1 Graphite Graphic

Clearly we’ve reached a watershed in this country. From 1980 to 2008, which might well be called the Age of Reagan, republicans and the republican ideology have dominated Washington and American life. Arguably Ronald Reagan put together one of the most powerful political coalitions in the history of the United States. (See my crude graph below for how this coalition compares to other great change presidencies).  It encompassed Wall Street and Main Street, united large capital interests with anti-government populism under the same roof, it was supported by activist right wing religion, to be sure, but also traditional religious denominations, vectored in a new solid republican South, and united them all in a single movement. It was a true political juggernaut.

Andrew Jackson and Reagan were surprisingly similar.  Both were anti-government, regressive movements. Roosevelt and Obama are progressive, pro-government types.  Arguably it is easier to to be against building and expanding something than it is to be engaged in building something new.  But, on the contrary, once built it is easier to keep a program in place than it is to change or destroy it.  Another key to these comparisons is the fact that Democratic reformers invariably have had moneyed interests solidly arrayed against them. As a republican Reagan alone had that formidable wind at his back.  That he had credentials as a populist too, is remarkable, because generally money and populism are contrary forces and politically inimical. 

Political Coalitions

Solid South    Money    Populism    religious: (traditional) & (radical/activist)

Jackson      +                 --                +                                     --                         +

Roosevelt   +                 --                 +                                     --                          +

Reagan        +                  +                 +                                     +                         +

Obama          --                 --                  +                                    +?                      --

Clearly Reagan, had all these support groups in his column, five for five.  Obama's position is apparently the weakest of the four, though of course there are other ways to build a coalition than with just these five categories, and his strengths and weaknesses may change as his presidency progresses.

Oddly though,since Reagan’s was a negative based argument, an anti-government movement, like Jackson's before it, it has left little in the way of real and enduring legislative achievements after nearly thirty years to show for its domination. Its priority was defending propositions and theory of how government ought to be rather than enacting laws and legislation. And now it is on the run. It has lost its majorities, it is engaged in a fierce rear-guard action to hold on to its legislative priorities, its tax cuts, and it refuses to endorse any kind of new federal program, which it expresses dismissively through its catch all phrase – big government. All this though polls show most Americans think that change is in order,needed and over due.

Even if you don’t believe the numbers and political defeats, their dyspeptic, divisive,bitter and shrill rhetoric would lead you to believe that there is something desperately wrong in the Reagan Revolution as it reaches its thirty year mark. Its only discernible policy at this point in time is obstructionism, to oppose everything all the time forever. It is a risk and gamble and a very rare tactic in American history. It is really guerrilla politics, damn the results, damn the consequences. Even if they lose they will happy because they will have drug the government down with them.

2 Republicans and the New Nobility

A guerrilla movement arises not just from an ungovernable lust for power but because it rejects the very norms under which a government must operate. In this way guerrilla government comes to resemble guerrilla warfare, as it rejects conventional norms of democratic debate and resorts increasingly to gorilla-like behavior patterns.As everything is justified in war, as opposed to civil politics,these tactics manifest themselves in wild exaggerations, venomous ad hominim attacks, extremely disingenuous argumentation, accusing others of being guilty of random behavior of which you specialize,demagoguery and all manner of anything goes policies based solely on the principle of anything you can get away with for as long as you can get away with it. This results in apish, chimp-like propagandistic behavior where false charges are repeated over and over even after having been thoroughly denied and discredited in loosely coordinated viral fear and smear campaigns designed to overwhelm an enemy rather than arrive at any objective truth.

Even though these politicians are employed by the population to find balances between competing interests which together comprise the national interest and the greater good they nonetheless find comfort and reward in actually working only for the interests of a very few Americans either in abeyance of or actually against the interest of the many. Under these circumstances democratic government and its natural drive for equality has become an impediment to their intentions and its supporters their enemies.

