irony abounds. Those whose world-view is centered in the mythology of a savior killed for his ideas, who weep at his sacrifice and would exclude from our country all who fail to see it, are figuratively killing the first person in a long time actually trying to implement policy that might be our salvation. (Yeah, yeah, I already admitted it's a stretch.)

The difference: ain't gonna be a resurrection. And a second coming will be way too late.

Along those lines, President Obama -- thoughtful as usual -- had this to say in a recent interview (which I'd highly recommend to everyone, especially those who continue to see him as some sort of incarnate devil):

Something that I have learned over the last couple of years is that I have to make decisions based on the long view. And I have to suppress my own desire for a short-term fix if I’m going to be able to lead the country effectively over the long term... I will keep on making that case, and I think that to point — to quote my vice president — I believe that voters are going to stop comparing me to the Almighty and compare me to the alternative.

Would that it were so.

Tea Pot Dumb

More thoughts on the conversation I had recently with my brother. I don't disagree with him about the idea that there's an argument going on about the role of government at the center of our politics. There always has been, after all, from the writing of The Federalist Papers to the present. My disagreement is with the idea that it's within the teabaggers that the heart of the discussion resides.

If it's a serious movement with a serious argument, why is it that the candidates they produce are such uniformly unqualified nutjobs? Surely a movement with serious intentions based on serious thought ought to be able to produce better candidates. Aren't there anti-establishment activists who know what they're talking about? Must there not be at least a few small-government advocates acceptable to the teabaggers who aren't liars, who aren't religionists, who have proposals that add up with simple arithmetic? (Local political ad, word for word: "John Koster's plan: cut taxes, cut wasteful spending, balance the budget." That's his plan? His plan? What, it came to him in the middle of the night like an alien probe, after which he leapt up [probe still dangling?] and wrote it down in a camomile-infused moment of clarity? Stop the presses! There's news! We have a plan!)

Which is not to say these people won't win. Quite likely, sadly, the opposite is true. But that's exactly my point. Can anyone imagine Christine O'Donnell or Sharon Angle actually legislating? If the point of teabaggerism is, as my brother suggests, to advocate the limitation of government like good libertarioconservatives, why can't they produce candidates capable of presenting thoughtful plans?

Or is the idea to take government down from within, by populating it with incompetents?

Could be: since Ronald Reagan they've known their economic dogma is made of smoke; thoughtful people simply no longer buy it. So the only hope for the people behind the movement, the ones bankrolling it from the sidelines to complete the ravishing of the economy for their benefit and at the expense of those they've convinced to take up their teabags is to aim their rhetoric at the last group of people who'll believe it: The credulous, the selfish, the easily deluded, the criers for simple solutions and faith-based politics.

And, as if conjured by witchcraft, they appear on the scene, stirred on cue and unshaken by fact: Beck, Palin, Bachmann, Smith, Paul, O'Donnell, Brewer, Angle, DeMint, Bought-and-sold-Boehner...

That there's a congenital disagreement in the country about the role and size of government is nothing new. What is new is the extent to which the conservative side has all but given up making rational arguments, as if conceding they can't win on merit. What's new is that they've ceded their ground to the crazies, hoping they'll carry the bucket without knowing the water has been spoken for long since. The Tea Party, in other words, represents no philosophy at all: it's the unknowing surrogate for people who prefer to dole out their money from the shadows. And who, thanks to the most activist Supreme Court in history, are doing so with abandon.

Challenge

This op-ed in the NYT is a challenge to both parties, and seems a clarion call to America to think seriously about long-held partisan tenets before it slips into irrelevance. Among its assertions, this one is preceded by bemusement at the nomination of Christine O'Donnell:

...the pendulum swings in American politics are a key concern of Wen Jiabao and Naoto Kan, the prime ministers of China and Japan, respectively, who both met with President Obama in New York on Thursday, with the loss of American jobs to Asian competition high on the agenda.

The Asian nations’ interest in American politics stems not just from America’s standing as the sole global superpower, but also from a growing belief among Asian leaders that the era of United States hegemony will soon be over, and that the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis. (emphasis mine, of course, since it's exactly my point, always, everywhere, all the time.)

At the core of the article is China's monetary policy, a thorn in the side of America's for some time.

With Chinese economic policy now serving as a model for other Asian countries, Japan was faced with a stark choice: back United States criticisms that China is artificially keeping down the value of its currency, the renminbi, or emulate China’s approach. It is a sign of the times that Japan chose to follow China at the cost of irritating America.

Japan’s action suggests that, in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the dominance of free-market thinking in international economic management is over... ...The fact is that the rules of global capitalism have changed irrevocably since Lehman Brothers collapsed two years ago — and if the United States refuses to accept this, it will find its global leadership slipping away. The near collapse of the financial system was an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment of revelation. In this climate, the market fundamentalism now represented by the Tea Party, based on instinctive aversion to government and a faith that “the market is always right,” is a global laughingstock. (mine, of course, again.)

Lest the reader think the writer, the chief economist for a Hong Kong investment firm, is some sort of lefty liberal, he also says this:

In France, Germany, Japan and Sweden, water supplies, highways, airports and even postal services are increasingly run by the private sector. For home mortgages to be backed by government guarantees would be unthinkable anywhere in Asia or Europe. Tax systems, too, are in some ways less redistributionist in Europe and Asia than they are in the United States. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the proportion of income tax raised from the richest tenth of the population is 45 percent in America, compared with only 28 percent in France and 27 percent in Sweden. These countries raise money for public services mainly from middle-class voters, through consumption and energy taxes, not by soaking the rich.

As a result, these nations’ budgets are more stable and their governments have more ability to support their economies in times of crisis... ...In America, by contrast, the tax system’s dependence on revenues from the richest citizens means that the social safety net and long-term goals like energy independence can be achieved only if the rich keep getting richer.

It's not necessary to be an economic scholar to recognize the implication that our polarization and reliance on comfortable sloganeering-as-dialog is killing us, and not all that slowly.

We need to stop electing idiots as lawmakers (which means, sadly -- because it appears impossible -- that we need more people to become thoughtful and informed voters). It's bad enough that we have smart idiots like Harry Reid and ... let's see... who's a smart idiot on the right?... It's worse to have thoroughly dumb ones like John Boner, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, Christine O'Donnell, Tom Coburn (yes, there are dumb doctors. Rand Paul is another)... And if there are fewer dumb Democrats (I make a distinction between annoying/disappointing and dumb), the article suggests they, too, need to consider options beyond their usual solutions.

Clearly, whether the NYT writer is right or wrong, these are complex issues, indicating our future is intertwined with that of countries seemingly light-years ahead of us in ability to function in a changing world. And yet the harder it gets the more Americans resort to superficialities. When the going gets tough, we turn to magic. In need of serious, we choose stupid. We make up conspiracy theories, resort to arguing birth certificates and secret Muslims, resurrect zombies.

What do you call such avoidance? Is it some sort of psychological protective mechanism, the weakness of the self-deluded? Is it that poorly educated people awash in falsehoods simply are no longer equipped to face facts? Is it that while we chant "USA, USA, USA," and "We're number one, we're number one" (and "no mosque at ground zero") other countries have been out-studying and out-working and out-thinking us? Have the easy magic of Reaganomics and the cultivating of religious anti-intellectualism, so cynically nurtured by Republicans, finally come back to bite us, fatally? So it seems.

I guess I do I know what to call it:

Suicide.