The beauty of this piece is that it calls out the Tea Party and their thuggish leadership and financial backers for being essentially what they are – a loosely organized group of people whose platform stands entirely on and for hatred and intolerance. There’s no political ideology behind them, and there’s no real conservative set of ideals either. Observe:

The August madness into which America has descended is about several things. It’s about the still-sputtering economy, of course, and the fear it engenders. It’s about xenophobia, never far below the surface. And it’s about a rightwing media-political complex that plays on the public’s ignorance.

But there’s a unifying theme that few wish to acknowledge. What we are witnessing at the moment is the full, ugly furore of white backlash, aimed directly and indirectly at our first black president.

The case was made, inadvertently, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last week by Republican congressman-turned-lobbyist Dick Armey, the godfather of what might be called the Tea Party movement’s corporate wing. Armey and his co-author, Matt Kibbe, proudly dated the birth of the Tea Party to 9 February 2009.

Barack Obama’s $800m stimulus bill was not approved until three days later. Which is my point. The most notorious political movement of the Obama era, grounded in racial fears if not flat-out racism, sprung into being within weeks of Obama’s inauguration, before he’d had a chance to do anything, really. If Obama was for it, they were against it.

The Tea Party winter and spring of 2009 led to the “death panels” of summer, and to rightwing hero Glenn Beck’s declaration that the president harboured “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture”. Minor issues involving Acorn, a heretofore obscure agency that helped register urban, mostly minority voters, became a cause célèbre. A little-known African American bureaucrat, Van Jones, was hounded out of office for having allegedly expressed offensive views about the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 – views he later said he had never voiced and did not hold. Protesters spat upon and directed racial epithets at African American congressmen as the healthcare debate reached its climax.

And now we come to the full fruition of all this race-baiting. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 18% of Americans – and 34% of conservative Republicans – believe Obama is a Muslim, proportions that have actually risen since the 2008 campaign. Another poll, by CNN/Opinion Research, finds that 41% of Republicans believe Obama was definitely or probably not born in the United States.

It’s something of a sad summation, and proof positive that more progressive groups, as opposed to paying attention to their pet causes, should rally together to help control the message and spin a bit. When you have an “opposition” who stands not to inspire ideas or call to action but instead to do nothing but bait and inflame the masses, you need a voice of reason on the other side of the line – and the halls of government can’t do it, they have a job to do in terms of keeping our democracy running, and they would only be perceived as defending themselves from attacks by the people. The American people – the True Majority – need to stand up and end the silence that’s allowed this hatred to bloom as much as it already has. For example:

But to experience the pure fury, you have to watch this video of a black man who had the temerity to walk through a group of people protesting the centre. It is a terrifying moment.

There is more – so much more. The anti-immigration law approved in Arizona, which made a star of Republican governor Jan Brewer, notwithstanding the inconvenient truth that illegal immigration across the Mexico-Arizona border is at its lowest level in years. The political crucifixion of Shirley Sherrod. The continuing phenomenon of Sarah Palin, who, at long last, feels empowered enough to reach inside the deepest, darkest recesses of her tiny little heart and embrace a fellow rightwinger’s repeated use of the N-word.

It’s a frightening time to be an American and to watch this insanity unfolding all around us. There’s a sense that anything could happen, none of it good.

What’s all too easy to forget is that though Obama was elected with the strongest majority of any president in recent years, he received only 43% of the white vote. Now, it’s true that no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has won a majority of whites. But it’s also true that 100% of voters who would never support a black presidential candidate cast their ballots for someone other than Obama. Now they’re roaming the countryside, egged on by the Republican party and the Tea Party and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, looking for new objects on which to unload their bitterness.

The traditional media, built as they are on the notion of fair-minded coverage of equally responsible, equally reasonable political forces, can barely process what’s going on. You literally cannot understand the current moment without watching the political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But, hey, they’re only comedians.

…

Strangely, there are virtually no political observers who hold out the prospect that the folks whom the right has alienated will turn out to vote against the Republicans this November. George W Bush, after all, worked mightily to appeal to Latino voters. That’s gone. Bush even won 70% of the Muslim vote in 2000. That’s long gone.

The Republicans hope to ride the white backlash back to power, and perhaps they will. But they may also find that the hatred they have embraced will come back to haunt them this November – and well beyond. For the rest of us, though, the consequences of that hatred have yet to play out.

And that’s the clincher: there’s nothing to make us believe that any of these rabid tea partiers will actually turn out to vote. These people had nothing but hatred in their hearts from the moment that President Obama took office – there’s no way they could be somehow against his platform, opposed to his policies, or prefer a different course of action in government. There were none of those things when they formed, and they had already lit their torches and tied up their nooses before the Bible he was sworn in on was put back into safe keeping.

There have been a few surprise primaries lately, but they’re primaries, and mostly in areas where any representative with fire in their bellies and money in their pockets can overturn an incumbent or play to the beliefs of their base and their party. The truth will come in November, and while I don’t expect it to be completely positive news, I do hope that it plays out moderately well for our country.

