If this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane!
Crazy like a red-blooded, American fox.
We are approaching the 5th anniversary of the start of the Tea Party movement.
So, for fun, I wanted to explore the devolution of insults about citizen activists like myself over the years.
First, we were peppered with a wide barrage: “Astro-turf”, “members of a mob“, “clansmen“, “un-American”, “political terrorists“, “Nazis“, and “evil-mongers“.
I must admit, being called “well-dressed” by Nancy Pelosi was hilarious.
Then, they hit us with their biggest bombshell: “Racists”.
Because all of these have failed to silence us, they have one last card to play. Now, we are simply crazy.
A Psychologist Diagnoses the Tea Party-and other extremists threatening our world. In “The Polarized Mind: Why It’s Killing Us and What We Can Do about It,” Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D., calls for a new and deeper psychological understanding of our greatest political and social conflicts and those who drive them.
Fortunately, those of us who planned to be involved in the grassroots movement didn’t count on being praised for our efforts by progressive academics or the liberal media. However, it is fascinating the lengths that our opponents have gone over the years to demean our desire for smaller government, sensible budgeting, and adherence to the US Constitution.
Captain Capitalism has a great send-up of this book’s promotion letter:
An Economist diagnoses Dr. Kirk J. Schneider-and other faux psychologists threatening our world. In “Liberal Talentless Academian Hacks Who Use Psychology to Criminalize People They Politically Disagree With,” Aaron Clarey, SAEG., calls for a new and deeper psychological understanding of the potential threat of biased psychologists who like the Soviets, use trumped up, fabricated mental diseases to lay the groundwork to institutionalize political enemies.
The laughter at Dr. Schneider’s efforts have provided Tea Partiers is priceless. Furthermore, those who are actually inclined to purchase the book probably will likely never reevaluate their disdain toward us. But, the dollars they spend will NOT be available to donate toward their 2014 causes and candidates.
And that is a good thing.
More importantly, our long-term approach may actually be paying dividends: Tea Party expands influence even in Democratic-leaning districts.
Despite national polls showing dwindling voter support for the Tea Party, House Republicans are embracing the movement’s issues tighter than ever, setting up a potential clash with voters in districts that lean Democratic, according to a new study of key House votes.
On average, said the study provided in advance to Secrets, House Republicans in Democratic-leaning districts or those that voted for President Obama over Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 sided with the Tea Party about 81 percent of the time on key votes like defunding Obamacare, blocking an increase of the debt limit and supporting a government shutdown.
Yep. I admit to being crazy.
Crazy like a red-blooded, American fox.
I wonder what Dr. Schneider’s mental state will be after the November elections. I suspect it will not be good.
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Comments
I’m a Republican who is a fiscal conservative but I tend to land on social policies more as a moderate. The few Tea Party politicians I have interacted with have left me uncomfortable that they seem completely unwilling to compromise. That’s not to say the cause of the TP is wrong, or that all TP members are crazy, and I’d never accuse one of being racist, but I am not sure how the Republicans are going to get back in the office of President with one faction being so strident. To make myself perfectly clear, I am not a fan of old timer R’s like McCain either, which confuses matters even more. I can’t be alone in how I feel about the R party and the Tea Party. I wish I could say some of my best friends are members of the Tea Party, but I can’t. Who can help me out here?
Best advice: get steel underwear.
I dunno — Barack “I Won” Obama got reelected while being utterly incapable of even acting like he was interested in compromise.
Everything you described is the Libertarian philosophy. You’re TEA Party didn’t know it. 🙂
Unfortunately, your comment leaves a little too much of a “concern trolling” for me to really give you an answer. Maybe you didn’t mean it that way, but it’s the way I perceived it. You managed to insert interesting Dem ‘talking points’…”one faction being so strident” “or that not ‘all’ TP members are crazy,” even got “racist” in. I don’t see how you could be a so-called fiscal conservative and not have found tea party principles to your liking.
