Matt Taibbi: the Tea Party Moron Complex

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Random House Publishing Group / By Matt Taibbi

Taibbi: the Tea Party Moron Complex
By rallying behind dingbats and morons like Palin and Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party has made anti-intellectualism its rallying cry.

November 14, 2010 |


The following is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book, "Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America." published by Random House, 2010.

If American politics made any sense at all, we wouldn’t have two giant political parties of roughly equal size perpetually fighting over the same 5–10 percent swatch of undecided voters, blues versus reds. Instead, the parties should be broken down into haves and have-nots -- a couple of obnoxious bankers on the Upper East Side running for office against 280 million pissed-off credit card and mortgage customers. That’s the more accurate demographic picture of a country in which the top 1 percent has seen its share of the nation’s overall wealth jump from 34.6 percent before the crisis, in 2007, to over 37.1 percent in 2009. Moreover, the standard of living for the average American has plummeted during the crisis -- the median American household net worth was $102,500 in 2007, and went down to $65,400 in 2009 -- while the top 1 percent saw its net worth hold relatively steady, dropping from $19.5 million to $16.5 million.

But we’ll never see our political parties sensibly aligned according to these obvious economic divisions, mainly because it’s so pathetically easy in the TV age to set big groups of voters off angrily chasing their own tails in response to media-manufactured nonsense, with the Tea Party being a classic example of the phenomenon. If you want to understand why America is such a paradise for high-class thieves, just look at the way a manufactured movement like the Tea Party corrals and neutralizes public anger that otherwise should be sending pitchforks in the direction of downtown Manhattan.

There are two reasons why Tea Party voters will probably never get wise to the Ponzi-scheme reality of bubble economics. One has to do with the basic sales pitch of Tea Party rhetoric, which cleverly exploits Main Street frustrations over genuinely intrusive state and local governments that are constantly in the pockets of small businesses for fees and fines and permits. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/148855/taibbi%3A_the_tea_party_moron_complex/

[soryang]

1. Identity politics= dumb like me

if you have a vocubulary bigger than 600 words, you're an elitist.

Hey, propaganda works. That is why adverising is so expensive.

[theaocp]

2. I love the way he writes

Not only is he spot-on, but his writing style just flows off the page/screen. Good stuff. K&R.

[CanonRay]

3. As usual, Taibbi is right on the money

[JackintheGreen]

4. Um..except his rhetoric is factually wrong

It's a small things (sort of), but a change in net worth from 19.5 million to 16.5 million is not "relatively steady." It's a substantial drop in net worth of about 12%. Now, realistically, when you're talking about that amount of money the people involved hardly felt a thing, I am sure. It's like a 2 driver family going from 5 cars to 4. Who among "us" fucking cares?

But to call it "relatively stable" strikes me as intellectually dishonest.

Now, the rest of us have felt a 40% pinch, so the wealthy can piss on their dinner and call it au jus, but...

[bertman]

5. Only a 12% drop versus 40% for the rest of us. I go along with 'relatively' stable.

[JDPriestly]

11. The key is the word "relatively."

The wealthy fared "relatively" better than the rest of us.

Relatively --

comparatively speaking: in comparison with other things
"a relatively cool day, given the summer weather"

http://www.bing.com/Dictionary/search?q=define+relatively&FORM=DTPDIA&qpvt=relatively+definition

relative --

ADJECTIVE
1. comparative: measured or considered in comparison with each other or with something else "discussing the relative merits of various methods of transportation"
2. changing with circumstances: not permanently fixed, but having a meaning or value that can only be established in relation to something else and will change according to circumstances or context""Big" and "small" are relative terms."
3. dependent on something: depending on or in proportion to something else
4. connected with something: connected with or referring to something
5. grammar referring to previously used word: used to describe words or clauses that refer to a word previously used in the same sentence
6. music having identical key signatures: describes a musical key that has the same key signature as another, usually a minor key with the same sharps and flats as a major key, or vice versa

http://www.bing.com/Dictionary/search?q=define+relative&go=&form=QB

You misunderstood what Taibbi was saying. That's easy to do. I hope it makes sense now.

[Enthusiast]

6. Tea Party? They celebrate ignorance.

That is all.

