What do liberals have against tea?

A letter to the editor in the Flagstaff Daily Sun asks, “Why are liberals so opposed to the Tea Party movement? From what I see, the Tea Party stands for self-reliance, small government, less taxes, reduce the national debt and less interference on the part of the federal government in our daily lives. How can any sane person be opposed to these views? Do you liberals want high taxes? Do you want the government controlling every aspect of your lives? Are you afraid to stand on your own? Do you need the government to take care of you? Do you really believe you are entitled to what I have worked for? I hope you folks of the liberal persuasion think about what the current government is doing to our nation. If you have any common sense at all, you will agree with what the Tea Party is trying to do, which is get our country back on the road to be the nation we once were.”

Like Ronnie Raygun once said, “There you go again....” I hoped to have gotten my disdain for the TP movement out of my system, but since they’re likely to play a major role in this year’s elections – and since I even have friends who are sympathetic to the cause – I can’t help but rise to the bait of this letter.

Confining one’s arguments to these talking points is a have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife proposition. It’s true; taken separately, no sane person would contest them. But I’m not opposed to the ideas that you represent as much as to the collective impression that your movement makes. (1) It’s the height of hypocrisy to lambaste Obama for power-grabbing and bemoan escalating debt after the ravages of the previous administration – suggesting it’s just a poor-loser stance. (2) You take your marching orders from demagogues on a one-sided “news” outlet that laughingly calls itself “fair and balanced.” (3) You lionize a manipulatively homespun political personality who would be more clueless than W was (could that be possible?) if she ever became president. (4) Many of your fellow travelers are so preoccupied with issues like non-existent efforts to curb gun ownership or Obama’s birth certificate that it’s hard to take any of you seriously. (5) You would have to go some to convince me, given the kinds of people your movement attracts, that your belief that government should stay out of private lives extends to sexual and reproductive choice and to the decriminalization of marijuana.

Maybe the bottom line is, those of us of the liberal persuasion are more inclined to see government as a mechanism for solving problems, not as the enemy. It may very well require some tweaking along the lines you suggest – but that’s what representative government is supposed to be about, so let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. You’d rather starve it into submission than change it, but the small government/low taxes mantra just doesn’t fly anymore in a nation as large and complex as ours. Which version of “the nation we once were” did you have in mind? The fifties? Prohibition? The Jacksonian era? Or just any time when white male protestants called the shots?

All of this suggests: (6) Much like the participants in another Tea Party, you’re detached from reality. It’s time you tuned in to the big picture. The world is changing – physically, demographically, technologically – and we can’t turn back the clock to Happy Days.

Vinegar Verboten

A story in today’s paper talks about the Tea Party movement attempting to lure Democrats by severing ties to social conservatism. While their focus on fiscal issues is admirable, thinking this will attract liberals is like trying to catch flies by merely not using vinegar, ’cause there’s sure not much honey on offer. All well and good to not take an anti-abortion stance, but that’s hardly going to create a major drain on the left. The teabaggers seem to forget that Democrats like Obama, want health care reform, and believe that government can do the people’s work. They also don’t freak out selectively over budget deficits. (We had our turn w/W’s war.)

No matter how much the Tea Party disassociates itself from the GOP’s cultural crusaders, they’re still shackled to Beck, Hannity, and company, and I’d just like to see them shake those albatrosses loose. Beck’s recent tirade against Christianity won’t help win any converts. And news of what the right-wing loonies are doing to education in Texas won’t help the cause overall; as one supporter of more open-minded education said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.” But somehow I think the Tea Party can relate to that.

The teabaggers are going to have to have more than a bit o’ honey to win new supporters, like actively supporting personal-liberty values – maybe even disavowing the social conservative agenda entirely – instead of just avoiding the issue. Because the lingering smell of vinegar just isn’t going to go away.

Choosing Sides

It was interesting to read today’s columns by conservative David Brooks and liberal Paul Krugman, because each weighed in on comparisons and contrasts between left and right. 

Brooks ponders how today’s teabaggers are similar to the radical left of the sixties: “Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures.”

Krugman meanwhile draws a line between congressional Republicans and Democrats based on their differing attitudes toward unemployment compensation and estate taxes. Jim Bunning’s recent tantrum is the point of departure, but Arizona’s own John Kyl is the star of the show. His attitude toward the unemployed—“continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work”—is downright Dickensian.

Each columnist makes some pretty astute observations, but each falls slightly short of the bull's-eye. Maybe if each had read the other’s rough draft they might have seen the common denominator.

Sixties radicals and present-day Democrats share an outward-looking point of view. They were, and are, interested in the betterment of society, in helping their fellow citizens. Teabaggers share with congressional Republicans a more inward-looking (dare I say “selfish”?) outlook: they take taxes as a personal affront and are unwilling, or unable, to look beyond their own self-interest toward the possibility of social justice.

