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The Backlash: Beneath the Doom and Gloom Lies Money

Boo! Scared you, didn’t I? Now send me money and I’ll tell you how I can protect you from people like me.

Rating: 9 out of 10

There are many things that connect us all, no matter where we live, what color we are and which God we believe in. One of the deepest and most integral of those connections is fear. We all have it, whether it’s worrying about the spread of Communism, the shortage of scientific breakthroughs toward a cure for cancer, or maybe just late night jitters about the foul-smelling thing hiding underneath the bed. Most of it can be boiled down to a simple phrase, “fear of the other“. While some fears can be debated and argued as being justified, the underlying problem with fear is that once someone or something knows what your fear is, it can be used against you as a weapon. People throughout history have made their livelihoods based on that fact alone and it is on proud display here in the present day inside the formation of the Tea Party movement and the outlandish opposition to Barack Obama.

The Backlash by Will Bunch is a well thought out and deeply researched journey into the heart of the fear that sprung forth like snakes-in-a-can upon the inauguration of our new President. While many progressives and liberals clamor from the sideline, poking fun at the Tea Party and their growing membership, Bunch takes the honorable mission of tracing the movement to some of its more humble beginnings and the people actually at the ground level. What he discovers is real people with real fears who are being co-opted by big business and private interests in order to stop the change promised by the new administration.

One of the first things most people were introduced to when they saw the Tea Party crash onto the political scene was their fascination and fervor for protest signs and costumes. While this might have increased their news coverage, it also quickly devalued their message. From the subtle to the incredibly overt, racist slogans and imagery littered the reports of the fledgling movement giving an overall impression that everyone involved had the same color-coded mission, to purify the White House, and by extension, the country as a whole. On one side of the cable news spectrum (MSNBC, CNN, BBC, etc…) the Tea Party was characterized as rednecks that time had obviously left behind, while the other side (championed by Fox News) raised them onto the pedestal of patriots and grassroots revolution hailed as “real America”. The problem here is that neither description is true, but labels are sticky and even removed they can leave a nasty residue behind.

Another factor behind the proliferation of the “real America” illusion was those pundits and political commentators who saw the Tea Party as the lightning-in-a-bottle moment they were waiting for. Once they grabbed onto the coattails of fear inside the Tea Party, people such as radio/TV/internet phenom Glenn Beck wove those coattails around and around into each other until the fear escalated into paranoia, which in the ratings world is a wonderful thing. Beck had actually boiled it down to a simple equation, the bumper-sticker solution to all the fear in the country:

On his November 23, 2009 show, Beck went back again to the theme of a looming economic meltdown and recommended to his listeners what could just as well be a mantra of the right-wing movement in this new decade: “The 3 G system” of “God, Gold and Guns.”

Beck skyrocketed in popularity and influence, like many of the voices from the outer right-wing fringe, preying on the fears of people feeling like their country was forgetting about them. He wheeled out his chalkboard day after day, giving his viewers something familiar from their childhood, a symbol of learning which they all believed would never lie to them. Beck littered the surface of the chalkboard with various historical people and moments, drawing incredibly slippery and weak connections between them to prove any conspiracy theory he imagined that morning. Worse than that were those occasions where he blatantly misrepresented the views of historical figures to grant his own ideas more credence. Bunch illustrates that nicely in this section:

“Beck – and probably many of his listeners – would be turned off by many of the views of the real Thomas Paine. For one thing, while Beck has tried to argue that America’s true roots lie in Christianity, the real Thomas Paine was a Deist who loathed organized religion, writing in “The Age of Reason” that all churches “appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

You can be sure that particular quote from Paine never graced the esteemed surface of Beck’s chalkboard.

This is the thrust of Bunch’s message, that much of the Tea Party is being towed along by puppeteers and plagiarizers, purposely mis-informing them to wean the money from their wallets and the devotion from their hearts. The fervent devotees of the Tea Party should not be written off as a joke, especially since some of them actually won seats in our government during the last election. They should be listened to, but filtered through a lens of mis-appropriated fear. If we do not try and understand where they are actually coming from, people like Beck and his cohorts will continue to wield them like a bludgeon against the wall of this country until its inevitable collapse.

The End of the Page recommendation: The Backlash by Will Bunch is a staggeringly human look into the real fear behind the so-called grassroots revolution of the Tea Party and how it has been co-opted, controlled and ultimately, how it will be condemned.

CPAC Starts Its Wild Ride

(Honestly, the joke here writes itself.)

Coming directly on the heels of the Tea Party Convention only a few short weeks back, the other clamoring section of the far right came together once again from all over the country for their once-a-year, bang-a-gong, color coded convention (red, white and blue being the consistent theme).

