Now that he is feeling refreshed and revitalized from his weekend snake-handling dance with the devils of lunatic fringe religiosity, Rick Perry is set to announce he is entering the republican race for the presidency as an instant front runner along with Mitt “Wait, you said I was ahead” Romney and Michelle “I’m not crazy” Bachman; what I like to refer to as the “scares the shit out of me” trinity. They all represent the anti-science, overtly conservative christian, anti-government, stealth-racist tea party wing of the new republican party, a wing grounded in a terrifying stew of biblical end-of-days fatalism and economic armageddon as a cure for what they perceive as the inordinate largess of semi-communist liberals in general and democrats in particular.
The tea party zeitgeist is fundamentally anti-government. Not a mature two party system of compromise, congeniality, collaboration and common goals but a “tear this fucker down” contempt for the status quo that would make the Chicago Seven and the Weather Underground proud. Their stated policy is to obstruct any such compromise and hold hostage any governmental initiative that ignores “what we were elected to do” – that is, reduce the size of government. While this is clearly a position that rings true with the portion of the American electorate that feels disenfranchised by the mealy-mouthed political class of pseudo-elites wandering from J Street cocktail parties to No-Tell Motels, it doesn’t address the immediate issue of economic survival for the rest of us. If you get trapped by a fallen boulder and your only choice is to saw off your arm with a nail file, you do what you have to do to survive. You don’t make that your first reaction if you get your jacket caught in the car door.
But the tea party is obviously the flavor of the month among short attention span media types anxious to find any angle, even if it’s bent over at the waist. So to the extent that they are given credit for the almost default and subsequent economic chaos, it feeds their hubris and gives them the feeling that hostage taking will always result in ransom being paid, something you should never do and something anyone who ever watched a cop show on TV would understand. In this they are becoming dangerous to the very powerful interests who created them, as freakish monsters often do. Wall Street wanted something around which to galvanize opposition to Obama, who they obviously consider persona non grata of the highest order, but in a new and satisfying example of “be careful what you wish for”, they have created a cult of economic doom to rival the delusional Heaven’s Gate cult tossing back Jello shots laced with rat poison while waiting for the flying saucers to land.
It’s this kind of “Oh, fuck it” fatalism that makes their screeds more disturbing than a typical political rant. Michele Bachman is alternately called “crazy” and “a real person”, a disturbing confluence of character traits that may go a long way towards explaining her popular appeal. At some point the democrats may have to face the fact that much of the electorate is just as crazy as she is. This doesn’t mean they have to get on board the space ship with them but it does call for an acknowledgement that cow-towing and pandering to these bastards just makes them more determined to burn down your house.
But for now it might also be a good idea if they could uncouple the Book of Revelation from the Macro-economics text book and point out with some urgency that policies that result in 1,000 point drops in the stock market over two days are no more helpful to the economy than leaches are for treating a brain tumor. Tea party republicans not only gleefully take credit for causing this disruption but promise to replicate it every time they have the chance, an ominous pledge that might make the smart guys at Goldman Sachs, who thought that turning loose a bunch of inexperienced one trick ponies in Washington was a good idea, spend some long nights in the conference room taking turns pointing fingers, spinning the chamber and deciding who takes the margin calls.
Meanwhile, progressives are wringing their hands over soy lattes and gluten free scones trying to figure out a coherent argument to put forth in opposition to the blare of “the government sucks” shouts they keep hearing in their nightmares, and can’t come up with anything remotely sexy enough to get the attention of a mob of voters who can taste blood and feel empowered by the sight of the mastodon of DC corruption staggering and about to fall. The last thing they want to do is continue talking about shit like global warming, immigration reform, gay marriage and other traditional concerns of gentrified liberals – the mob doesn’t care, the media doesn’t care and continuing to try win the hearts and minds of a electoral majority this way is doomed to failure.
Unless, of course, you find the idea of doom inspirational…
No comments:
Post a Comment