As Krugman puts it, “the difference between the two universes isn’t just intellectual, it’s also moral,” and I don’t think either side would dispute it. Barry Goldwater justified voting against the Civil Rights Act by declaring “You can’t legislate morality,” and there’s a smidgen of truth in that. But aren’t all laws a codification of our worldview? And sometimes it’s not so much a question of morality as compassion – a trait that I seem to recall was linked to conservatism not all that long ago.

For one side, it’s people that matter; for the other, it’s money. And I think we should be grateful to Bunning, Kyl & Co. for making that so crystal clear.

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.

Time to Sing Along...

Before the teabaggers, there was Woodstock Nation. (Remember?) And before you jump to the conclusion that aging has simply transformed the latter into the former, bear in mind that the slightly older median age for the teabagging crowd puts them squarely (and I do mean squarely) in what was then the “anybody over thirty” set we weren’t supposed to trust.

Patti Smith sang “People Have the Power” in ’88, but the best anthem of all, from 1969, was “We Can Be Together” by Jefferson Airplane:



The real difference between protest then and now is that Woodstock’s revolutionary spirit was defined by pure joy (as in “Yippie!”), while today’s teabagger movement is characterized by befuddled bitterness.

Do the teabaggers have an anthem? “Dazed and Confused” would certainly be appropriate, but I somehow can’t imagine it catching on. Much easier to picture them swaying with arms interlinked singing the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” (“The taxman’s taken all my dough...”). But I can’t help but think of that classic misinterpretation by the older generation when “One Toke Over the Line” was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1971 because they thought it was a gospel song:



So in that spirit, I’d kinda like to hear the teabaggers get a little joy by wailing on the chorus to Jimmy Buffett’s “Fruitcakes,” thinking it an homage to a favorite dessert....

Teatime for Democracy

One of the upshots of this early American history I’ve been reading (see “Forward Into the Past!,” January 2) is the notion that some people thought too much democracy was not such a good idea. This was certainly true of the Federalists, who envisioned their own aristocratic leadership as the key to America’s future; it also held for some moderate [Jeffersonian] Republicans, who defended an independent judiciary against their radical brethren’s insistence that judges be more accountable to the public.

There’s also a danger of too much democracy today,and that threat looms in the form of teabaggers. A few days ago, conservative columnist David Brooks opined that the teabagger movement had the potential to not only give the [modern] Republican establishment a run for its money but also evolve into a political force on the same level as our present two parties. Scary.

What’s so scary about people taking back power, you might ask? In principal it’s not scary at all, it’s what this country is all about. Whenever I hear Patti Smith sing “People Have the Power,” it gives me chills. What’s scary is that this particular crowd seems too easily swayed by the likes of Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh to ever begin to think for themselves. (Okay, maybe I’m just jealous because we lefties can’t agree on anything.)

I came across a fairly outrageous suggestion once (wish I could credit the source): that votes ought to be allocated by age, with younger people having more votes because they have a greater stake in a future that will be determined by the political decisions of today. That’s not too far-fetched an idea, but just try selling it to the teabaggers, whose median age seems to be about 75. The protester who insisted “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” pretty much summed it up: ill informed, quick to jump to conclusions, and too stupid to trust with choosing tomorrow’s leaders.

Unfortunately, an IQ test would be as unconstitutional as a poll tax (and we learned back in 2000 that butterfly ballots aren’t the answer). But since we already have rules that politicking can’t go on within so many feet of a polling place, maybe Fox News ought to be banned within the same distance of retirement communities.

So, what makes the People that Patti sings about different from the teabaggers? When you get right down to it, maybe not much. “The people have the power ... to wrestle the world from fools.” But first they have to recognize that it’s the fools who are egging them on.

Government Health Care: WWJD?

It was two years ago that we bought our house in Prescott and started getting ready to move from Tucson. Arizona is a conservative state, and we’d been residing in its most liberal district for more than two-dozen years; we knew we were relocating to a more traditionalist, less culturally diverse area but were willing to pay the price to escape the heat and sprawl.

It’s not just conservative politically: one of my friends commented that we were moving to the “Bible Belt,” and I can see his point. Summer church camps abound and Gideon Bibles lie in physicians’ waiting rooms. A questionnaire from one doctor for whom I got a referral even inquired about my faith. On the other hand, there’s a thriving arts community; Prescott College students provide a semblance of hippie culture; and last fall just down our street two houses on opposite sides sported Obama signs in their yards.

Another indicator of Prescott’s having two sociopolitical camps appears in on-line comments to editorials and letters-to-the-editor in the Daily Courier. The exchange between left and right is nothing short of scathing. I thought it had been brutal during the election, but the debate over health care has really pushed the envelope. I wouldn’t have bothered commenting on this since I’m sure it goes on everywhere, but a letter that appeared yesterday – and the comments to it – are worth noting.

