I watched Bill Moyers segment with Jonathan Haidt – a social psychologist – on the extreme positions that so many have these days both in our culture and it’s manifestations in politics.

You can watch the show here.   And read the transcript here.

The segment deals with what Jonathan Haidt refers as The Righteous Mind. That now more than in the past, both sides tend toward good vs evil and black and white thinking. And judging each other in this way.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Anytime we’re interacting with someone, we’re judging them, we’re sharing expectations, we think they didn’t live up to those expectations.

So, in analyzing any social situation you have to understand moral psychology. Our moral sense really evolved to bind groups together into teams that can cooperate in order to compete with other teams.

So, some situations will sort of ramp up that tribal us-versus-them mentality. Nothing gets us together like a foreign attack. And we’ve seen that, 9/11, and Pearl Harbor. And, conversely, when there are moral divisions within the group, and no external attack, the tribalism can ramp up, and reach really pathological proportions. And that’s where we are now.

They speak of how the civil rights acts push the south over to the republicans.  And he and Moyers make some interesting points but I think they did not spend enough time on this main point.

JONATHAN HAIDT: So there are three major historical facts, or changes, that have gotten us into the mess that we’re in. So the first is the realignment of the South into the Republican column, which allowed both parties now to be pure. So that now there are basically no liberal Republicans matching up with conservative Democrats. So, the parties are totally separated. The second thing that happened was the replacement of the Greatest Generation by the Baby Boomers.

BILL MOYERS: The Greatest Generation fought World War II. Came home. Built the country, ran the economy. People’s politics, and, created this consensual government your talking–

JONATHAN HAIDT: Exactly. These are people who joined groups, had a sense of civic responsibility, participated in the democratic process. And so these people, as they moved through. I mean, they could disagree. Politics has always been contentious. But at the end of the day, they felt they were part of the same country, and in the Senate and the House, they were part of the same institution. They’re replaced by the Baby Boomers. And what’s their foundational experience?

It’s not responding together to a foreign threat. It’s fighting each other over whether this country is doing evil, or good. So you get the good/evil dichotomy about America, and about each other happening in the ’60s, and ’70s, when these people grow up, assume political office. Now, you got Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. It’s a lot harder for them to agree than it was for Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan.

BILL MOYERS: So we get through the culture wars. Fights over abortion, prayer in schools. And that conflict becomes very polarizing.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: And that’s because of the Baby Boomers, and-

JONATHAN HAIDT: Well, the Baby Boomers, I think, are more prone to Manichean thinking.

BILL MOYERS: Manichean thinking. Good and evil.

I believe that this one issue has as much to do with our culture these days ans it’s politics as anything else. Maybe more so. The righteous ideology that has been appearing now bares a striking resemblance to the ideological riffs between the baby boomers and their parents and parents generation and even between the baby boomers themselves.

My father never got around to talking about his experiences during the depression and WWII. Most of what I learned has been from my mother.  I do not believe there has been a generation since that has gone through the same kinds of  situations as those who fought in WWII or even those who remained state side and worked in the industries that supported it.  I don’t mean to imply better or worse, just vastly different. That those who were fighting in Europe and Africa and the Pacific, though they may have hated the enemy – a lot of them also gained great respect for them as well.

And more so for their comrades in arms.  You may or may not know or even agree with his or her’s personal politics and social, religious and other beliefs – they were your comrades and you learned to respect them.    This carried over after the war. It’s is very difficult to have extreme views of those whom one has fought, worked and seem killed.  I believe that it was a mistake that this need to respect and need to be able to view those who you disagree with was not passed on the way it should have been. And more so as to the reasons we need to be able to to this. That more people who were involved with WWII should have expressed better what it was really like. Instead what we got was some Hollywood romanticized version that was at best counter productive.

It was believed that WWII was a righteous and just war and though there was anti-was sentiment at the time, it was small and mild.

This was not the case with Vietnam however.  The anti-war sentiment among those of my generation – baby boomers was very strong. Although mostly remembered as being directed toward those of my parent’s generation who supported it, what is rarely reported these days is how strong it was within the baby boomers who apposed it toward those who supported it. I would say with out fear of contradiction, even stronger as they were seen as evil war mongers, killers and traitors to their generation. And this feeling went both ways, with the supporters viewing the protestors as equally vile.