BTW, you note that you’re “moderate” on social issues, then please examine how big government intrusion into our lives via the way the Democrats and Establishment GOP lines up with your “fiscal conservatism.”
My feelings exactly. I haven’t meant many Tea Partiers who concern themselves with social issues anyway. It is almost always concern for the Constitution and the fiscal policy.
“The few Tea Party politicians I have interacted with have left me uncomfortable that they seem completely unwilling to compromise.”
Yeah, that old compromise thing. Liberals propose new spending, and conservatives must compromise and allow some, which eventually grows into a lot. Conservatives propose cutting spending, and they’re completely insane, going to starve old people and children. No compromise can ever occur in cutting spending. Unless it’s on the military. Lot’s of spending cuts available there.
Voter ID? Can’t happen- though every country in the world has it except the US. The liberal argument for single payer healthcare consists of stating we are the only western country without it.
Enforce immigration laws and deport illegal aliens? Unthinkable! Can’t even call them illegal! It violates their dignity. Why don’t we just follow Mexico’s lead on how they treat their illegal immigrants? (That’s a trick question…) Now, according to the the head honcho at homeland security, “Illegals Have Earned Right to be Citizens…” (from Drudge).
Sometimes, there should be no compromise. For example, let’s say your neighbor wants to kill you. Will you compromise by letting him beat you half to death?
Oh well, I tried to have a conversation. I was serious in my question. Alas……
Eosredux: try rephrasing the question.
I believe they are giving you serious answers.
There are topics where compromising is OK.
This level of government spending is equivalent to suicide, so the only valid compromise there is to stop and reduce spending.
Oh, wait.
Suicide is not the right term.
Maybe we should call it filicide or prolicide, since our children will be the ones having to pay the debt.
But it’s a nonsense question.
Stripped to its essentials, the Tea Party is all about avoiding the spiral into fiscal ruin due to perpetual gross government overspending. It’s about avoiding bankruptcy. What room is there for compromise? In this case, compromise is indistinguishable from failure – the country goes bankrupt, or it stays solvent. There’s no in-between.
It was a clown question, bro.
Just because the answer didn’t ‘ coincide with your preconceived bias doesn’t mean the response was lacking.
Not agreeing with you makes other people “not serious”? Shades of Dr. Schneider.
“Compromise” usually turns out to mean “do what the Democrats want, but slower.”
Conservatives want less taxing and spending; leftists want more of both, so “compromise” means more but not quite as much as the Dems demand.
Conservatives say the federal government is too intrusive in the medical system; leftists say it isn’t (or wasn’t) nearly intrusive enough. Dems tell us that Obamacare is a “compromise” because it wasn’t designed to demolish private medical insurance & care immediately, but gradually.
Too many Republicans in Congress are comfortable with this kind of compromise, because the natural tendency of people who acquire some power is to expand the reach of their power. That’s one reason why the federal government grows like Topsy, and any effort to slow down the rate of growth and spending is called “extremist”; it’s seen as violating the natural order of things according to prog ideology and according to D.C. habit.
And that’s why conservatives need to be wary of calls for “compromise.”
Now you’re bing disingenuous (I’m trying hard not to say dishonest). You ARE having a conversation. Your problem is you don’t like the responses you’re getting, but that sort of thing happens when we dialogue. If you want people to say what you want them to say, take up screen writing or go converse with TOTUS.
If you truly wanted to converse on the topic, no matter how your question and comments were framed, you would dive in and engage. In that way, you would clarify your position and hear what others think. Instead, you respond like a liberal.
Maybe if you quit listening to the voices in your head, and engage in dialog with him, you might have a better grasp of what he “really” means.
That’s not to mention the series of strawmen arguments you whipped out (or should those be called “false dilemmas?”).
I’ve been noticing for a while now that social cons are jumping on the TEA party bandwagon with both feet, then boring from within to remodel the movement into something more blatantly socially conservative.