The letter is brief: “I am being priced out of health care. I needed a test done and the doctor wanted the $1,000 co-pay first. It has been 11 months and I still have not had the test. If you are a Christian, vote for national health care.”

Some of the responses are startling: “Charity at the threat of government fines and imprisonment is neither charity OR Christian. It is fascism.” . . . “It’s time for everyone to get off their hind ends, quit looking for handouts and start doing for yourself.” . . . “So you want the government to control you is that it?” . . . “If you had worked harder in school you would not be in the position you are in, using BLASPHEMY to try to further your selfish agenda.”

I hope the last one was tongue-in-cheek, but suspect otherwise. (And btw, if you go to the link, the Wayne commenting is not yours truly.) I’ve come to expect these kinds of reactions in the general give-and-take over the issue, but not with so much hostility to an appeal to religious solidarity. What I find most disturbing is that in an overwhelmingly Christian community the notion of providing a common good for fellow citizens is trumped by knee-jerk paranoia about big government. If W had proposed health care under the banner of Compassionate Conservatism, would the reaction have been as fierce? Reactions to the precedent of other industrialized nations outdoing us simply echo the parental response of “If everybody else jumped off the bridge, would you jump too?”

I find this a sad commentary on a supposedly Christian nation, where the poster-girl for the religious right advocates America getting back to God (in advance of what is presumably a presidential bid). I suspect she means the God of the Old Testament – you know, the vindictive slayer of enemies – not Jesus’ God of Love. Because there’s no love showing in some folks’ attitudes about what government of, by, and for the people can do for their fellow man.

A Face in the Crowd

Lately I’ve been working my way thru a bunch of Woody Allen movies, taped from cable over several years, while putting in sessions on the Nordic Track (a futile effort in waist management). I recently watched Zelig for the first time in a while and found it fascinating.

No doubt about it, the technical tricks in this tale of a flapper-era “chameleon man” are amazing, and I was pleasantly surprised that there were more laugh-out-loud lines than I’d remembered. One incidental touch I found startling was seeing the Mia Farrow character with a cigarette in hand in nearly every scene – it made me wonder whether it was some strange inside joke.

But that wasn’t nearly as jarring as the bit where the vanished Leonard Zelig resurfaced in Nazi Germany. The voiceover spoke of Hitler’s popularity as a product of economic hard times and renewed nationalism, and it gave me a bit of a chill to think that it could happen here.

Before I proceed, some disclosure might be in order. I’m what is known on the right as a “left-wing moonbat.” To quote Will Rogers, I don’t belong to an organized political party - I’m a Democrat. (Actually I used to be Independent and then registered Republican so I could vote against the loonies in the last congressional primary, but I got so sick of the mail I started getting from the RNC that I re-registered Democrat for spite.) I would gladly entertain Republican arguments regarding fiscal policy, but I have no time for their social agenda. As was famously said by my long-time hero Barry Goldwater, people like Jerry Falwell deserve a kick in the ass. When McCain chose Palin as a running mate, it clinched my vote for Obama (I preferred Hillary); although despite the idealism surrounding his candidacy, I feared he would be too divisive – and he’s proven to be just that.

Even so, I’m frankly bewildered by the Obama/Hitler analogies espoused by the wingnuts. Granted, that stylized poster was creepy, but these people have severed all contact with reality. A few months ago, Beth and I were having lunch at the local brewpub, which faces our town square, when we noticed a commotion across the street and saw a teabagger demonstration forming. Some of the signs read “King Obama,” and I wanted to ask the people holding them where they had been when W was expanding executive powers and generally pissing on the Constitution – but then you don’t have to resort to thought processes when you take your cues from an admitted rodeo clown. The rantings of Beck, Hannity, & Limbaugh as they wrap themselves in the flag make me think of another classic movie, Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd.



If you’re not familiar with this gem from 1957, you’d be startled to watch Andy Griffith in his first screen appearance, portraying a philosophizing bumpkin who becomes a manipulative media sensation. It views like a precursor to Glenn Beck (and if you’ve never seen Jon Stewart’s brilliant parody, check this link); yet when I looked at the comments on Amazon I was startled to see that at least one person likened the character to Obama. I suppose it’s all a matter of one’s point of view; unfortuntely, when that p.o.v. is spoonfed by Fox News, it tends to be a bit skewed.

The teabaggers ignore one indisputable truth: if a Hitler were to emerge in this country, such a tyrant could never come from the left - like Rogers said, we’re simply too disorganized. But ever hopeful, I remain open to suggestions for any politician who can unite what W hath put asunder.