Thanks Tea Party: America Now Held Hostage

From the right, there has been anger really since the winner of the Presidential election was announced at 11:01 pm CDT on November 4, 2008 after the polls closed in California. The core of mostly white, middle-aged Red State America took immediate umberage to having a black man in the White House and the wealthy Wall St. and corporate interests that were so well treated under the Bush Administration, also realized immediately that for them, the jig was essentially up.

Not wasting any time, a number of very smart, clever, and essentially dishonest power brokers from Rupert Murdoch to Dick Armey saw that there was an opportunity to meld these two unhappy forces into something that they could wield against the new President, coming up with the ‘Tea Party Movement’ that in effect, enlisted the disaffected core of angry white-middle America to rise up against anything that remotely impacted the Wall St. and corporate interests that had made their fortunes and gained enormous power by exploiting American consumers and workers for decades. That such a movement would seem to be counter intuitive given that it would require people to basically fight for the very things that dminished their lives and hurt them financially and emotionally was of little consequence. The forces behind the movement were smart enough to realize that Americans had really not been paying attention for the better part of the last quarter century or so and that for the vast majority, reality TV in the guise of Survivor, Big Brother, Hell’s Kitchen, American Idol, and other such nonsense had become more real to Americans then such mundane and boring matters like how their taxes were being spent, how their children were being educated, whether or not the food they ate or the cars they drove were safe, or if their sons or daughters would be sent off to fight and die in wars to benefit multi-national corporations or to satisfy a President’s oedipus complex.

As we now know, this plan has worked out perfectly. The recent midterms were their crowning achievement with the GOP, always on the lookout for expedient means to obtain and hold power, hitching their fortunes to the Tea Party movement and riding it back to relevance. With the angry right flush with victory and righteous revenge, the left distraught and wondering what happened to the momentum that seemed so strong two short years ago, and the independent middle confused to the point that they find themselves voting for people they have no faith in, the collective emotional mood of the nation has been elevated to a point that makes it virtually impossible to step back and objectively look at what has transpired and evaluate where we now stand as a country.

However, such is not the case for the rest of the world, where they can take a much more objective view and where it seems people have a greater tendency to pay attention to meaningful reality as opposed to the false reality Americans worship. As a result, non-Americans often have a better grasp on what is happening in America than Americans themselves, and such seems to be the case now.

Looking at the recent events taking place in the States, and the results of the midterm elections, Johann Hari of the British newspaper The Indpendent accurately described the current situation we now find ourselves in with the ascent of the GOP:

This is the story of the modern Republican Party. They use the cultural signifiers of the good people of Middle America to get their emotional identification, meanwhile they pillage Middle America and redistribute its wealth to the rich. Sarah Palin is the queen of this cause. She presents herself as a warrior for hockey moms and Momma Grizzlies, while spreading fictions to stop those very people supporting social programs that could save their lives: remember her claim that Obama’s healthcare plan involved setting up “death panels” to execute the old and disabled? Her true slogan is Shill, Baby, Shill..

In one paragraph, he has basically distilled into simple terms that which so many pundits and talking heads in America make out to be the complicated moral and political dilemmas facing our leaders and our citizenry. To him, it is pefectly clear what has occurred.

And in explaining how such a ridiculous and seemingly impossible political reality came to exist in America, Mr. Hari goes on to articulate the essence of the Tea Party movement that helped to get us to this point, a movement which looks insane to the rest of the world but that somehow has become not only accepted in America, but is now considered normal:

The essence of the Tea Party…can be seen most plainly in Glenn Beck. Just over a decade ago, he was a drug-taking, pro-abortion, perpetually drunk DJ on morning radio. One of his famous “pranks” was to ring up the wife of a radio-show rival a few days after she had a miscarriage and taunt her about her loss. But then he stumbled into political commentary. After 9/11, Beck began to articulate a blubbery, blubbering hysteria, calling for the shooting of Michael Moore and the poisoning of Nancy Pelosi. He announced that any government program helping ordinary Americans was a step towards “communism”, and prophesied: “The country may not survive Barack Obama? If he does fundamentally transform America, we’re done. You don’t have to worry about a 2012.” He shot up to be the second highest rated show in cable news, and assembled hundreds of thousands to a rally on the Mall. At times seems quite conscious of the manipulation: “They’re getting so tired of me saying there’s a Marxist in the White House, I gotta take it up a notch,” he reportedly said to one private audience.