If you go back and look, the original TEA party people were concerned with issues like fiscal sanity and a less intrusive Federal government. These days all I seem to hear now are cries about gay marriage and/or illegal immigrants. There’s a couple others, but those are the two most popular.
I’m all about controlling illegals myself, but anyone who strays from the reservation with a policy less severe than “send ’em all back to Mexico” (or grind ’em up for dog food) gets attacked as a RINO or such, to provide just one example.
You are trolling even worse.
Anyone who is actually conservative knows that true social conservatives want less government intrusions into our social lives, not more.
We don’t want to rewrite the law in our form…we want most of the law to be thrown out. (Unfortunately, the only way to throw laws out nowadays is to write more that supersede the previous incarnations).
I find Tea Party people more focused on fiscal issues than social ones, but that is me. All I can tell you is I support the Tea Party and have views similar to yours (on policy). I am for social issues being handled by the states and the federal government staying out of them as much as possible (and every thing else other than core federal actives).
There’s really no such thing as a fiscal conservative. You either are or you’re not.
I would characterize you as a normal person who wants what he/she earns to remain his/hers and are nothing more than a run-of-the-mill crony capitalist. But I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just crazy.
I’m a Republican who is a fiscal conservative but I tend to land on social policies more as a moderate.
That’s fine, but it’s of absolutely no relevance so far as the Tea Party is concerned.
Consider Niccolo Machiavelli. His most famous work is concerned almost entirely with how a ruler (the “Prince” of his title) stays in power.
This has been widely misinterpreted to mean that Machiavelli didn’t consider anything else worth consideration – ie, that his book is nothing but a “how to” manual for tyrants.
In reality, M. realized that the first job of the ruler was to stay in power. Everything else, all details of policy, were secondary, in the sense that if the ruler lost his position, all his other policies would be rendered inconsequential. Even if the ruler is a saint, he must remain the ruler if he is to rule the country in a saintly way.
M. didn’t consider himself a particularly good adviser on the ways of saintliness. He believed that advice on social issues and good rule regarding them should come from religious types. Whether he was on the right track there is a different question.
The Tea Party outlook appears to be similar, in the sense that it puts first things first. Someone might have a realistic plan to make the United States a complete paradise on earth, but whatever it is, it has to be affordable or it ain’t gonna happen, or if it does happen it ain’t gonna survive. In other words, we have to believe the numbers. Mere “triumph of the will” won’t pay the bills.
Seen from the perspective of history, the Tea Party seems to be dead accurate about that. Interestingly enough, the US was experimental territory for a good number of utopian projects in the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly because it had available land, a healthy climate, a functioning economy and banking system, and reasonable law & order. But every one of these projects died after initial funding ran out – not a one ever achieved economic viability. And without economic viability, all their other plans were, in the end, futile. Good plans, bad plans, all ended up in the same place – bankrupt and dead.
Because this is just numbers – the numbers work economically, or they don’t, and there’s little room for pretense otherwise – it’s all very sensible and hard to dispute. So its opponents don’t even try. Instead they try to define the question as something else. And they do that by talking as if the Tea Party is about something other than economic mathematics – that it’s about gun control, or abortion (that’s one of the favorites), or any number of irrelevancies. Or they fall back on their more incoherent mainstays, that they’re “extremists”, or madmen, or racists – all nonsense, but if that’s the only drum they can find, that’s the one they have to bang on.
But these are obvious tricks, and could only deceive the militantly unreflective.
Concern troll.
…Aaaaand there’s the famous so-con “big tent approach” which has done so well lately…
And, your day job is with the Republican National Committee?
I agree. I got really turned off when Sharron Angle proclaimed “I am the face of the Tea Party” or when Michele Bachmann said she was the “leader of the Tea Party”. Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and Joe Buck were horrific candidates. The TP got taken over by the social cons and frankly had some God awful candidates run who blew winnable Senate elections.
