It doesn't exist. When people combine politically, they are anything but stupid. Quite the contrary, the act of joining together is proof of "intelligence", as Malcolm used to say. They may be reactionary, they may be wrong, they may be confused, they may represent classes or strata that have the worst possible interests in the society, they may be drinking suburban rum... but they are not stupid. The mob, the rabble, the host, the great unwashed - those are all made up... by people like those at DU... by philistines... by those who would justify their position as education or intellect or some other pillar of self-aggrandizement. And they are wrong.

The masses are not stupid, no matter how much propaganda there may be. And the enemy is not stupid: not the lumpen bourgeoisie, nor the small businessmen, nor the racists, nor the Nazis... there ain't no advantage of "intellect" in politics.

I write all this as a prelude to this:

A friend keeps calling me up today and telling me that I have to watch the CSPAN video of the Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nevada. I'm busy and I've got neither the time nor the inclination for this shit. Worse, my friend knows about politics. So, I keep repeating, "Yes, yes, right-wing populism... even the fascists do it.. yes, yes, seen it once seen it a hundred times... Ron Paul... yes, yes."

But, my friend is not having any of it... "Just WATCH..."

ok... Ok... OK...

So I'm watchin'... and first comes Sarah Palin and she is awful. It is one slogan after another and she can't make them more than a disconnected phrase after disconnected phrase... without segue... and by the end even this runs out of steam and they are just one word slogans: God, Taxes, Guns, Freedom, Deficit, Nothin'. And then it gets WORSE. One AWFUL "musical group" after another; one "speaker" after another with nothing whatsoever to say - no program, no foul doggery, no plan, no populism, no theory, no nothin'. Even the "anger" is contrived.

And then, it hits me: morans... real live morans... I've never seen it before.

But, but, but... there are no morans... hmmm...

I call my friend - "Yea, I see it..."

WTF? he asks.

"Dunno... it's like at the McCain rallies... he pretends to believe what he is saying and they pretend to believe him. But there are no fookin' MORANS (well, maybe the guy in the giant green styrofoam Stetson, but no others)."

"Well, then...", says my friend, "something else is coming right behind this turkey."

Makes sense... more sense then this jive-ass shit as "political movement".

but they cannot bring themselves to say what it actually is that angers them - they can't bring themselves to say it, yet...

I have watched and listened to these people and they fume and sputter, bluster and gesticulate, but can't quite put the sentences together - or won't put them together (not sure which). There are other, ancillary, phenomena that, all together, make for jittery times: the "common" folk shouting out at Presidential speeches - that did not used to happen. Bozos openly carrying pistols to Presidential/political events and getting no response from authorities. Congresspeople getting death threats and office trashings over a piece of legislation - even this POS legislation.

I agree with you that there are no "morans", but...

Indeed, keep an eye out for what is coming behind this particular "turkey"...

The Teabaggers are to the Republicans as the Peace Movement is to the Democrats.

In either case these party appendages imagine themselves 'the base' and carry plenty water and will continue to well beyond the point of farce. The current peace movement has gotta be on it's last gasp due the brazen continuance and expansion of Bush foreign policy. The TB's ain't too happy with the Republicans as is and are gonna be less so as the Repubs fail to seriously address their most extreme positions, though of course they will have some DK's of the Right as sucker bait. The coming assault on Social Security is gonna take some fancy footwork for them to frame strategically but they seem to have pulled it off on health care.

When the disillusionment sets in the TB's will fall apart but a kernel will remain, a hardcore reactionary populism, mebbe with religious trappings.

Confused and bewildered, racism always an epithet away, these people will take the American road of least resistance unless a better understanding of their situation is made available to them. That 'kernel' of course is a waste of time...

I haven't watched any of the national TB videos, but a guy I know covers all their Cincinnati events for a local "progressive" blog. He's shot and posted lots of video, and at least here, both the organizers and attendees are not the working class rugged individuals shown on TV. From the people I recognize (and have had a couple other people confirm this), they are largely petty bourgeoisie: lawyers, real estate agents, doctors, former local politicians etc.

The emptiness of the rhetoric is because they have nothing to say. To a large degree the politicians are still chasing them and have trouble connecting, there's nothing to connect to. Sooner or later, the one word slogans will bridge the gap, leading the TB movement back into the Republican Party, and a return to the traditional balance of power.