And the Kent State shootings helped to cement this view on both sides.  Along the same lines there was a large number who were also beginning to question our form of government and economic system as well.   And were seen by those who unquestioningly supported it as being traitors and anti-American and worse.  These feelings that each side had toward one another did not magically disappear after the war concluded and the troops came home. And having not been really dealt with, have been passed on  and have festered.

So the seeds of disdain amongst certain sectors of the the baby boomer generation were already sowed on both sides.

And as Jonathon Haidt point out later on in this segment, our culture has been self segregating since after WWII.

JONATHAN HAIDT: The third is that America has gone from being a nation with localities that were diverse by class, in particular, let’s say. You had rich people, and poor people living together.

It’s become, in the post-war world, gradually a nation of lifestyle enclaves, where people chose to self-segregate. If people are concentrating just with people who are like them, then they’re not exposed to the ideas from the other side, from people that they can actually like and respect. If you get all your ideas about the other side from the internet, where there’s no human connection, it’s just so easy, and automatic to reject it, and demonize it. So once we’ve sorted ourselves into homogeneous moral communities, it becomes a lot harder to work together.

Thus making it easier to justify our views of each side. Especially when we already have a negative view of them.   And to justify our own beliefs as well.

This kind of thinking – this demonization of each  other – has lead in the past to some of the bloodiest conflicts in history.  At least one of which has occurred here on this continent.

WPA House New Orleans - flickr

It should be rather obvious that the republican part is the party of white people. More specifically white people who are very religious, fairly rich and hold racist views of non-whites.

The common belief of those on the left is that this began with Nixon after the the civil rights acts were passed. But it goes back further than that. To end of Franklin Roosevelt’s  fourth term.  FDR had made a deal with the Dixiecrats. if they would support his New Deal legislation – the CCC WPA Social Security – the democratic party and the government would turn a blind eye with what they did and how they did it.

The democratic party at the 1948 convention had just approved a civil rights platform, one that was mild and vague and ambiguous enough not to offend the South. The liberal wing however were incensed by this and the them mayor of Minneapolis – Hubert Humphrey - vowed to take the fight to the delegates.

The liberals’ plank included anti-lynching and anti-poll tax legislation, ending segregation in the armed forces, supporting fair employment laws. All were positions the nominee-to-be, Harry Truman, supported. – SFGate

The convention roared it’s approval and the southern Dixiecrats walked out.  They held their own convention and nominated Strom Thurmond as their candidate. Truman won the election of 1948 without the Dixiecrats though.

But FDR himself wanted to rid the party of the “reactionary elements” in the south and in 1944 said to one of his advisers, “. . . the time has come for the Democratic Party to get rid of its reactionary elements in the South and attract to it liberals in the Republican Party.” Lead by Wendell Wilkie. But Wilkie died before the 1944 election and the liberals that followed him fell apart.

So instead of attracting these liberals into the democratic party, it left the door open for the southern Dixiecrats.  The southern states had their own reasons for hating the democratic party’s stance on unions and labor and social contracts. These things meant that they would have to treat blacks the same as whites and this they would never do. Unions had black members and so unions were anti-south. Equal education and voting was also considered anti south.

But what the politicians of the time neglected to consider was that outside the metro areas in the northern and central states, a lot of whites held similar beliefs as those in the south.   So when the civil rights acts were passed by congress and signed by LBJ, white resentment swelled from Alabama to Idaho and Oregon to Main in the predominantly white small towns and rural areas.   Reagan’s meme of the “Welfare Queen” hit a nerve with those folks as well and the republicans knew it.

But overall demographics are changing and a party of all white christian males is on the decline and they know this as well.

A Republican strategist said something interesting and revealing on Friday, though it largely escaped attention in the howling gusts of punditry over Mitt Romney’s birth certificate crack and a potential convention-altering hurricane. The subject was a Ron Brownstein story outlining the demographic hit rates each party requires to win in November. To squeak out a majority, Mitt Romney probably needs to win at least 61 percent of the white vote — a figure exceeding what George H.W. Bush commanded over Michael Dukakis in 1988. The Republican strategist told Brownstein, “This is the last time anyone will try to do this” — “this” being a near total reliance on white votes to win a presidential election.

. . . . .