[The Backlash Against Obama's Blackness ]
Source: The Guardian UK

By now, the completely unremarkable crowd of about 2500 people who descended on Washington DC to the utter and prompt annoyance of us locals, complete with their attitudes of ownership of the city and their privilege (seriously, these folks assumed that because they were white and “proud” so much that they wouldn’t have to actually, you know – spend money to get around town on the Metro) are all gone, leaving the rest of us to go back to the duties at hand that are important to the fate and future of our Republic.

Behind them in their wake, aside from the trash they left behind on the streets and lawns of Washington and the stench of their putrid ideology in the air, they leave behind questions about why Sarah Palin can’t seem to speak in public ever and make a coherent sentence, and why Glenn Beck ever hid behind his so-called “divine providence” that led the event to be on the same day at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago.

There are a couple of reasons behind this, but I think Henry Rollins said it best and with finer words and a finer point than I could hope to put on it in a recent blog post at Vanity Fair:

I get the feeling that this pitiful gathering will be more about angry white people who think they have lost something. These are people who can’t handle the fact that with time, things change. The restoration of honor they strive for is nothing more than regaining a perceived position of superiority they feel is rightfully theirs, that has been taken away. Who took it? The Muslim from Kenya? Liberals? Activist judges? Probably.

Glenn Beck has told his followers not to bring signs. Smart thinking. He knows his demographic well. He knows that there would have been some atrocious sentiments expressed on those signs. Not that Fox News would carry the images, but certainly real news outlets would have. Had the signs been present, would anyone be surprised at what they said? You know what this grouping of woefully misinformed and willfully ignorant participants is all about. It’s not about honor, it’s not about freedom, and it’s definitely not about what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for and died for. It is about white anger, indignation, desperation and severe plot loss. Their numbers will be few. Many of them have to be bussed in, perhaps unable to even find the nation’s capital on their own. It is yet another pathetic exercise of a small group of people whose beliefs are regressive and repellent. They are only left with their hate, ignorance, and fear. This non-event is their moment to bark at the sun.

[ Comedy Critic’s Choice: Glenn Beck’s Restoration of Honor ]
Source: Vanity Fair

I think that’s absolutely well put, and even after the event, Henry Rollins felt bad for him more than he thought the event or the speeches were contemplative in any fashion, and I wholeheartedly agree. Conservatives in general put up a lot of bluster and pomp and circumstance, but at the end of the event, what were the tea partiers supposed to go home with? What were they supposed to do, except be themselves? How were they supposed to go about “Restoring Honor” in their communities?

After Mr. Beck had mercifully ended his speech and the man in the kilt came onto the stage playing Amazing Grace, it fully registered with me what a huge non-event this was. The speech, full of references to God, over and over, possessed not one concrete thing to take away. When the people who were at this event get back to their normal lives this week, what changes will they make? What steps will they take to restore honor? Seems to me there would be no place for racism or homophobia in the life of an honorable American, so I guess we won’t be having to deal with any more of that. Mr. Beck wants his people to make God the central force in their lives. Does that mean they get all generous, tolerant, and kind now? Cool.

When was the honor lost? Operation Ajax in 1953? The bitter opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964? The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968? The covert bombing raids into Cambodia in 1969? Watergate? The invasion and occupation of Iraq? I am not listing president Clinton and his sexcapades because no one was killed, although millions of dollars were wasted. So, were these instances where America lost some traction on the honor-highway? Or perhaps it was things like the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that abolished child labor and established a minimum wage or Social Security that pushed America off the shining path to honor?

So, Citizen of the Republic, what are you going to do to make a change? What is your resolution to the restoration of America’s lost honor? More prayer? Tithing? Perhaps maybe even reading some of the speeches of Abraham Lincoln? Where is the next stop, great restorer of honor? To Florida for the 9/11/2010 Koran burning, perhaps?

[ Pity, I Guess ]
Source: Vanity Fair

This makes me think about Sarah Palin’s speech, where she – true to her own “did anyone actually read this before she opened her mouth” style, claimed that she and her followers are resistant to change, and instead they want to “preserve” America in the image of its past. Which of course amounts to changing the way it is today. But they don’t want change, they want to preserve….by changing it from what it is today. You see the problem?

Like Rollins says, the entire thing amounts to saber-rattling on the part of the far right, which sadly does nothing except get them out to the polls, which could be bad enough for the future of our country, frankly.

These folks don’t have ideas on how to improve our communities, our schools, our jobs, or our environment – ideas and thinking are their strong suit. What they do have, is a lot of anger, hatred, and bluster, and a deep-seated fear of the changing demographics, dynamics, and power structure of America in the 21st century. They see their old standby, privilege, slowly being eroded in favor of equal opportunity and equal rights, and they fear it and hate it with the same fervor as a infant whose rattle has been taken away. And they behave as such.

It’s up to the rest of them to note the fact, marginalize them, and move on without them. We must.