I don't think we've seen enough working class participation to make good guesses about the future political action of the relatively few working class people involved in it. I agree with BP analogy below (Peace Movement>Democrats), but there is larger working class component to the PM than to the TBs. At the leadership/activist level the analogy works better than throughout the PM.

When ya think about it, who else has the time? Though I expect that a good number just imagine themselves in that league, tradesmen and one man contractors and the like.

I know this retired school teacher who is county co-chair for the local Republicans, he generally refuses to engage me politically but ya couldn't help notice a bit of disdain when I brought up the TBs.

Guess I'll have to check out a Republican gathering or two. There's this joint up the street, the Beacon Drive-in, which is a must stop for any politician in the area, and as there are shitload of Repubs in the primaries here I should have plenty opportunity. The TB's raised hell with Bob Ingeles a few months back up there.

the "morans" thing. I can fully understand the antiwar movement, even if their tactics are completely ineffectual. But the tea-baggers are ostensibly an anti-taxation movement, aren't they? Isn't that where their name comes from? But in reality taxes are not very high in this country - they are spouting something that is demonstrably not true; they go on to shout things like "keep the government out of my Medicare" which is just beyond understanding. So the question comes back to what are these people so angry at? What is the real agenda. I agree with you, that the organizers of the TB "movement" appear to be, by and large, bourgeoisie, but the "mass" of the "movement" appears to be working class (remember that the Nazi movement was almost completely working class).

I think that the question is still one of, "What is really going on here?" Because we may disagree with the drives and motivations of a reactionary or conservative movement, but we should at least be able to "understand" it; with these tea-baggers, there appears to be nothing to understand...

that reads "taxation without representation". I'm not really sure how to approach that.

Anyway, its not fair to say that taxes aren't high in the US, in fact they're an enormous burden on most workers. Corporate taxes, sure. Also remember that taxes aren't collected in a vaccuum..what do people get for all of those tax dollars? Whole lotta nothin', even compared to Western Europe where the "socialist" programs are vastly overrated.

Teabaggers are weird, I don't think we've quite captured exactly what is going on. It may also be that whats "going on" has not fully revealed itself yet.

I probably live in one of the most teabag friendly areas of the country (central florida, retirement capital of, probably, the world really) and I am hardpressed to explain all of the various facets of it.

then why are we in such debt? If you say because of the Pentagon, then would the average teabag agree that the defense budget must be slashed by 70%? I think, probably not. So what part of the gubment would your teabag want cut? Entitlements? Even those earmarked for the teabag hisself?
And what about when it is shown that doing away with all of the entitlements would not only destroy the country, but would not solve the debt problem?
What would he/she/it say then?

I agree with your statement, "Teabaggers are weird.".

Also, what ARE the facets of this thing? Beyond a generalized hatred?

At least 'the blues' as anax sometimes defines it. These people are not happy, their(my) generation is not doing as well or better than their fathers, something must be wrong, and they are afraid of sinking further. The brethren of 'Joe the Plumber', tradesmen, really do get hammered by taxes and fees on the local level as localities scramble to make up budget deficits by attacking targets of opportunity. They see their federal taxes going to "other people" and the military, to which perhaps they or their children have belonged, is sacrosanct and not open to discussion. Then there is the 'culture war' aspect, which I think is largely(less abortion) a result of capitalist marketing, is in their face constantly. Somebody is giving them pat answers, well crafted to chime with some of their held beliefs and ain't nobody with any credibility to them saying any different.

Some of these folks are beyond reaching, one day we will be fighting them, but I think a considerable portion are just scared and confused and I wonder how we might open a conversation. I had thought that health care might be an opening but the way the Ds & Rs managed this spectacle shut that gambit down. If they manage to do the same with Social Security I am at a loss other than waiting on events.

familiar with small business taxes and the like. I have always thought that these were not "fighters", but grousers and that when the media tires of them they will mostly disperse. But there may be a hard core of them who will have to be met.
I have wondered how do you approach someone like a teabag and talk to them about real politics...

Taxes - It can't be a coincidence that the 1970s "stagflation" and the end of the period of income growth from the 1950s and 1960s (at least for the majority) also coincides with the rise of the modern anti-tax movement, Reagan, etc. Taxes are clearly significant for workers but they are one thing when incomes are rising and yet another when they are falling. The more is this so if one is disconnected from the struggle with the employer (as in the pink and white collar ghettos). There, the employer may as well be a force of nature - he is totally outside the bounds of what can be changed (at least in the present consciousness). Government is actually easier to impact.

