NYT Article: Are Tea Party members conspiracy theorists, or patriots?

[Sabrina]

I have to echo the concern that Joey's expressed about these folks potentially becoming violent.

Understand, I do not by any stretch of the imagination think such a thing is CERTAIN to happen; but the potential is there, however remote. And given the rhetoric spewed by the likes of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones, the possibility grows with each new fruitcake idea espoused by either one of these knuckleheads. I do not advocate a repeal of the Second Amendment, nor do I think these individuals should be treated like potential terrorists. I do think that we, or at the very least people more versed in the particular subjects than the "armchair quarterbacks" such as Beck and Jones, should make a concerted effort to educate them on the folly of their positions. The only thing that can defuse these people, in my opinion, is knowledge, because like I said earlier, they don't seek it. They're the little baby birds opening their beaks and swallowing whole whatever Beck and Jones and the like regurgitate. It won't reach all of them, but I have to believe that enough of them would understand the remote likelihood of ANY of the things they fear coming to pass that they would realize just how silly they appear and would cease acting like idiots.

Perhaps a futile hope, perhaps not; but so long as no one makes an effort to educate these people, the lunacy will only grow. I'd do it myself, but I'm only an "armchair quarterback" at best; I don't have the expertise in the subject matter that would be needed to counteract the lunacy.

 

[JoeyDonuts]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it, especially if it doesn't taste just the way he'd like it to.

If they are really going down the rabbit hole, you can throw hard facts at them all day and nothing will stick. Rational discourse is viewed as an attack.

I mean, we see this all the time with the 9/11 CT crowd, don't we? If evidence doesn't fit or support their conspiratorial worldview, it's dismissed out of hand.

I've seen this with my family that went down the Birther hole. (I hear you laughing in the back, UC. Pay attention.) They still say 'he's never produced his birth certificate!' I'd tell them, the Governor of Hawaii and a number of other agencies have vouched for it. They'd counter "I haven't seen it! It must be fake! The government ALWAYS fakes things like that!"

It's really frightening to hear the same kind of twisted logic and thinking the 9/11 Truth Movement uses, but coming from your own family.

They still don't know I'm an atheist. This probably isn't the time.

 

[I Ratant]

One interesting thing is how often I've seen Clinton blamed for Ruby Ridge despite the fact that it happened in 1992.

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It won't be long before Obama and the Obama media coverup gets the blame, and gets jumped on for the Gadsden Purchase, and Seward's Folly.
The Tea Baggers have no sense of time or history, or even why the first Tea Party occurred!

 

[eutychus]

I have thought it interesting that the tyranny and the mechanisms of tyranny that these folk fear in their cartoon Obama -- i.e. practically un-checked presidential power -- was pioneered under Bush Cheney...whatever they fear Obama might do to them and their "liberty", Dick Cheney showed them how...

To be fair, a lot of them say that it's not a left/right thing for them; that they saw this all coming a long time ago and are only now getting riled up enough to try to organize and do something. It's just too coincidental for me that it's all happening immediately after we elected a predominantly black and allegedly "Muslim" president.

 

[Sabrina]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it, especially if it doesn't taste just the way he'd like it to.

If they are really going down the rabbit hole, you can throw hard facts at them all day and nothing will stick. Rational discourse is viewed as an attack.

I mean, we see this all the time with the 9/11 CT crowd, don't we? If evidence doesn't fit or support their conspiratorial worldview, it's dismissed out of hand.

I've seen this with my family that went down the Birther hole. (I hear you laughing in the back, UC. Pay attention.) They still say 'he's never produced his birth certificate!' I'd tell them, the Governor of Hawaii and a number of other agencies have vouched for it. They'd counter "I haven't seen it! It must be fake! The government ALWAYS fakes things like that!"

It's really frightening to hear the same kind of twisted logic and thinking the 9/11 Truth Movement uses, but coming from your own family.

They still don't know I'm an atheist. This probably isn't the time.

Well I wouldn't argue that necessarily, but seems to me that only applies to the diehards (much like twoofers, who have been steadily losing numbers since 2006; only the really mulish idiots are left now) in this arena. The majority could possibly be woken up to the lunacy of their beliefs.