Blowing up the welfare state and affecting the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history is a politically tricky project (hence Romney’s belief that he may need to forego a second term). Hence the Romney campaign’s clear plan to suture off its slowly declining but still potent base. Romney’s political-policy theme is an unmistakable appeal to identity politics. On Medicare, Romney is putting himself forward as the candidate who will outspend Obama, at least when it comes to benefits for people 55 years old and up. Romney will restore the $700 billion in Medicare budget cuts imposed by Obama to its rightful owners — people who are currently old.

He will cut subsidies to the non-elderly people who would get insurance through Obamacare — a program that, Romney’s ads remind older voters, is “NOT FOR YOU.” Romney’s repeated ads on welfare, blaring the brazen lie that Obama has repealed the welfare work requirement, hammer home the same theme. The purpose is to portray Obama as diverting resources from us to them.

In their heart of hearts, Romney and Ryan would probably prefer a more sweeping, across-the-board assault on the welfare state. But the immense popularity of the largest, middle-class social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security force them into the divide-and-conquer gambit. They can promise to hold their disproportionately old, white base harmless and impose the entire brunt of their ambitious downsizing of government on young, poor, and disproportionately nonwhite Democratic constituencies. – New York Magazine

Wall Street Trekkers - flickr

Groupies. If you have ever been to a concert, you can spot them. They hang around the groups there. Wangle to get the best seats. First up with the autographs and defend them to the death. The groups music is always the best and the members can do no wrong.

Wall Street has it’s own groupies as well.  They play the market like they are part of the elites. Defend all that Wall Street does. The hang around them and wish they could be one of them but have not the talent or resources. The live in gated communities and drive imported cars and vacation just outside the Hamptons.

They are what Chris Hedges calls The Careerists..

These systems managers believe nothing. They have no loyalty. They are rootless. They do not think beyond their tiny, insignificant roles. They are blind and deaf. They are, at least regarding the great ideas and patterns of human civilization and history, utterly illiterate. And we churn them out of universities. Lawyers. Technocrats. Business majors. Financial managers. IT specialists. Consultants. Petroleum engineers. “Positive psychologists.” Communications majors. Cadets. Sales representatives. Computer programmers. Men and women who know no history, know no ideas. They live and think in an intellectual vacuum, a world of stultifying minutia. They are T.S. Eliot’s “the hollow men,” “the stuffed men.” “Shape without form, shade without colour,” the poet wrote. “Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

Like the musical groupies they have no creativity of their own. No imagination, compassion or passion. They are the Uriah Heeps of society.   The cockroaches, the maggots and the leaches. In the past they were the bourgeois and petite bourgeousie. The enablers and supporters of all that the elites did.

They really have no politics. Some are republicans ,some tea party,  some democrat. What ever suites their purpose at the time since all they really care about is furthering their own agendas.   They will be at the republican and democratic conventions cheering on their favorite performers.  Caring not one bit about what the lyrics say or whether or not they can actually play.

Just as long as they can keep their big fortified houses with their BMWs and indoor swimming pools. Shop at Whole Foods or Macys and attend self help seminars and focus on self actualization.

They will support Romney or Obama – whatever suits their fancy.

Suburbia - Flicker Creative Commons

In an interview with Mark Karlin in Truth Out, Tim Wise gives us some insight into where some of the hate, fear and resentment that particular parts of white America has been vocalizing more and more in the last decades comes from. The origins of which are actually older than this country. The interview revolves around Tim’s new book, Dear White America. It begins with how this White Tribal Identity came over with the first settlers from Europe but was put to use so the elites of the time could gloss over the deep class divisions that existed and enable the subjugation of African slaves and natives.

The term white was not, in fact, used in the European context to universalize the various European ethnic and national identities: after all, those national and ethnic groups had been slaughtering each other for generations. They hardly thought of themselves as members of a single team, let alone family. So while white supremacy has its roots in the class, religious and ethno-national systems of Europe, it took America – this place where the old divisions would need to be put aside so as to subjugate indigenous persons and maintain chattel enslavement of Africans in the name of “the white race” – to really bring racism, as we know it to fruition. Whiteness was really something of a trick, developed for the purpose of uniting otherwise disparate Europeans, first, so as to make the subordination of “non-whites” easier, but also (and importantly), to paper over the otherwise deep class cleavages that had long beset those from Europe. If the elite could make the poor Europeans believe they were members of the same “white” team as the rich Europeans, then the prospects for class-based rebellion would be dampened.