[TygrBright]

7. Very insightful. I think he's correctly fingered complexity, combined with fear, combined with...

...intellectual laziness, as the culprit that has given our Corporate Owners such an effective tool for exploiting us.

I've noticed it any number of times, when I come up against some earnest, well-intentioned individual who insists that some hideously complex problem can be solved by some simple, intuitive-sounding, soothingly-"commonsense" solution that would only produce a dozen new and even more hideously complex and damaging problems. And when you try, honestly and respectfully, to point out why their pretty, shiny, "simple" solution won't work, their rage level escalates with astounding speed and amplitude.

The minute you try exposing them to the realities of complexity you lose them.

I don't know the answer, but I think it's good that Matt is pointing out the question.

thoughtfully,
Bright

[JDPriestly]

12. I know people who run successful businesses but have no patience

for the abstractions of economics. It's amazing.

Many American children are not taught the kind of patience that you need to understand math, science and economics. That is something you learn from a patient parent or teacher in pre-kindergarten. It comes naturally to very few people. That is where the real failing is in our education system.

So, naturally when impatient children grow up to be adults, they accept the quick and easy but very false answers that Palin and Bachmann give to their questions.

[TygrBright]

13. I think patience is half of the equation.

The other half is humility, and the honesty to admit that you don't know/understand what you don't know/understand.

For example, I have no problem with people saying "I'm disappointed because (Obama/Congress/Hizzoner the Mayor/whoever) couldn't manage to (insert specific desideratum here.)" But they lose me when they go on to: "Therefore I feel justified in labeling (aforementioned disappointing government-type person) as a sellout, a corporate tool, a socialist muslin, a (opprobrious epithet of choice indicating an assumption of bad faith, evil intent, etc. on the part of specified individual.)"

And they COMPLETELY alienate me when they go on further to explain exactly how easy it would be for the individual in question to deliver the referenced desideratum with some facile, simplistic solution. "Term limits would solve the problem!" or "S/he should just use their power/bully pulpit/whatever to MAKE it happen," or "Just STAND UP to the bad guys and insist on doing what's right!"

Cripes.

I'm DEEPLY disappointed that Health Care Reform didn't schedule a phase-out of the private for-profit health care sector and replacing it with a single-payer system buttressed by non-profit facilities and institutions and taxpayer-subsidized training and education for health care professionals who would work as private contractors to the government or to the non-profit facilities/institutions. That's what I want, that's what I believe is the only workable model to assure adequate health care for our entire population without busting the taxpayer bank, and that's what I believe everyone (except the phased-out for-profit health care sector of the economy) would really benefit from and ultimately value if they had a chance to experience it.

I'm really chagrined that the final version of the bill didn't even make any serious, meaningful steps in that direction. It didn't even lay any philosophical or legislative, legal, or Constitutional groundwork for moving in that direction.

But I don't believe that we ended up with the inferior product that we did get, because everyone involved in the process (particularly the President and the Congressional leaders) were carelessly or maliciously conspiring with evil to deliberately and knowingly perpetrate a damaging failure.

And I am willing to admit that the interplay of legislative, economic, social, and governmental factors involved in re-designing an entire sector of the economy is so complex and involves so many abstruse elements that my level of knowledge is wholly inadequate to accurately draw conclusions about how disastrously the whole thing turned out, or how easily it COULD have been delivered exactly the way I want it.

Fear of complexity is, I believe, far more common and intrinsic to the conservative mindset, but it spans and transcends the entire ideological spectrum.

And an unwillingness to acknowledge our own limitations/ignorance is universal.

regretfully,
Bright

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Tea Party Moron = redundant

[The Wizard]

9. The Teahadists are victims

of a crude appeal to the worst fears and lowest instincts in the human psyche.
As the Bush cartel pushed fear, the Koch brothers and Dick Armey have thrown a well funded temper tantrum with the underlying message that the colored guy in the White House is different from the rest of us, an illegal alien at best, and a socialist, communist, Nazi that wants to make white people's skin a shade darker with his evil magical powers.
They are a snapshot of American bigotry.

[Overseas]

10. Recommended! //nt

[Bette Noir]

14. Matt Taibbi is always worth reading. Thanks for posting.

[ProudDad]

15. Kick -- read this article...