If Sharron was so horrible, how did she win every county except Clark? You are being very naive if you acceptthe LSD driveby media meme about OUR candidates.
Had the RNC and the other deep pocket GOP funds actually put money into any of these races, all would be in GOP hands and Dingy Harry would be back swimming laps in the whorehouse pool.
Instead, the GOP led the pack of snarling mutts attacking these three and of course the results were virtually guaranteed. But at least you and your buds can recycle Soros talking points.
Classic concern troll.
.. and was that speech by Chuck “The Schmuck” Schumer really supposed to win over any Tea Party sympathizers to his world view ?
But leave it too a Democrat to advocate for electoral tricks to discriminate against a group of voters.
Chuck Schumer Pushes Plan To Wipe Out Tea Party Calls for nonpartisan blanket primaries By Jacqueline Klimas January 23, 2014 “Do what a handful of states have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, then enter a runoff,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer suggests in his scheme to weaken the tea party. (Associated Press) Democrats should push for more open primaries as a way of weakening the tea party movement, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York.
Doesn’t Chuck recall that Operation Chaos was Rush’s idea?
In the spirit of Jim Crow
So you noticed the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The more things change – the more they remain the same.
” . . . like the Soviets, use trumped up, fabricated mental diseases to lay the groundwork to institutionalize political enemies . . .”
The lessons of history confirm we should be very much afraid.
And recent events whereby political adversaries are being illegally and unjustly targeted and persecuted should make any American with half a brain very frightened.
It can’t happen here?
It IS happening here.
Congress is impotent.
Justice is non-existent.
Three more years?
We need lots of crazy re-blooded American foxes, NOW.
We are a lot farther down the road of Tyranny than many people realize.
Let’s see if the dangerous Kirk Schneider will try to get ‘tea party affiliation’ classified as a disorder in the DSM IV, then his totalitarian behavioral health friends could start signing orders to have tea party members committed.
Interestingly this fellow claims to be influenced by Abe Maslow, who felt ‘self-actualized’ individuals have a better insight of the world- here are some of the qualities that Schneider apparently didn’t bother to note =
According to Maslow, self-actualizing people share the following qualities:
Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness
Goodness: rightness, desirability, uprightness, benevolence, honesty
Wholeness: unity, integration, tendency to oneness, interconnectedness, simplicity, organization, structure, order, not dissociated, synergy
Dichotomy-transcendence: acceptance, resolution, integration, polarities, opposites, contradictions
Aliveness: process, not-deadness, spontaneity, self-regulation, full-functioning
Unique: idiosyncrasy, individuality, non comparability, novelty
Perfection: nothing superfluous, nothing lacking, everything in its right place, just-rightness, suitability, justice
Justice: fairness, suitability, disinterestedness, non partiality,
Order: lawfulness, rightness, perfectly arranged
Simplicity: nakedness, abstract, essential skeletal, bluntness
Self-sufficiency: autonomy, independence, self-determining.
Yeah, sure we’re crazy… NOT!
Speaking of Nazis, the History Channel had four hours on them this morning, sourcing more private videos than previously offered. One thing that stood out, was Hitler as chancellor declaring government was no longer to be the place where factions fought for their causes, rather politics was now to eliminate the factions and “unite” Germany.
Then the murders and tortures began, for various wrong thinking. Obama has the IRS and Holder acting to eliminate the Tea Party. The tea party is loosely the two thirds that want less government control, and that thinking must be punished.
Schumer was caught on a hot mike once … “the word we are using is ‘extreme'”. The whole “crazy, racist, extreme” buzzword war is orchestrated right down to your local news prompter reading anchors, and sitcom scripting.
An episode of Big Bang Theory has Penny lamenting her dumb boyfriend, and her friend says to let them think they are smart, but listen to PBS, like she does. Yeah, right. We all know dumb leftists that stroke their inflated ego by listening to the indoctrinating docile tones of PBS. But Hollywood slips this crap in their shows constantly (almost as if the shows are designed for that purpose).