Though they try to couch their economic prejudices in an objective philosophic framework this turns out to be just a cover for a baser intent. So to be in favor of cutting taxes for the wealthy in every circumstance may be misconstrued as fiscal conservatism but it is not fiscally conservative nor democratically fair and in practice merely adds to a ruinous debt. It is the theft of the wealth of the general funds of the nation which will ultimately result in the crippling dependence of the many on the few.

Partly this is because though it is not organized, not really a club, there is a new nobility that’s arisen in this country every bit as domineering and self-righteous and determined as any old European nobility’s ability to feather its own nests by plucking the chickens of the middle class. This economic nobility is fundamentally based not on equality but on the hierarchy and social differentiations necessary to sustain great wealth. This elitist coup viscerally rejects social, political economic movement toward equality and resents the very idea of a social or national responsibility to others. In other words they reject out of hand the very qualities that first distinguished America and made us exemplary among the nations of the world.

Therefore at the root of all their policies is an inbred rejection of government as an equalizing or arbitrating force in our society. Instead they see democracy primarily as an impediment to increasing inequality and growing separation of rich and poor, as economic and social differentiation serves their only purpose, the making and keeping of money.

The republican guerrilla assault on government has to be seen in this light, as an attack on the buffering effects of sound democracy in favor of an economic rule of the jungle where a few get rich for whom everyone else eventually labors. It is a type of slave economy in favor of this new nobility, these blessed cherished few, who their party feels are superior and should be in charge of permanently running roughshod over the rest of us. It is a type of stunted, feudal democracy which will result.

At its very worst,and it is not all bad, but at its worst which I believe we are seeing today, this devotion to capital at the expense of a diminished democracy is an assault on the best of our values. It is preaching greed and hoarding over generosity of spirit, in favor of a top down,dog eat dog, society rather than a freer and fairer workplace. It is an assault on the humanity of government, on our long standing devotion to a meritocracy, to fair play and of our freedom to succeed not only in spite of but because of our great diversity. Why?

Although its not widely appreciated money is the hub on which the great wheel of the nation’s history turns. It was perhaps Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s.The Age of Jackson which first illustrated this clearly. It is a thread of debate which runs clearly from Hamilton and Jefferson to the Bank War of Jackson, percolating as an undercurrent through the Civil War, to the robber barons and the Gilded Age to the Cross of Gold of William Jennings Bryant and the reforms of Theodore Roosevelt, wending up through the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, to Reagan and now Obama. Though social issues come and go and wars and generations pass, the war between capital centralization and its disbursement toward the general health, wealth, well being and infrastructure of the nation is the central fulcrum on which the national debate between left and right and rich and poor has always hinged. Even if it is often confused and disguised as something else.

It has been the unholy modern triple entente of money with right wing religion and the republican party that since 1980 has propelled the US economy, not coincidentally just like in 1929 when Wall Street last held such a dominant and domineering sway, up to the very brink of what was nearly the second Great Depression at the end of the Bush administration. Having learned our lesson, this time government intervened with massive bailouts to prop up Wall Street and so the economy has so far survived short of tumbling into the abyss. But ironically this means that Wall Street has not been chastened as it was at the advent of the Roosevelt administration in 1932.

Not only are they not remorseful by the huge fraud and incompetence that nearly brought on world financial collapse, they’ve given themselves huge raises, pretty much with taxpayer money. Therefore, since Wall Street and the new nobility don’t really care about main street, or health care or our national infrastructure or the rest of the population and the republican party works on their retainer, the republicans may still feel loved and secure in their current stature as the party of no as the new nobility that bankrolls them approves of ineffectual government, the rest of the country be damned.

Instead they are adamant in their refusal, unlike what they consider happened in Roosevelt’s day, of never giving an inch of their ill gotten advantages back. Any thing even tangentially bordering on an implied hint of a weak move toward a hesitant start of a reversal of the republican ascendancy over the last thirty years no matter how harmful and ruinous it has been to the country as a whole is not a matter of compromise for them. Bipartisanship is a dirty fourteen letter word. This is why the Republican Party of today has chosen to come out into the open and opt of democracy in a fight against any perceived threat, no matter how oblique, to the centers of the continued accumulation and consolidation of wealth in this country they have so far nobly advanced into the hands of fewer and fewer actual Americans.