CPAC stands for the Conservative Political Action Conference, where those politicians looking to connect to the fervent and boisterous base of the conservative movement come to recharge and reload their political weaponry (or actual real-life weaponry depending on how dedicated they are to appeasing the second amendment crowd). The main keynote speaker on the final night will be Fox TV host and poster child for the Chalkboard Lovers of America, Glenn Beck. I’m doing mental workouts each morning in preparation for this speech, making sure I can handle the triple jumps of logic and 100-meter dash from assumption to conclusion (while dodging those nasty fact hurdles, of course). Yet before Mr. Beck can grace the stage, the crowd must be worked into a frenzy over the opening days.

I can’t comment on Marco Rubio, the new young buck on the right-wing  block, since I didn’t catch his speech. I know he’s young and he’s bringing a hearty primary challenge in Florida against Republican Governor Charlie Crist in the race for a Florida senate seat. Once a total longshot, Rubio rallied strong and sits atop a healthy lead in the polls right now. From clips I did see the only thing I can truly hold against him is he began the unending train of anti-Obama teleprompter jokes, all while standing in front of a shiny pair of teleprompters. (Nearly every speaker who followed made a similar crack, each one more tactless than the one before)

Let hypocrisy ring, people. Oh, wait, it’s freedom. That’s what they meant to ring. Freedom. Oops.

Jim DeMint graced the stage and really got things cooking with a reminder about where the conservative movement truly wants to take this country. While touting the goal of freedom for everyone he simultaneously spouts the idea that all politicians should be taken out of office if they are not voting based on Judeo/Christian values. His claim that this was the true intention of the founding fathers and the Constitution seems to fly in the face of the first ammendment when it states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” but hey, don’t let the actual words of the Constitution get in the way of your point Mr. DeMint. Please proceed.

He goes on to state that what the government should do is place a moratorium on all spending and spend the next two years balancing the budget, but again he staunchly opposed, alongside the entire Republican caucus, the creation of a bi-partisan budget commission created to do that very thing. Hmmm…I’m sensing a pattern here.

Lastly, making a nice closing, he related a thinly veiled threat to those in the Republican party who were only pretending to be Conservative to gain the political voting power of these fine folks. Mentioning Mr. Rubio and others like him, DeMint made it clear that all the incumbent Republicans could easily be replaced if they didn’t fall in line with the people and this nationwide groundswell from the Tea Party movement.

Let the right-wing evisceration begin. Self-inflicted, of course.

Later on Kevin McCullough came up and reminded everyone how freedom loving the Conservative movement is. One of his points was that the young people in the conservative movement had to save the next generation from the terrors inside the “halls of academia”. Are our children are being taught too much? Given too much information so they can think for themselves and make up their own minds? Maybe he’s angry at the system because more and more of the youth are growing up more tolerant towards gays and lesbians, which is staunchly opposed to his “freedom”. Oh yeah, so is Roe v. Wade. So ladies, prepare to grow more free while simultaneously losing control over your own body.

My favorite moment of his was when he used the phrase “we will not sit in the back of the bus”, which is a direct reference to Rosa Parks and her daring silent protest against blacks being made to sit in the “black” section of the bus back in the pre-Civil Rights days. I had no idea the conservative fight for freedom was so identical to the civil rights movement.

That’s because it’s not. Not even close.

More and more came up, singing the praises of Ronald Reagan and each other and rehashing new version of the teleprompter gag. Scott Brown and Mitt Romney took turns praising each other, while Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks, dropped a gem when he claimed Obama created the illusion of the health care crisis in order to gain control of the economy. I wonder if Mr. Armey works for Aetna Blue Cross as well? They could most certainly afford to pay him well since they are planning to raise their rates for a large section of Californians by up to 39% with no reasoning whatsoever.

Nope, no health care crisis here. Not at all, Please move along and do not under any circumstances look behind the curtain. (Did you notice our new curtains, by the way, their made out of 100% money. Feel how decadent they are…)

Also, the right wing should know better what it look like when someone creates a fake crisis in order to gain control. Bush did a splendid job of that with his mythical WMD’s in Iraq. *BOOM goes the dynamite*

Lastly, Ginni Thomas, an everyday citizen who just wanted to get involved, spoke about how pleased she was with the energy surround the tea party movement. She specifically pointed out how wonderful she thought all the homemade signs were. Think she’s talking about this one:

this guy is actually the head of one of the largest Tea Party groups


















or possibly this one:

maybe this one:

but she couldn’t have meant this one:

Is half-breed muslin washable with other like fabrics?












These are the people rallying right now to take control of the direction of our country.  Progress sure looks funny, doesn’t it.