He also goes on to explain how the Myth of Self-Made-Man was used to galvanize this with the poor, unlike in feudal Europe where when the poor knew they would never rise above their station. Read the rest of this entry →

Be very careful not to get cooped and don’t go home. Here as reported here by Tea Party Founder Karl Denninger by way of RT.

Karl Denninger was one of the founders of the Tea Party back just a few years ago when some concerned conservatives wanted to fire back at the government for what they said was unjust practices.

Today, similar sentiments are being echoed by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Is it right to make comparisons between the two groups? Denninger says that, yes, to some degree the comparisons are indeed accurate. The Occupy movement, however, can learn from some of the mistakes that he says the Tea Party succumbed to.

“The problem with protests and the political process is that it is very easy, no matter how big the protests is, for the politicians to simply wait for the people to go home,” says Denninger. “Then they can ignore you.”

And this is the thing that happened in the 1960s with the anti-war movement. As soon as it looked like the war would end, everyone went home and forgot about it.

He goes on to say that the lack of a plan or demands is a good thing. Like the blog I did here. Read the rest of this entry →

But far too many on the left, possibly because they do not want to see it or because they have their own agenda and hatred for Wall Street and the bankers , want the Tea party to be all about the rich and elite. But I think Morgan Freeman is closer to the point.

“Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term,” the actor said. “What’s, what does that, what underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we do to get this black man, we can, we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.’”

Declaring once again that “it’s a racist thing,” Freeman said the group’s rise has shown the hate still lingering in America.

“Well, it just shows the weak, dark, underside of America,” he said. “We’re supposed to be better than that. We really are. That’s, that’s why all those people were in tears when Obama was elected president. “Ah, look at what we are. Look at how, this is America.” You know? And then it just sort of started turning because these people surfaced like stirring up muddy water.”

Sure they’re being used by Wall Street but they just don’t give a damn. They hate that there is a black man as president and the really hate that any of Their Tax Money is being used to benefit any minority – especially blacks -  so they are perfectly willing to see the country broke even it it means they themselves will be affected.  There is such a thing as cutting off ones nose to spite ones face. So to my eyes is it about racism and bigotry. Just the same old racist upper class white pricks that went ballistic over desegregation and civil rights. But now they are wrapping it up in libertarianism and religion.

Robert Parry from Consortium News VIA Alternet asks whether America has become totally dysfunctional but lays a good part of the blame on the left for not giving Obama and the Democrats a pass.

On the Left, the argument is almost the polar opposite, faulting Obama for applying timid solutions to grave problems (like agreeing to water down his stimulus plan with tax cuts to get a couple of GOP votes). He also is disparaged for bending over backwards to Republicans in the unrealistic hope that they would reciprocate with some measure of bipartisanship. These Left critics say Obama should have used his “bully pulpit” aggressively to fight for his positions, whether his larger stimulus plan or a “public option” in his health-care bill, and he should have held George W. Bush and his aides accountable for war-crimes, from torturing detainees in the “war on terror” to waging aggressive war against Iraq.

Facing this barrage of criticism from all sides, Obama’s shrinking army of defenders points to the unfairness of it all. America’s first black president inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and was burdened with a federal deficit of more than $1 trillion (while Bush started with a robust economy and a budget surplus).

Then goes on to list or rather give some lame excuses for the lack of leadership such as the bogus 60 vote majority, the loss of a couple of senate seats and the intransigence of the republicans.  All of which could have been overcome, although with a good deal of effort.  Then starts point his finger at the media, the population in general and back at the left again. Even bringing up the class war being waged by the uber-rich and cheered on by the tea party right.

The dysfunction is not simply the Republicans and the Democrats, as some centrist pundits like to pontificate. It is the entirety of the system, including the pundits themselves, the national news media and the think-tank structure. It is the Right’s splurging on what amounts to information warfare and the Left’s skimping when it comes to building a counter-media infrastructure.

It is also a population that is too lazy (or too distracted) to wade through all the half-truths and disinformation to find something approximating the truth on a wide variety of topics. Many Americans either believe falsehoods or are profoundly confused by all the noise.

Class War

Another remarkable part of the American dysfunction is that at a time when – as billionaire Warren Buffett says – the rich are winning the class war, the nation’s top “populist” movement is the Tea Party, which is fighting to give the rich more money and to grant their corporations more power.