Sensing the public’s desire for a reversion back toward a truer democracy with the election of President Obama, this cabal is vehemently resisting change. Since they don’t really care for democracy or our system of government or the aims that our constitution was written to achieve and secure, they feel free to discount the results of free elections and majority rule altogether. They do this not only because our government is not working well, and thanks largely to them it isn't, but because they are afraid it may start to work well again.

Therefore the Republican Party that serves the interests of this New Nobility has become devout obstructionists, the party of no, nullification. nope,not hardly, nunh-uh and never.

Government at its best comprises the shared resources of an entire nation that when properly applied through sheer economies of scale can solve any problem which the nation might face. Yet this later wayward branch of the republican party today, quite divorced from the principles on which the party was originally founded under Lincoln, look at our nation’s wealth only as a mass pool of capital to get their hands on. Not for the collective good but for the private profit of those enterprising and well connected enough to corner it. Take Social Security. This is the nation’s intergenerational trust fund. It is the essence of the sound management of our resources as one generation pays ahead to ensure an entire segment of society security in its old age in the firm belief that the next generation will do the same for them. It’s not only a national trust fund but a unending fund of national trust and national reaffirmation.

But the republicans of today only see Washington like the vandals saw Rome, as a capital or a capitol to plunder. Whether the public good would be enhanced or diminished by risking social security has never been a concern of theirs. So though they are hired by all Americans to preserve, protect and promote the interests of all Americans equally, they have somehow twisted this to mean that they should screw the most if they must in order to help the least if they want, and recognize no contradiction between the two positions.

In this world of backward democracy in which they live all catch phrases such as social welfare or tax reform are placed and dismissed under the same rubric of “income redistribution” or more crudely, “soaking the rich” in favor of the usually colorful(not all white) poor. But this phrase can easily be reversed and more appropriately applied to their own actions. There was little hint of actual income redistribution downwards prior to the republican ascendancy in 1980. And to the extent there was it was entirely and unambiguously beneficial. The rich still got richer but there was a slight movement toward equal job opportunity, a rather porous social safety net and a growing and prosperous middle class – all salutary developments which have unarguably led to a stronger and healthier nation and, not just coincidentally, coincided with our greatest national prosperity.  On the contrary since 1980 there has been ample evidence of a massive shift in wealth from the lower and middle classes to the very, very rich who have in fact grown exponentially richer while the wealth of the middle class has either been stagnant or suffered actually remission. At the same time the nation has become noticeably weaker. Since 1980 there has indeed been a very unhealthy income redistribution at work - upwards.

This use of preemptive language, in this case, “income redistribution”sneeringly applied to attempts at securing greater economic justice in our society, represents a common tactic of the right. To compensate for an alleged disadvantage or prejudice which barely can be proven to exist, when they can they enact extreme policy overreactions to the minimal provocation they identify designed to result in huge imbalances in the other direction, i.e. in their favor. To prevent the rich from being“soaked” then, which they have never been in danger of, the middle class must be drenched and the poorer people must be drowned like unwanted cats in a bucket.

There is a very curious tendency at work here which is, consciously invoked or not, to accuse your political opponents first and more loudly of behavior which you are more guilty of, either before or after the accusation, than they ever were.  As most people don’t act like this or think to behave in such dishonest fashion the tactic is actually quite disarming at deflecting and diminishing criticism for their own bad behavior onto others. If the republican noise machine begins accusing you of something be forewarned, it is either something the republicans are preparing to do or have already done to a far greater magnitude than anything you have ever done or even have previously conceived.  

So for instance,“political correctness’ was a legitimate issue when a certain liberal consensus existed in this country, but it is nothing compared to the political correctness demanded by the right since, even among its own membership as anyone who steps out of line even for a moment is shrilly denounced and brought back in proper group think order or exiled forever for their apostasy. And everyone outside this select group is accused of being traitorous, terrorists, criminals and worse.

