Teatime for Democracy, Part II

The NYT ran a lengthy front-page feature story today on the Tea Party movement, and it has to make you stop and think. Many of the participants are past 60 and getting politically involved for the first time in their lives, which makes me wonder what sidelines they were standing on back in the sixties. They’re obviously sincere and concerned, however wacky they may seem to those of us on the left. But their problem, it strikes me, is that they’re running off half-cocked with scattershot paranoia, due mostly to their willingness to take anything that Glenn Beck – today’s answer to “Lonesome” Rhodes – says at face value.

They’re railing against big government, bailouts, and the sellout of both parties to special interests, and quite rightly so. But just consider some of their extraneous talking points:

• Obama is a socialist. (The guy is now seen as hopelessly centrist by the left.) Or a Nazi. (Pick one, wouldja?) A tyrant at any rate. (Uh, excuse me, but where were you during W’s expansion of presidential power?) This is so ludicrous it defies belief and just points to their susceptibility to Fox brainwashing.
• The “birther” argument. Come on, get a life.
• Obama will take our guns away. Face it, the NRA has conditioned these folks to believe this will be the case with any Democrat, so save your paranoia for somebody who actually advocates it.
• Along with the 2nd Amendment argument: Prepare for violence in the streets. Okay, so we lefties felt the same back in the sixties, but it’s no more likely now than it was then.
• The Democratic administration is to blame for the deficit. Another attempt to rewrite history.
• Any regulation of health care is socialism and therefore evil. Presumably they’ve never been denied coverage and/or are content with government sponsoring Medicare and VA benefits. (BTW, the Daily Show’s take on health care in Hawaii, where the RNC was meeting, is particularly priceless.)
• Sarah Palin is America’s savior. This is the scariest bit, succumbing to the folksy appeal of a half-educated bimbo who winked her way into the base’s favor, you betcha.

And along with these talking points inevitably comes the conservative fall-back on family values that spells disregard for minority or gay rights – as well as for such libertarian principles as decriminalizing drugs, separation of church and state, support for reproductive rights, and generally keeping government out of the bedroom.

If these teabaggers would just focus on the main issues – valid debates over the role and size of government, our ineffectual Congress, the insidious power of big banks – they might find more Americans willing to take them seriously. But by echoing Beck’s rantings and staking out these other claims, they’re proving themselves to be nothing more than raving loonies. We of the sixties at least left a legacy of music; this crowd will only leave a trail of Metamucil.