Tea Party favorites, such as Rep. Michele Bachman, actually favor taxing the working class more (by making everyone pay some income taxes) so the top income tax rates on the rich can be lowered again.

Half truths at best. What he and so many others refuse to accept or even look at are those that are benefiting from the status quo.  Those whose life is still good even while the rest of the country is slowly dying a torturous economic death.  Those who were the actual beneficiaries of the bank bail outs. The ones who have been protected at all costs all along, while the middle class and those below have been thrown under the bus.

The country is dysfunctional as he points out. But he does not understand the dynamics of a dysfunctional family.  Where those who are the most in delusion and denial are always protected from the truth by the others.  They are coddled and their abuses hidden. Even from themselves at all costs.

Those who make over 90k a year working for Microsoft and Apple and DELL. Who work in defense plants as engineers and management and as doctors and lawyers and in the financial industry as accountants. Whose 401Ks and stock portfolios must be enshrined.  Some who are part of the teabagging right or call themselves liberal – as long as their defense plants aren’t closed.   Like the so called liberals of the past who supported blacks and minorities and civil rights just as long their kids did not have to got to school with them.

The ones who must not under any circumstances feel any of the pain the rest of us feel.  The ones whose positions in the insurance industry were well taken care of by the so called health bill. Those who work nice cushy jobs in health care industry and whose salary has never been questioned.

There is a reason why those of us on the left go after the Democrats and Obama supporters who genuflect in their direction while holding onto their financial rosary beads.

The question though comes, why have we not risen up in numbers and yelled this from the roof tops ? Why has there not been some one person on the left to yells CHARGE !

I for one have a reason. A reason why I have not supported vigorously an uprising of this sort.  It’s for the very reasons state above. It’s because these people whose lives are still pretty cushy, have not felt the pain. Because in order for any movement in this direction, these are the people that need to begin to feel the pain.

And I for one would be very OK in letting the system fail to the point that these people did begin to feel some pain. I would even be open to helping it along.

Because until they begin to feel the financial pain – until they begin to hit bottom, only then is there any chance of them seeing – what we see – that the system is broken and badly in need of changing.  They have to hit bottom themselves in order to see how their behavior effects others.   For they are both the abusers and enablers of the system.

"Part mwah, part shh, part *ponder*" by Sarah G on flickr

From Truthout. A former GOP operative lays out what the republican strategy actually is. As if we could not have already guessed.

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might – the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was “bring it on!”

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

I would go as far to say a tyrannical, totalitarian cult.  One that is only interested in absolute control of the country.

According to this article in Salon and the charts below the vast majority of the Tea Party Caucus comes from the West and the South.

The mainstream media have completely missed the story, by portraying the Tea Party movement in ideological rather than regional terms. Whether by accident or design, the public faces of the Tea Party in the House are Midwesterners — Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann and Joe Walsh of Illinois. But while there may be Tea Party sympathizers throughout the country, in the House of Representatives the Tea Party faction that has used the debt ceiling issue to plunge the nation into crisis is overwhelmingly 

Southern in its origins:

The four states with the most Tea Party representatives in Congress are all former members of the Confederate States of America. The states with the greatest number of members of the House Tea Party caucus are Texas (12), Florida (7), Louisiana (5) and Georgia (5). While California is in fifth place with four House Tea Party members, the sixth, seventh and eighth places on the list are taken by two former Southern slave states, South Carolina and Tennessee, and a border state, Missouri, each with three members of the congressional Tea Party caucus.

So what we have is in reality the same old Dixiecrats of George Wallace fame but with a different name. With the exact same agenda they have had all along.

The Dixiecrat platform, which Lott is so proud his state supported, proclaimed: “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” Thurmond, who at the time was South Carolina’s governor, expounded at the party’s convention: “I want to tell you that there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.” Newsweek describes the campaign as “one of the nastiest, openly racial campaigns of modern times.”

A firestorm of criticism caused Lott to apologize for the comments. But his past actions speak louder than his purported regrets.

At a 1980 campaign rally for GOP presidential nominee Ronald Reagan in Mississippi, then-congressman Lott gushed about Thurmond: “You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today.” In fact, Lott helped convince Reagan to kick off the presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That city was famous for only one thing: being the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

If you look at the southern representatives voting pattern you will see this.