Now I’m catching up on the Central American history of Rev. Wright’s Sandinista friends. They describe quite well the long term propaganda war of the America hating left. They call us crazy, here is a little Freud, thrown back at them. (The diagnosis would also apply to Dem’s Detroit and the current economic malaise)
These long term America haters of the left have not changed, they just now claim to be main stream America, and are setting about using government to eliminate factions like those that still believe in our constitution and separation of powers.
A new society of ‘haves and have-nots’ has been successfully created.
But a linguistic inversion has occurred – the ‘haves’ possess some form of Obamabucks and the ‘have-nots’ are independent and self-sufficient.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
yeah … the Obamabuck rich (or dependent) are many.
My link is from 2007, but it still applies. More from that:
In the US, the clientelismo would include the 90 million able to work but not working, like the 99ers or those cheating their way onto disability or some form of welfare. Plus those that let their retirement funds be spent by government, so at 65 becoming state dependents.
Thanks, great post.
eosredux, you flunk the purity test by questioning the strict party line, in this case the Tea Party line; no questioning or discussion permitted, only repetition. What is it about every ideological movement that makes the members get more and more strident, exacting, and intolerant? I share your concerns about the repugnant aspects of the Tea Party. Keeping the mission statement as simple and as inclusive as possible would have meant for greater success—wasn’t it supposed to have been about smaller government and fewer taxes? How did religion, abortion, guns, immigration, etc. get mixed in? Squirrels, squirrels, squirrels. Since futile head-butting seems to be the preferred method of discourse among the various factions of the right, we can expect the small, inessential gains to continue for another few election cycles but nothing more until even libs see no alternative but to vote for the Republican to save what’s left of their city/state/country. I’m thoroughly disgusted with the right, which is squabbling over whose shoes are shinier while their house is being looted top to bottom. Be glad we’re only commenting virtually, or we’d be stoned to death in the village square for “concern trolling.”
Oh my, another victim of LI intolerance and abuse. I cry for you, Sopra.
BTW, if you go to TeaPartyPatriots.org, you’ll hunt in vain for those “repugnant” (pro-life?) positions. They have kept “social issues” out of their platform.
May I fuss and moan that I find groups that shy away from opposing baby slaughter to be compromisers? Oh, maybe now I’m a victim like Sopra!
On a more serious note, I support only limited-gov’t, pro-life candidates. That’s easy, and if folks call me crazy, I say get in line. I’ve been getting that from Republicans since 1990.
purity test?
Where the HELL are you getting your ideas about the TEA Parties?
It’s obvious you have never bothered to find out from the TEA Parties what their positions are. Instead of accepting a pack of outright lies from people who have chosen to identify the TEA Partiers as their enemies, who not find an original source and go to it, and read?
Reading. Adults do it all the time.
Possibly you should consider changing your moniker to Sopraredux. You sound like a clone of him/her.
BTW, aren’t you two being darn rigid in your position of demanding compromise? Consistency will serve you much better than hypocrisy.
I must admit, being called “well-dressed” by Nancy Pelosi was hilarious.
Dress is often – though certainly not always – a real giveaway of the totalitarian mentality.
It’s hard to deny that the Nazis were, by far, the snappiest dressers of the WW2 era.
And in the fictional realm, what baddies can approach the sartorial splendor of the Borg?
The bolsheviks and Mao’s minions dressed like lumpy sacks, but that was so blatant it was probably propaganda – they were just biding their time until the last counter-revolutionary was purged and they could break out their preferred regalia.
Yes, rantbot. I eagerly await the day that Obama finally dresses up in style to match his fake Grecian columns and other splendid stage props. For some reason he is still postponing his chance to wear a military uniform more lavishly decked-out with medals, aiguillettes (the decorative braided cord worn on the shoulder), medals, sashes, medals, campaign ribbons, and medals than the showiest doorman’s uniform in New York City.
