The emergence of the Fox media fueled Tea Party, the modern day version of the 19th century nativist "Know Nothing" party has inspired legions of contemporary nitwits to get involved in our sacred political process. One look at this infamous image from back in 2003, way before the tea party, reminds me that the unholy alliance between the naive constituency of Tea Party enthusiasts and the cynical amalgam of corporate interests like the Koch Brothers, FOX TV, military industrial conglomerates and the like, has many historical and popular precursors.
We could mention William Jennings Bryan and his famous populist whistle stop presidential campaign of 1896 against William McKinley, which probably attracted most of their supporters from the ancestors of folks like this man. Sadly, within the modern Tea Party there is no equivalent to the eloquent and very socialist leaning Bryan who, despite being out spent by the Mark Hanna led Republican campaign machine by 10 to 1, gave the Republicans a good run for their money. The support for Bryan came mostly from farmers and rural folk who felt victimized by the railroads and the eastern banks and wanted to regulate the railroads and also wanted to make silver the standard of currency instead of gold. Although Bryan was called the "Prairie Marxist", he was a social conservative who believed in a strict fundamentalist Christianity and unfortunately is mostly remembered for his prosecution of Tennessee school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution. How little things have changed really, except nowadays political hybrids like Bryan are almost non existent. This picture also reminds me of the Frank Capra movie Meet John Doe, which depicted a Tea Party like mass movement that is cynically manipulated by a greedy industrialist and his newspaper flunkies, with the way that the right wing media has exploited the ignorance of hundreds of thousands of lower middle class white Americans who are uneducated and evidently don't even know how to spell the word "moron". These media flunkies like Glenn Beck(presently unemployed), Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, lead the charge and the uneducated red state hoi polloy are the cannon fodder who mindlessly follow. After all, they still have to go home to their trailer park sewage pits after the rally is over so what better way than to top it off but with a couple of 40 oz. Cobra's and a couple of hits of crank, right? These are also the descendants of the same "upcountry folk" who fought in the American Civil War (the rich man's war and the poor man's fight) to save the south for the slavocracy.
AMENSTY: Isn't that the kind of place a bachelor lives in? Not trying to be unduly harsh with Grandma here but didn't she ever hear about spellchecker? Or buy a dictionary? She will probably vote for Michelle Bachman
n because while she might be a bit on the illiterate side, Frau Bachmann is highly intelligent, if somewhat unpolished. And you know what? I bet she doesn't even care that Michelle's husband is gay, although he pretends to be "cured" of his homosexuality. I wonder if William Jennings Bryan is spinning in his grave right now as we speak? I don't want to seem cruel but Granny needs to break out the Dick and Jane primers from her school days and start learning about how to spell. Meanwhile those Mexicans who clean her yard every year need a place to sleep that has running water and heat. They need a place to sleep other than that interstate overpass that they have been living under all summer. Perhaps she could show a little more kindness to those Mexicans, instead of wanting to stigmatize them for wanting a better life...
Remember when Marlon Brando said "the Horror, the Horror..." in Apocalypse Now? We'll here is our Tea party equivalent:
"Oh the Borror, the Borror..." I hope the esteemed economist holding this sign hasn't defaulted on his South Dakota GE money credit card(full disclosure: I'm still holding on to mine. I have had it since seven years ago when I started getting on my feet from a financial catastrophe. Question: Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to have credit cards at all? To rent cars and hotel rooms? Wouldn't it be great if the banks didn't control everything of a financial nature?) This gentleman is obviously not a Keynesian enthusiast. But I ask you, where would he be without the GE credit card? Life is tough and my New Years resolution is to get rid of those balances on my credit cards...
This last one Baffles me:
This woman looks like a Mexican, or an Asian, or a Native American. Yet here she wants to "Impeah" Obama. Does she mean "Impeach" or "Impede"? Little of both maybe? I guess this last picture goes to show that you don't have to be white to be stupid, but, HELLO, sorry sweetheart, this country has been "socialist" since 1935 when president Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. It has become quite clear to me that these nitwits who are the innocent and not so innocent pawns of the vast right wing media to hijack the country's attention and the congress while holding the vast majority of the rest of us hostage to their greedy agenda. Thus they legitimize the Tea Party's agenda and in the words of Martha Rossler, make it seem as if it stems "from the anti-elitist heartland, 'the real America', a kind of righteously raging beast that must be placated. The excuse of the mob offers the appearance of urgency to a persistent campaign by plutocratic elites to permanently capture the wealth of the nation--now at the greatest divide between rich and poor in a century--and to subvert democratic institutions while posing as vox populi..."