Here is how the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that favors Southern secession from what it describes alternately as “the yankee empire” and “the South-busting American regime,” describes the South’s pattern of voting in Congress in recent years (note the author’s British spelling of “favour” — Noah Webster, who tried to Americanize spelling, was a Yankee):

Another stark Southern – US split occurred when the Senate voted on President Clinton’s impeachment verdict. The whole Senate voted to acquit Clinton on both impeachment charges while Southern Senators voted two-thirds in favour [sic] of convicting Clinton of obstruction of justice (18 to 8). If the South had been in charge, President Bill “the Lecher” Clinton would have been the first president in U.S. history to have been removed from office by impeachment.

Election

If the South had had its way, however, Clinton would not even have been elected in the first place. In both 1992 and 1996 the South voted for the Republican nominee for President, i.e., the candidate generally perceived to be more conservative (regardless of the reality).

Taxes

On tax policy, the South almost always votes for lower taxes, and is sometimes overridden by the US congress. In 1998 the thirteen State South voted by the required two-thirds margin for a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds vote of both houses of congress to raise taxes. Southerners voted in favour [sic] of this constitutional amendment 90 to 41. In the full House the amendment failed by 238 to 186 opposed, far short of the constitutionally required two-thirds margin.

Religious Freedom

Also in 1998, Southern Representatives voted by the requisite two-thirds “super majority” to submit to the States the Religious Freedom Constitutional Amendment. It would have guaranteed an individual’s right to pray and recognize his religious beliefs on public property, including schools. The house of representatives [sic] as a whole rejected this amendment by a vote of 224 in favour to 203 opposed, falling miserably short of the necessary two-thirds margin.

States’ Rights

In 1997 Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas offered an amendment to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts and transfer its fiscal 1998 funding directly to the States. The South voted for this State Rights proposal by the ample margin of 17 to 9, whereas the full Senate rejected this affirmation of the rights and duties of the States by the almost equally strong margin of 63 against to only 36 for.

In light of this recent history, it is clear that the origins of the debt ceiling crisis are to be sought, not in generic American conservatism, but in idiosyncratic Southern conservatism. The goal, the methods and the passion of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right.

The Tea Party Caucus are just the same old White Southern Racists.  So it’s not surprising that McConnell wants Obama out of the White House and that a Republican would refer to him as a tar baby.

He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted. – Lao Tzu

We have heard and read a lot concerning the so called Tea Party conservatives. From vituperative language to questions about their mental stability to their motives. I do not think that anyone has actually looked too deeply into to this particular group though.

Just look at this data. Over half are men, own guns, are very religious, have has at least some education beyond high school and over 45 years of age. And nearly completely non-Hispanic white. And nearly all hate and fear the federal government.

Look at the charts. Guns, religion, age and the government. This is NOT about money and never really has been. It’s about CONTROL. Conservatives have always been control freaks but these people are off the scale.  According to Dave Masco they are viewed as Rich Bullies who are very insecure.

Tea Party viewed as rich bullies who want it their way

According to the New York Times/CBS News poll, “the Tea Party movement burst onto the scene a year ago in protest of the economic stimulus package and its supporters have vowed to purge the Republican Party of officials they consider not sufficiently conservative and to block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment and health care.”

At the same time, the poll noted how the Tea Party supporters’ have “fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.”

Also, the poll showed that the overwhelming majority of Tea Party supporters say President Obama “does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.”

The poll is shocking in its findings that Tea Party members “are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.”

But I think it also goes deeper than that. They fear government in their lives in any way shape or form because they fear the government.  They hate the idea of government providing anything because they fear and hate any dependence on it.  It’s absolutely about loosing what little control they feel they have over their lives.  They do not trust the government and most likely do not even trust themselves.   And they feel victimized and paranoid.  So the tea part is very supportive of the military and the wars in general. just no “Obama’s Wars”.

I do wish however that I could find an even more detailed view oh those who consider themselves staunch tea-party conservatives.  Whether they are overly concerned with personal security. That they are more likely to have guns would suggest this.  Whether they are more likely to be self employed or have a small or smaller business.  The religious factor suggests a deep seated fear of the future and their anti-gay stance shows to me that they are very sexually insecure as well.

Their statements and willingness to destroy an economy that is already causing them financial distress appears to be irrational.  People who react almost totally emotionally will be irrational since emotions nearly always block out any rational thought.  As Bill Cosby once observed – Scared children are very difficult to get along with. I would like to add angry children as well.