Double the above for the independents, the quasi-independents, and the pickup truck businesses of the grey market. Here, the employer does not exist or is an equal "victim", with the state playing a direct role as frustrater of the best laid plans... In the 1860s in Russia, one of the factors driving a rise in rural anarchism was the long-term debts spat out by the "freeing" of the serfs... debts which were owed to and collected by the state acting as intermediaries to the suddenly invisible landlords. No wonder the role of the state rose above even the class struggle.

I agree with Curt's assessment of the TPs. There aren't many workers there, or at least not many manual workers. There are a lot of insurance agents, on the other hand.

Morans - Watch the CSPAN video (it is in 3 parts). There is nothing, NOTHING there... and yet it is something. It may be that it is simply the lack of a plausible program. Taxes and small government cannot be enough. Small government is itself not really possible. The military is certainly verboten... there is agreement on this between the Democrats and the Republicans (and maybe even, the Greens) - checkmate, nowhere to go. The entitlements that are left are dual-edged at best: social security, medicare. Much of what was left after that has already been purged since Reagan. Nothin' there...

The Republican program is on empty. The Democrats are snakes. The Empire costs money. Patriotism is a sink hole... What to do? What to do?

It is the tentativeness of the TBs that is really a shocker: We are racists; no we aren't. We are conservatives; no we are not. We are mad at all banks and corporations,; that's why we support them.

We are impossibly lame and stupid... until we figure an angle.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8046043

Teabaggers are ugly, teabaggers are stupid, teabaggers are inferior....

I'm thinkin' there is some sorta symbiotic mutation occurring, with each "side" becoming the embodiment of the other's "projection"...

Does that sound New-Agey?

Never mind...

"I agree with you, that the organizers of the TB "movement" appear to be, by and large, bourgeoisie, but the "mass" of the "movement" appears to be working class (remember that the Nazi movement was almost completely working class)."

You may be right in other areas or nationally. I just know that here the participation is petite bourgeoisie. At least where I am it's not a working class movement.

I don't think that is true, Dahl, unless we are using a purely technical definition of "working class". The party was based on the same combination of demobilized soldiers, lumpen, shopkeepers, small farmers, trades people, disparate unemployed, clerks, petty bureaucrats, and middle class philistines that had fueled German reaction since the 1840s. I could be wrong, but I do know that the name of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) was the source of endless jokes and insults in the late 1920s as there was nary an industrial worker to be had (maybe Johann, the butcher). The same thing was an issue when Strasser and the Nazi "left" was purged (perhaps for non-performance).

There was a scholarly book published in the 1960s that claimed that the core of the proletariat had never historically been at the center of reaction in any country, no matter how privileged or imperial... not even in the colonies. I'll see if I can hunt it up. I do know that in the Teamsters it was an open political secret that the national union's "turn to the right" had never worked - not as part of Nixon's "silent majority" and not with Reagan. The gypsies (owner-operators) and crafts people might have gone that way, but not the core drivers and warehouse people.

...I use for work.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled over to a container on my current job site (*FUCK* I am so ready to be home more than a day or two at a time), and the radio was on the Fox News Channel. I do listen some to Fox as I travel, along with NPR where I can get it, CNN, BBC, C-Span, yadda yadda.

Anyway, I am seldom in the car at the 4pm hour and was interested to hear raving lunatic and mastergandist Glenn Beck for a while as I loaded up more material. Yesterday, his show was at least in part a soliloquy about the horrors of the Holodomor. Although I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't hear him crying, it was a bit of solace to think perhaps he had a tear in his eye as the dark music rang in the background and he invoked Stalin's name time and again.

"This is real progress," I thought...

Tick Tock Motherfuckers. And they know it.

Edit, thought I'd see if they archive his programs. Apparently not, unless yesterday was a repeat or sumpin'. Lotsa content when searching Holodomor though:
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/34922/

Edit Edit, it was a repeat. Gotta get the "truth" out there ya know.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583732,00.html

I saw something that said the richest used to be taxed up to 90 percent here (60's?), and were still rich and happy...best tax idea I've seen is to tax each stock transaction .05%, that's $5.00 on every thousand, nothing to the individual, would generate billions...

A guy I work with, maintenance, I think a Libertarian, said he thought everyone should be taxed a flat 15%. I said that would hurt someone making 30 a year, not a pinch to someone making 300 a year...He said: "Y'know, You're right..." and we went back to work...He's a smart guy, he'll work it out...

The family next door to us when I was a kid were the Morans.