Out-of-pocket, without a script, and with a firm grasp of history and human nature. It’s ironic that people who are ostensibly “secular” are most likely to prefer intelligent design. They will defer their dignity and sacrifice human lives to fulfill their dreams of money, sex, and ego gratification. So, who, exactly, are the crazy people? Spoiled and Dodo is no way to live a meaningful life.
Wait till the next revision of the DSM comes out (Henry H, please remind what version we are on).
There will be a diagnosis under Psychotic Personality Disorders called OCTPD. Yes, that’s right, the Obsessive Compulsive Tea Party Disorder. And I’ve got the symptoms.
I can’t get the debt clock number to stop streaming in my mind, I always hear the IRS asking me questions and I find that I am becoming more polemical each day. Any thought of John McCain now scares me, too.
I find that tin foil headwrap works to lessen mind pictures of McLame and his ilk. Blurs ’em out, sort of.
You’re probably right about the DSM. There will be universal mental-health screening in schools. BTW, Bush actually started that. It’s the old Nazi “mental hygiene” program revisited. But now, instead of Jews, they’ll target anyone who defies the regime.
As other commenters have noted, history shows us where this leads. We should be alarmed. Libs should be alarmed, but they’ll laugh. When the time finally comes to cleanse the “useful idiots,” then they’ll cry.
Great, Ms Eastman. So much name calling–wear it proudly. I have so many badges on myself that I can sew them together for an outfit, so here is a list of many of them. But then, I live in flyover country, so am a rube hick moron by definition:
I’m one of those that D.C. and the media et al call “an ankle biter peasant angry mob moron raaaaaacist troublemaker evilmonger astroturf stupid disruptive rightwingnut Indy hick Neanderthal kkk applicant K street Lobbyist hired mob un-American Nazi-loving brown-shirt bitter clings to guns and Bible homophobic xenophobic redneck teabagger irrational extremist whacky maverick fire-breathing nut job just want to see you die bigot nativist Islamophobe mosque basher psychopath nuts whacko fruitloop flat-out crazy paranoid unwashed ignorant illogical subversive unhinged fanatic loon enemy coward exterminationist captive to my fears don’t think clearly hater scared moonbat flat earther birther carny barker full of extreme rhetoric and vitriol desperate and dangerous with a sloping forehead goofball weasel destructive child Walmart shopper low information voter fragger (baby-kidnapping) terrorist extremist suicide bomber bomb throwing democracy threatening Al Qaeda (Christian)Taliban hostage taker jihadist ignoramus destructive child delusional ignoramus economic terrorist tyrant hobbit real enemy maintaining states rights and slavery going to hell put party before country son of a bitch barbarian at the gate apocalyptic cult zombie mis-information voter extremist small government posse type callous bigoted tool bozo motherfucker bitches freeloader, squealing pig, slut shaming slimebucket fat ass whackobird chirper.” 6-16-13
The full list from Alamo-Girl.com:
Sources at link.
Clinton doesn’t like women much. He sees us as lady parts to be used to affirm his power.
One has to hope the TP doesn’t fully buy into the attacks that somehow they have to kick those soc cons to the curb in order to attract more of those desirable libertarians.
If the TP takes the same route as the GOP of requiring every one to compromise on the same topics they will lose members just as the GOP has. And hopefully the TP isn’t so foolish to actually count on liberals who pretend they support fiscal control. Or libertarians who won’t fade away if/when they encounter any actual government that others feel necessary.
Remember the TP is not the replacement for the Libertarian Party and should not be allowed to take it over. The TP had strength when it addressed all who felt the GOP had thrown them out. IS the TP going the ame route?
This post brought out multiple concern trolls. Leslie, keep up the fine work. Its excellence is confirmed by the swoop in of trolls.