Similarly it is possible there was a subtle but distinct liberal bias in the establishment news media and academia which deserved to be identified and condemned but this easily pales to the full throated Fox News abandonment of all sense of objectivity and propriety as in the name of news they pursue undisguised propaganda in its purest form. In each of these instances the right wing fulminaters took a kernel of truth and some isolated instances of liberal bias, exaggerated them to monumental proportions and then to “counter” them have justified behavior far worse and comprehensive which they then deny either to be engaged in or to be bias at all.

As they do this they are self-consciously dishonest in characterizing their own reactions. So Fox News preemptively styles itself “fair and balanced” though it has never entertained any interest in being either.  As a proud and belligerent counterbalance to what it sees as the entrenched biases of “extreme liberalism” they are self- consciously conservative to more than just a small fault. This places them at the other end of the political spectrum and makes them extremely conservative by their own definition. To then claim they are not biased is self-contradictory. It is their entire raison d'etre.

Or look at the republicans sudden concern with deficit spending. No party ever in the entire history of the United States has a worse record of fiscal irresponsibility and deficit spending excesses than the Republican Party of 1980-2008. Yet you recently find a fool republican senator holding up a necessary $10 billion in employment payments to struggling families in the name of fiscal probity,because this money has not been properly accounted for in the budget and paid down in advance. This after voting trillions of unsecured spending to support misbegotten wars, rapacious tax cuts for the most wealthy and least deserving and a thousand and one other boondoggles without a bang, whimper or even a stray oops in passing. In fact republicans voted down pay-go the policy which the democrats actually employed the last time the budget was actually in balance while fighting the policies which achieved it tooth and nail.

The hypocrisy and cynicism is too stark here. When Glenn Beck says that social justice and welfare have no place in either Christianity or America he is perfectly blasphemous and traitorous to the finest ideals which have always motivated both. Or when John Kyl tries to hijack government until he can blackmail congress into passing the asinine and destructive repeal of the Estate Tax through a congress which has many wealthy members just elitist and corrupt enough go along, the republicans show the nature of their true priorities and allegiances.

To examine another part of this, it is illustrative that the very first measure taken up by Gingrich’s republican congress in 1994 was a bill to try to deny funding to public broadcasting. Their excuses for this were novel and typically erroneous.

They said that government never can do anything as well as the private sector. Yet public radio and television were and still are excellent on a variety of fronts from children programing to news and discussion shows, to nature shows and documentaries and at the time was easily the best thing on the airwaves then as it still remains today. Then the critics hinted at biases in the operations but couldn’t make these charges stick because the coverage was so scrupulously fair. Thirdly they claimed that the private sector would not only replace public broadcasting's programming but do it much better. It was quite clear even then that these charges were completely, knowingly untrue but how much more evident has this become today as private television continues to plunge into fatuously risque programming and mindless reality shows and radio continues to unimpress with its shock jocks and questionable political proselytizing.

Fortunately (and this might be said of an entire range of programs and departments of government from Social Security and Medicare to the Education Dept.and Energy Dept. and Security and Exchange Commission, etc.) under ruthless and withering as well as thoughtless republican attack, they were able to maim Public Broadcasting but not kill it.

The real reason the Republican Party hated PBS was because it couldn’t be bought and if it couldn’t be bought then it couldn’t be controlled. Though publicly supported it retained its independent voice. It did what government was supposed to do, fill gaps in areas where our quality of life lags and smooth over areas of injustice with the fresh new paint of old opportunity and regulate areas where private sector abuses would severely diminish the ability of democracy to function. So the problem with pubic radio and television was not its bias but its independence as, I repeat, no one could buy it and twist it to their own personal advantage. Such areas of sacrosanct inviolability and objectivity are vital if a democracy is going to survive, adjust and prosper.

