The Tea Party is going down for the count. The Double Penetration assault of the Neocons is working. The Outer Enemy/Inner Traitor attack is doing what it was designed for. The Tea Party Movement is all but tamed and will act out its assigned role as electoral cannon fodder for the Republican Party.
The Tea Party Movement was never a cherry, pristine, citizens’ revolt to begin with. Rather, it was a media contrivance to afford a chunk of Middle America to let off steam, and partly defuse the built-up anger against the Wall Street bailout at the expense of Main Street. To be sure, the Tea Party Movement threatened to get out of hand. But that’s being taken care of. This task of taming for the big electoral round-up is made easier by the fact that the base of the Tea Party movement are middle-aged, middle-class conservatives. They tend to be very conformist; it’s the nature of the beast.
The Tea Party Movement DID NOT begin with the saintly Ron Paul and his 10% of the Republican base. Instead, the Tea Party took shape in a typically sordid & fraudulent manner. A year ago, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli let loose with a tirade from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. His enemy? Any sort of mortgage reform. He was cheered on by the huffing & panting speculators on the floor of the exchange. How appropriate; the USA now has a paper, casino economy.
Far from a spontaneous outburst, Santelli’s rant & appeal for a ‘tea party’ protest was a stage-managed event, prepared well in advance. With video-taping & editing, virtually nothing is spontaneous on television except maybe car chases on LA freeways.
The job of the media today in the words of Michael Collins Piper “is the maintenance of the American political system as it exists today, dominated by a tightly knit clique of families & financial groups, international in scope, hardly at all concerned with the needs & concerns of grass-roots Americans.”
With exorbitant media coverage, the Tea Party had a dainty, little protest of sorts in DC on September 12th. Pretty harmless stuff. Contrast that with the treatment & media coverage of a REAL PROTEST in Pittsburgh in October. Attend the stooge event in Washington and you’re toast of the town. Go to a REAL protest in Pittsburgh and you get tear gas in the face and a bloody scalp.
Seeing which event went up against police-state methods is all you need to know.
Tea Party R.I.P.
Dear Maury,
I first discovered your blog through a link on Keith Preston’s site. While I find your work highly original and interesting (and your opinions and analysis mirror mine almost precisely) I must concede that it also find it somewhat confusing. The confusion stems from my inability to specify what political ideology you write from. At times you sound like a leftist, at other times like a right-populist, and other times you display ENR sympathies. Please explain this to me. Also, are you familiar with Jim Goad’s 1997 masterwork, the Redneck Manifesto? Often you seem to echo the worldview (and socio-cultural analysis) expressed in that book.
In my very first blog, I identified myself as a National Bolshevik. In fact, the blog was identified as looking at the Twilight of the West from a National Bolshevik point of view. But that terminology usually draws a blank from American audiences or a ton of confusion. So I now simply identify myself as a Left-wing Redneck. While I’ve been termed a ‘Marxist with a Nationalist deviation,’ my thought most echoes Jean Thiriart who was not a Marxist. Much of my work lies in translating Thiriart’s thought to the Western Hemisphere. I’m also close to Kai Murros, who is a friend. We make similar use of the Marxist tradition, though both of us are better identified as Nationalists. And I’m a supporter of the International Eurasian Movement, founded & led by Alexandr Dugin.
Yes, I still have my original copy of THE REDNECK MANIFESTO. I consider it vital. It also, in a way, validates my point that Nationalism and conservatism are incompatible. Thomas Chittum, my fellow Vietnam veteran and author of CIVIL WAR TWO, is the other big American influence. Like Chittum, I oppose secessionist & overtly racist groups.
I have given critical support to Pat Buchanan in the past.