The 6 Stages of Teabaggery

[babylonsister]

The 6 Stages of Teabaggery
old new lefty


Elisabeth Kubler-Ross entered social science history and obtained fame when she conclusively identified the five stages of experiencing a slow death. Old new lefty has gone through his own slow death experience lately by attempting to make contact with Teabaggers, and is here to report on the five stages that educated progressives go through in dealing with the 'baggers. For one thing, trying to communicate with them doesn't make you any younger, and many of the 'baggers are in their golden years, so they're near slow death themselves.

LAUGHTER

Probably your first encounter with the Teabagger is by watching the John Stewart show, or maybe Keith Olbermann is feeling in a good mood that day. When you first see those misspelled signs on the Constitution or those signs saying, "KEEP SOCIALISM AWAY FROM MY MEDICARE" it's a truly WTF moment. I mean, what gives with these people anyway? Are they really that dumb? And the whole movement pretty much looks like a bad soap opera only without the sex.

CURIOSITY

Then you start to wonder. Is weird Uncle Harold a Teabagger? What about that old fart who lives down the street from you who always flies the American flag and has a pickup truck with a gun rack on the back? If you're an enquiring mind, you really want to know. So you screw up your courage and walk down the street to stand on Crazy Phil's lawn to get his view on political things.

BOREDOM

WTF turns into yadda yadda yadda pretty quickly. Chris Matthews says, "Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line," and in any initial questions of the 'bagger there will be some of the regurgitations he's seen on the F*x News. Something Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh said comes back to you as if you'd pulled the string on a Chatty Kathy doll. I don't know who the mastermind is who thinks up all of these zingers -- that everyone then immediately parrots as if it's the unquestionable truth. Maybe it's some pimply faced 20 year old intern chained to a computer. I don't know, but it's very important to get through this stage to the next one.

ANGER

If you continue with probing questions, eventually your blood is going to boil, and it won't be any damn good. One likely reason for anger is him (it usually is) spouting off birther nonsense about forged Kenyan birth certificates. Another source of anger is racism or homophobia. That one always guarantees a rise in your gorge. My anger stage came when I got a bagger to spout off nonsense like this.

more...

http://open.salon.com/blog/old_new_lefty/2010/03/29/the_6_stages_of_teabaggery

[samplegirl]

1. Acurate summary to say the least.

Happy Easter Babylon!!! Keep up all the great postings!

[babylonsister]

2. Same to you, samplegirl!

:hi:

[bemildred]

3. Guardians of the free Republics looked to Gandhi, King, and Mandela

In a recent plea, Sam Kennedy, a "guardian elder" of the Guardians of the free Republics, warned the modern-day "original government" revolutionaries to approach their March 31 "Restore America Plan" with Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mohandas Gandhi in mind.

"We would simply like to urge patriots everywhere to champion their faith instead of force, and allow The Restore America Plan an uneventful 30 to 60 days for visible implementation which will ultimately end the bogus prosecutions and terrorist activities once and for all," wrote Kennedy recently.

---

In essence, their "plan" seeks a return to de jure, or original, governance, stripping Washington of its ability to tax citizens' income and dismantling agencies such as the FBI. The Anti-Defamation League says "sovereign citizen" groups wage war against authority using "paper terrorism," but rarely resort to violence.

And although the Guardians lay out an interesting legal theory – arcane federal law and how it's interpreted is core to the sovereign citizen movement – the idea that they could quietly, and, as they suggest, without ridicule, work behind the scenes to slide America back nearly a century seems, in retrospect, folly.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0403/Guardians-of-the-free-Republics-looked-to-Gandhi-King-and-Mandela

[tanyev]

4. Final stage: Shriveled, dried-up teabag is thrown in the trash.