Meanwhile we have seen our private news gathering organizations be increasingly corporatized and continue to decline in quality as distinguished journalistic organizations. They are unctuously dependent on polling popularity. Too timid to take on their corporate masters, in general they have become pale reflections of their own recent pasts, mealymouthed, underfunded, unenterprising, reactive and afraid. If the republicans had succeeded in destroying PBS and their money controlling friends had bought up sources of network news and newspapers and continued their domination of talk radio it is possible that today most of our journalism would simple be an elaborate, anemic house organ of the right wing. Balanced and fair though that might be in the minds of some, it would be the death of democracy. Yet the right wing still bloviates about the liberal left wing press whenever the news doesn’t report the way they want it to.

Witness the latest attempt referred to elsewhere in these pages of the Supreme Court’s back door attempt at injecting money as overlord and chaperon to political free speech and you may begin to understand how insidious and widespread and corrupt these big money influences are and the lengths to which they will go to bring democracy under their financial and political control.

Their right's unstructured scheme to control all media failed, mercifully, due to the entirely unforeseen rise of the internet and its thousands of independent voices which consistently have run circles around network news organizations. Does anyone doubt that if the internet had not arisen to undercut the domination of the network news, that the pressure corporate and republican political interests and right wing commentators could have brought to bear on every single news story generated by an “independent” press would have increased to extraordinary levels of excruciating scrutiny and control today? If you doubt it just look at the weight they brought to bear (on a topic too complicated,arcane and patriotically emotional for internet operatives to effectively mount an argument against) against anyone who dared dispute the wisdom of the second war with Iraq.

And the republicans inanely say this is not political correctness but necessary vigilance to combat political correctness on the other side. Without the internet it is possible to see that journalistic freedom and enterprise might have already been nearly extinguished in this country by now.

Similarly, though these anti-government types claim to despise government they are awfully anxious to run it, and are not shy about ramming their beliefs down our throats when they do. Take the state educational board in Texas that has unilaterally decided that our history was not properly conservative enough to suit their memories and desires.These amateur bureaucrats, a dentist uh, someone who sells real estate, a uh .., well you get the hint. No historians needed to apply for ideologues to rewrite history in Texas, as this board has suddenly discovered that they are greater historians than any real historian or teacher could be.

To cite one peculiar and telling instance of their insight they have decided to denigrate Thomas Jefferson’s historical role in the founding of the country and elevate his quite a bit less distinguished and even less admirable namesake Jefferson Davis. The first helped build the spiritual basis of the nation and actions with his words and the second to nearly destroy the spirit of the nation through slavery and civil war. This collection of school board geniuses somehow has decided the second character with Jefferson as his given name was more exemplary and salutary to the nation’s history than the first with Jefferson as his family name. This will be the second greatest crime against the nation (this one against children) associated with a school book depository in Texas.

Finally, just recently, the passage of a health care reform bill whose proponents were (with the extraordinary ability of the ignorant to use big words whose meanings they don’t understand) often labeled “fascists” by members of the right wing. Certain militia members, as described in the press, called on opponents to attack democratic offices across the country. This resulted in smashed windows in a number of states. Unfortunately for these wordsmiths this is exactly the same type of intimidation tactics fascists actually used in Nazi Germany. Here again they infallibly accuse others of behavior and ideology of which they are far guiltier themselves.

It always makes me wonder when looking into the eyes to the barrenness within of guys like  Boehner and McConnell and Gingrich and Limbaugh, etal., the whole lot of ‘em, given the singularity of their bad behavior and the mediocrity of their minds and the paucity of their purposes, that they don’t somehow in the dark of night sense a lacking. After all, why did none of the far greater Americans of the past need to resort to permanent filibusters, legislative nullification, juvenile tantrum throwing, misrepresentation and dishonesty as a permanent amoral legislative tactic to achieve their great goals? They were uniformly scrupulous in using the structure of democracy itself to achieve democracy’s greatest triumphs.

Don’t these simpletons see or care that even if they don’t have the personal integrity reproach themselves as being far lesser men than those who’ve served us well in the past that their behavior fits perfectly this pattern and that history will?

