The Tea Party Movement. It's James Brown in reverse. Say It Loud and Chewing Gum. I is White and I is Dumb. What's going on over there?
The USA is being dragged in the most alarming skid to the right I've seen in my lifetime .... and I'm old enough to remember the last chapter, when Ronnie Reagan, the Man Who Never Told Bad News to the American People, ruled the airwaves. But at least then Reagan was just a cynical manipulator of the religious right of the Republican Party. He didn't actually believe the hogwash. Now it's a different story. The Tea Party Activists are true believers. Pinheads with Armageddon pamphlets you hide from behind your curtains on a Sunday morning. Beady eyed polyester trousered losers. But back home in the prairies, somebody's been a feedin' them and a clothin' them in red pantsuits and a givin' them great fistfuls of dollars while breathing words of power and hope in their tiny ears. And now the Tea Party is making a bid for power. A real credible bid. Nick Griffin must be weeping tears of bitter, bitter envy. What miracles could he have wrought in Barking with this kind of crazy money.
So... what does the Tea Party stand for? Well, lets take a look at Sharron Angle, the candidate who recently won the Republican primary nomination in Nevada. Let me repeat, won. Thousands and thousands of people went out into the burning desert sun to mark a cross (burning, also) next to her name at the polling station.
Here are some of Sharron's thoughts on life. She'd like to abolish the US education department because it's 'unconstitutional'. She believes America should pull out of the UN because it promotes un-American ideologies (like having a good reason to carpet bomb) Sharron is anti-abortion in all cases, including where rape or incest is involved, and she doesn't believe in state pensions for the elderly, or in mothers working. She doesn't like the demon drink much either, but surprise, surprise, she loves a smokin' gun and has pretty much threatened an armed rebellion if radical conservatism doesn't get its way. 'Iif we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?' She asks. A hoe down mow them Commies down?
And who is voting for her. The people who believe Obama is a Muslim, that climate change science is witchcraft and that evolution is a myth. Let's not beat about the G.W. Just watch any Tea Party rally, tune into Fox news and take a close look. It's a sea of terrified, white, supersize me folk, led by the nose by former alcoholic and coccaine addict Glenn Beck, the vitriolic Fox News Anchorman and all round good guy who just cares an awful lot about stuff...
You've got to hand it to him, Beck is a true master of the dark arts of manipulating the anger of white middle and working class people and his toxic language and extremist ideas have taken root with a whole section of disenfranchised people. Backed by a powerful cabal of financial and media interests, he knows to keep it good and simple. Us good, them Bad. Us being patriots and god-fearing and Them being elite, Un-American and the worstest cuss word of them all, Socialist.
Recently this pasty-faced fool held a mass rally in Washington on the anniversary of Martin Luther's famous I have a Dream speech. Perching on the step below the one that Dr King stood on all those years ago, he declaimed to the massed flag wavers around him, 'we are the ones who must stand for civil rights and equal rights.' Watch it, please. It's like Quantum Physics for real. A genuine parallel world opening up right in front of you.
You can understand why people feel so furious and lost and powerless. America is ruled by corrupt elites; whichever party you're with you have to be a millionaire to even think of running for the senate, and from the minute you enter office until the time of the next election, you've got to raise at least $10,000 a week to stand a chance of getting back in power. What kind of whoring with business must the political class have to do to stay in power? The people are all well and good, but the people don't pay the bills.
And so here we are. The Days of Rage for working class whites. The Democrats do next to nothing for them, the Republicans round them up with the church prod for the slaughter. What will it take for a credible party of the left to rise and fight for the working man in America?
