"Tea Party Rocks Primaries"--------Matt Taibbi

[KoKo]

Tea Party Rocks Primaries
By Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/195177/83512#userComments

The Fox/Rush/Savage crowd in the last 18 months has taken the anti-Muslim fervor that launched a phony war in Iraq, carried George Bush to re-election, and pushed through the Patriot Act, and re-directed that anger at a domestic nonwhite enemy. In doing so they’ve achieved a perfect storm of political cross-purposes: they’ve almost completely succeeded in distracting the public from the real causes of their economic misfortune (i.e. Wall Street corruption), they’ve re-energized a Republican party that was devastated by eight years of Bush-era corruption and incompetence, and, as usual, they’ve made Rupert Murdoch a shitload of money.

I’m convinced that none of the key actors here – the Wall Street banks shrieking about government takeovers and advertising on Rick Santelli’s CNBC, the Republican Party’s career hacks who have been scheming for a new horse to ride ever since Bush imploded, and the right-wing TV and radio networks – none of these actors is pushing this crazy movement out of any real desire to stoke a race war. For these institutional leaders and patrons of the Tea Party movement, this is all about material expediency: overcoming the real threat of new financial regulations after the crash, winning elections, and making TV profits. It’s just our bad luck that driving frustrated/broke white suburbanites into a race-hatred frenzy happens to be good business for these folks. And all of this is race-baiting-for-cash is borne out of the same short-term, indifferent-to-consequence thinking that we saw from the Wall Street guys in recent years -- who created mountains of deadly leverage capable of destroying the global financial system for the sake of a few one-year bonuses.

The fact that Fox and co. are doing what they do for these dreary commercial reasons makes it even worse, of course; at least Hitler really hated Jewish people. But that also means there's a bright side. One of the few positives in this Tea Party phenomenon is that it's shown how quickly masses of Americans can be convinced to completely change their minds about shit. The same Americans who six or seven years ago were looking skyward in search of poison-distributing Saddam-drones and buying duct tape and bottled water to protect themselves against imminent Muslim attack are now probably not spending five minutes a week worrying about Muslim terrorists -- and instead arming themselves against the coming black-Mexican-leftist-communist state. To me that indicates that if Fox and Glenn Beck can be induced to jerk off to some perhaps similarly profitable but less toxic hate-fantasy (midgets from New Zealand are taking our jobs!), all of this – well, it maybe won’t go away, but it won’t have us steaming toward widespread racial violence like we are now.

More at....


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/195177/83512#userComments

[DCBob]

1. Its good to see Matt has finally realized who the real enemy is..

and that bashing Obama hasnt accomplished anything.

[girl gone mad]

2. Shame that Rahm, Gibbs and Obama can't seem to figure out who the real enemy is.

Instead of derailing the barbaric neo-conservative/neo-liberal agenda, they've warmly embraced it.

Now we are fighting this far right wing monster that is as much a creature of greedy Democratic "centrist" corporatist appeasement as it is of craven Republican desperation for power.

[MattSh]

3. +infinity

Dang, DU message board does not recognize the infinity symbol...

[GeorgeGist]

4. There's always been more profit in hate ...

than peace.