The only thing we have seen close to this kind of behavior in our entire history has been in support of the indefensible, namely, the political protection of the institution of slavery and later, it’s lame, dimwitted cousin, segregation. The only time the filibuster was so completely employed, at least in threat, was by southern democratic politicians in defense of this later agglomeration of injustices that comprised Jim Crow laws in the South.

You have to ask yourself what evil it is the republicans of today are trying to protect by all their pseudo secessionist tactics. The moneyed interests that control them or the shallowness of their own minds and hearts? Or maybe it is a pale visceral echo of this distant sordid past that they feel themselves to be modern caretakers of. I admit it seems unbelievable but the symmetry is there in a segregationist’s past to employ exactly such obstructionist tactics in defense of slavery and then segregation and then against the first Black American president. It is up to these weak minds, hardly aware of their own susceptibility to these ancient cries from ancient graves of long since vanquished slaveholders and their segregationist cousins, to these distant relations of the present that now lead the new republican party to fulfill these same patterns and forms so long discredited. I repeat, this is no longer the party of Lincoln, they don’t even claim it to be, but the party of Lincolns, of the new nobility, the new southern caretaker party, upholders of the newest line in the sand against racial impurity and democratic equality. Unbelievable as it seems it is probably true.

3 Mirror Projection Psychosis

But then unbelievable is becoming common with them. A president who cuts taxes for the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else, has the nation’s largest terror attack occur on his watch, while he was napping, doesn’t finish a necessary war he starts in Afghanistan to start an unjust war in Iraq on bogus pretenses, probably the most corrupt and mismanaged war in our history and never bothers paying for any of it… A guy who never even pretended to govern from the center or on behalf of all but only for a few of the wealthiest Americans and corporations… who through masochistic anti-government deregulation and astonishingly poor appointments presides over the worst financial calamity since the great depression… A president who runs an administration that engages in illegal torture and illegal spying on his own citizens while operating illegal and unsupervised torture prisons abroad... who wrecks our relations with the rest of the world, thumbs his nose at congress and the public while denying all legal accountability for his actions… All this while pursuing a truly bizarre and completely unconstitutional theory of the unitary executive – or virtual dictatorship in a time of war– no matter how nebulous or open ended they deemed that war to be –subject to their own definition of it.

And to do all this with unprecedented arrogance and disingenuity and ultimately, a complete lack of remorse. The administration of George W. Bush was not a threat to American liberty and worthy of protesting against. No, according to the tea partiers, it's the administration elected in reaction to that administration that must rank as one of the worst in American history. To their minds this is administration is tyrannical and fascistic for NOT doing all these of illegal and self destructive things, for trying to clean up the messes they were left with and, as far as is possible, to move the country back toward the middle of the political spectrum. And this is tyranny? Because he wants to extend health insurance to all Americans?

Man, with reaction time like this, if the Tea Party were a guy who went to the doctor for the famous reflex test where his crossed knee is struck with a rubber hammer, eight years later he may involuntarily kick someone in the shin on the subway. These people have the worst political antennae in history. Some are probably just beginning to worry about the end of the world at Y2K at the end of the millennium. Others may be starting to wonder what we should do now that the Berlin Wall has just fallen.

The tea party islike an outraged crowd being led by a bunch of arsonists reeking of gasoline, accusing the fire department that has come to put out the fire of having started it. The solution the arsonists suggest: more fires. For to consistently accuse others of things which you are or will soon be guilty of yourself is a peculiar pathology. It’scalled “projection”. Obviously the republicans and their followers so abominate all these terrible things they have done to the country, the bad debt, the false wars, the crumbling infrastructure, our declining place in the world, etc., that they can’t accept they have done them to us and are projecting the self-loathing of their own acts onto others. This is how they pretend to see flaws in others that they possess to a much greater degree themselves. It is a mirror psychosis, not recognizing themselves in their own actions which they then accuse other of.

