Unaware Of The Contradiction

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/023085.php

UNAWARE OF THE CONTRADICTION.... There's an old joke that goes something like this: my neighbor went to public schools before joining the military. He went to college on the G.I. Bill, bought his first home through the FHA, and received his health care through the V.A. and Medicare. He now receives Social Security.

He's a conservative because he wants to get the government off his back.

I mention the joke because a surprising number of right-wing activists don't seem to appreciate the humor. We talked the other day, for example, about a radical libertarian activist who encourages his allies to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices to protest the Affordable Care Act. He hates government involvement in the lives of citizens -- but his main income is taxpayer-financed disability checks sent to him every month by the federal government.

snip//

The cognitive dissonance is rather remarkable. They perceive the government as the source of their economic distress -- which itself doesn't make sense -- and then rely on the government to give them a hand, all the while demanding that the government do less to give people a hand. Their reflexive hatred for public programs is so irrational, they don't even see the contradiction.

"After a year of angry debate," the Times article noted, "emotion outweighs fact."

That's no doubt true. But that doesn't change the fact that we're talking about a reasonably large group of people who are deeply, tragically misguided.

This is important to the extent that there are still some who believe the political mainstream should do more to listen to the Tea Party crowd and take its hysterical cries seriously. But how can credible people take nonsense seriously and hope to come up with a meaningful result? How can policymakers actually address substantive challenges while following the advice of angry mobs who reject reason and evidence?

The bottom line seem inescapable: too many Tea Party activists have no idea what they're talking about. Their sincerity notwithstanding, this is a confused group of misled people.

-Steve Benen

[mrcheerful]

1. Again these are the greed heads that read nixon/Raygun code as they are entitled to their

government hand outs but no one else deserves it because "they" are lazy. What they are afraid of is the more people getting government programs the less they will get, it's that simple. Their only thought is stopping others, not one thought about how by buying into the evil government programs they are hurting themselves, they refuse to believe that their actions will destroy their lively hoods, by voting for the R's it gives them immunity from R's taking their piece of pie away from them.

[HughMoran]

2. Thus the expression "VIOLENTLY STUPID"

Or as the one or two remaining intellectuals on the right call it "anti-intellectual populism".

[pepperbear]

3. They want THEIR government, not SMALL government. n/t

[mulsh]

4. All of the conservative and libertarians I know attended

public schools. Most of the hard core conservatives and libertariansI know not only attended state colleges and universities but worked for government agencies their entire professional careers. Not one can explain why they never saw fit to move on to the private sector and take their chances in good old "free market" capitalism. weird.