Fight fire with fire
From its inception, the Tea Party is the very definition of the type of revolutionary movement. Until Democrats, and their leader in the White House, realize they need to stop calling people like Paul Ryan "courageous" and "serious," and start fighting fire with fire, Michelle Bachmann and her creepy pinwheel eyes are going to continue to get their way at the expense of American values and the middle-class that once made this country great.
The late, great historian Richard Hofstadter added further insight into just the type of "movement" we're dealing with, in his 1964 award-winning tome, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics." In it, he outlines the psychological origins of the type of crazed, Tea-bagger style of all-or-nothing dedication to an absolute end, when he wrote of their forebears:
"He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated -- if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention."
In other words, any compromise, no matter how small, is seen as an act tantamount to treason, which is precisely why we need to stop engaging these tottering tea lovers, because they simply do not believe in the workings of democracy.
Like the Terminator, or The South before the Civil War (the region which spawned much of this movement, not surprisingly) the Bachmannites simply must be defeated -- beaten in the world of combat, political combat in this particular case (lest anyone think I am advocating war -- which I am not).
The Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, or even Reagan -- the GOP in its current form is nothing more than the party of Ted Nugent -- hopefully with somewhat better hair.
Speaking of Lincoln, he proffered to Congress in 1861 that, "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthral ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
What he said.
Cross-posted from Al Jazeera(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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