Of course, even if you are not exactly Snow White, it’s tiresome being consistently accused of vices you don’t have by people who have them in great abundance. So the tea party fully supports those who drove the bus into the ditch they are in and reserve their criticism for the ones trying to get them back out. They are especially angry and will never forgive those who were right in the beginning when they pleaded with them not to make the very mistakes that put the bus in the ditch in the first place. These will never be forgiven by the surely bus dwellers for having been right all along.

That’s why the tea party and the republican cries of fascism and socialism and Armageddon (really!) are so deceiving and confusing to an outsider, because what they say is the opposite of what they mean. The secret to understanding them is to understand that they are totalitarians at heart. Totalitarianism was the root cause of both fascism and communism last century. Perhaps that's why a true totalitarian has such a hard time telling these extremes from opposite ends of the political spectrum apart today. Meanwhile, through the magic of mirror projection they think must see in others like tendencies that they possess themselves.

Totalitarians believe in using the levers of government even to excess if necessary in order to place more controls on more people not fewer. This is why they never flinched at wiretaps and torture by the last government. To their minds everyone must profess the same religious beliefs down to fine details of theology, they must support big business, big money, guns and Wall Street without question. They would prefer a strong unequal and dismissive government that will keep them (by which they really mean everyone else) in their places. Highly centralized themselves, they are willing to let government control them socially and make them toe a certain theological and political line because they want to use government to control everyone else.

When government loosens up and institutes equalities, such as extending health care to those who may be down on their luck or born on the wrong end of the economic scale, they are incensed at the generosity and the lack of control exercised over the behavior of the lower orders, many of whom may be of different races and different religions and all of whom might be lazy.

So when some of these tea partiers demand freedom they really only mean they should be free to control others while being subservient themselves to a higher government order, just one they approve of.

This is why they make so little sense. When they say want more freedom for the country they really mean less. When they say government is being oppressive they really mean being too lenient, by forcing them to be more tolerant of others of whom they disapprove. When they say they want less government they mean less government aid but more government prisons. When they say they hate the Wall Street bailouts but are also against the very regulations which might prevent the exact same type of excesses which will make bailouts necessary again in a few years time, to a tea partier republican this makes a certain kind of weird good sense.

It’s illustrative for instance, that Catholic bishops were against health care reforms because they believe in strict moral controls and accountability over everyone (but themselves apparently) and exist in a system that is extremely hierarchical. Catholic nuns, however, who run the catholic schools and hospitals came out in favor of the same legislation. They were thinking of human beings and the Bishops were only thinking of institutions and structures and placing strictures on people.

This is the remnants of the coalition which has formed on the right wing. The domestic economic imperialists have combined with a floating tea party of seething resentment toward all that has befallen them. The ones whom it was done to can’t help but team with the ones who did it to them against the ones who tried to keep it from happening. This is how a guerrilla movement against government foments and sustains itself against all apparent logic and hope of success.

So this is what the great republican coalition of 1980 looks like at its fag end. The unholy trinity of the Monetocracy, the Religious Right and the Republican Party is foundering on its own shoals. The end result of their historic thirty year cooperation is that the big money interests got away with all the money, the republican party is laboring in a minority (with hopes of course of rising again) and the religious right seems to have finally decided to try their luck with salvation back in church rather than through congress. The revanchist tea partiers cannot come to grips with the fact that the policies they were such loyal foot soldiers in support of have actually not only all failed but have particularly victimized them and all other down scale working Americans.

In reaction the tea party is trying to blame the same old suspects, the democrats,the liberals the minorities, etc, even though the true culprit here is the very party they have vehemently, belligerently and sometimes even gleefully supported, no matter how many people and experts were telling them that they were ultimately liable to be the victims of the very policies they were supporting. The hardship they are facing now is the direct result of thirty years of republican economic predatory misrule. Apparently they haven't yet grasped that they have spent the last thirty years working for Wall Street without having even realized it and without tangible benefit. And they most assuredly cannot and probably will never accept the reality that the very same people they have reviled all these years, symbolized by everything Barack Obama stands for, will, if they are very, very lucky, be their rescuers.

 

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