Reply #88: Let's take that on a case-by-case basis . . .

[Jack Rabbit]

First of all, the Tea Party is the Koch Brothers, Dick Armey, Rick Scott and people like them. It is not a grass roots movement. It is astroturf. A mass movement does not hold conventions asking hundreds of dollars for admission. They simple demagogues like Sarah Palin a bullhorn and attracted racists who resented having a black president. No, that Tea Party I don't want in the movement. Of course, they would not want to be part of a real mass movement, anyway. They despise democracy and wouldn't fit in.

Now, as for those they've led around by the nose for three years who were deluded into thinking they really were part of a mass movement, let's take a look. There are many who think that Brown Shirt tactics are fine and well. They're not interested in joining the 99%ers, even if they have more in common with a college student looking a lifetime of paying off debt or a working professional who has fallen out of the middle class after two or three years of unemployment than with Jamie Dimon. There are many who think that they are better than the rest of us because they go to the "right" church. There are some who think that being white or male should afford them some privilege. This is a movement committed to democracy, and those people have no idea what that means. To make it simple, one who believes in a "natural" social hierarchy is not a democrat.

There may be a few who realize they've been had by the astroturf manufacturers, if not for just the last three years, then for a lifetime; that even though some are white males, they have more in common with the black woman who toils scrubbing floors just to feed her children than have they with robber barons on Wall Street; that mere financial success is no more a measure of one's nobility than is being born the child of the King and Queen. If so, then dope dealers are great men and King Louis XV was righteous leader. They are aware that no man has any right to rule over another without the other's consent. They know that living in a society may restrict an individual's freedom, that it is part of human nature for each of us to reach out to his fellows to accomplish things better than he can alone. That is called society. Anybody who says there is no such thing as society or that he owes nothing to humanity at large is a sociopath, whether it's said by a nineteenth century robber baron like J. P. Morgan or character in twentieth century fiction like John Galt (which only means that Ayn Rand, Galt's creator, was a sociopath).

Now, to those people we can talk.