 

[NotJesus]

... it doesn't take much to work them into an unthinking maelstrom of heavily-armed Creationist Southern Baptists who won't stop until there's a giant Ten Commandments statue (with Lee Marvin as Moses) in front of every courthouse in the land.

Charlton Heston, surely?

 

[dudalb]

Charlton Heston, surely?

Nah, Heston was too liberal on the Social Issues for the Tea Party crowd.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Nah, Heston was too liberal on the Social Issues for the Tea Party crowd.

God will smite you for that one.

 

[Accidental Martyr]

I think the potential of violence is very real.

Teabagger calls for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray at rally in WA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/idaho-tea-party-speaker-h_n_466261.html

 

[fullflavormenthol]

I think the potential of violence is very real.

Teabagger calls for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray at rally in WA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/idaho-tea-party-speaker-h_n_466261.html

I would agree, birthers have been calling for violence for sometime now. Like this example.

 

[Sabrina]

Thankfully no one's actually performed an act of violence, but the fact that people are calling for it over bogus claims worries me immensely.

I just wish that these people could get some common sense; but like I always say, "common sense ain't so common".

 

[Accidental Martyr]

I would agree, birthers have been calling for violence for sometime now. Like this example.

Just read that link. I'm getting very worried that it may only be a matter of time before there is an assassination attempt on the Pres. or other elected officials.

 

[I Ratant]

Just read that link. I'm getting very worried that it may only be a matter of time before there is an assassination attempt on the Pres. or other elected officials.

.
Based on the e-mail virulence from the rightwingnuts I got before the election, I was surprised Obie got to the Inauguration!

 

[Nosi]

The Tea Partiers are not the type to indulge in self-enlightenment. They jumped on this bandwagon because it echoes what they already believe. These are not folks searching for anwers - just power, influence and attention. They want reinforcement for their bias not revelation.

I just hope they stick around long enough for the elections so they can mess with the GOP.

The Tea Partier I had a conversation with couldn't consider anything beyond the fact that Palin had an attractive backside! They are a disgrace to the tea industry frankly.

 

[MaGZ]

I'm certain Alex is gunning for this demographic in a big way. He rotated promos for 'The Obama Deception' on Mark Levin and Michael Savage's shows. Not sure about Rush, though.

Personally, I think this party is going to fall apart before the table even gets set.

It's really easy to find a group of people that agree on something they don't like. Harder to keep a group united around a common idea of what should be done.

I hate to see Alex Jones get any more followers than he has, but if this 'poisons the well' and cripples this movement's mainstream credibility (the kind that wins elections) then by all means buy into his crap.

Then again, I could be wrong. I hope I'm not.

Here's why.

As it stands, this 'movement' is made up almost exclusively of angry white people who are reacting to the economic conditions in the country. Well, that and the Libertarians who are too crazy for the Republican party. They're good for spoiling a get-together.

At any rate, their political socialization is suspect, their knowledge of government is next to nothing, and to cap it all off, there is serious pressure being put in this movement and directed towards Sarah Palin running for POTUS.

From what I've seen amongst my own family here in the Midwest, the Tea Party is as much about Sarah Palin as it is about any kind of laissez-faire philosophy of government. They can't start a sentence about how great the Tea Party movement is without invoking her name.

It's even more bizarre and unwarranted than the 'messianic' treatment President Obama received during the campaign. They actually think of her as the best person to lead the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.

You take a group of people who are already upset about poor economic conditions and tell them what they want to hear, and best of all - give them a bogeyman for all their problems - it doesn't take much to work them into an unthinking maelstrom of heavily-armed Creationist Southern Baptists who won't stop until there's a giant Ten Commandments statue (with Lee Marvin as Moses) in front of every courthouse in the land.

Combine this kind of unbridled fanaticism with Alex Jones' paranoid and dangerous ramblings, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Mark my words, folks - if Alex Jones succeeds in gaining traction with this group, there will be another Ruby Ridge, if not something worse due to his influence.

If Sarah Palin it the "leader" of the Tea Party people, then it says the followers are more in the line of Christian conservatives or fundamentalists than conspiracy theorists.

 

[MaGZ]

Insane statement, Ruby Ridge was a case of government massacring its citizens and coming in guns blazing for the crime of selling some shotguns that were a bit too short.

Unless you are saying that Alex Jones makes the police act violently, I don't understand your point.

"if Alex Jones succeeds in gaining traction with this group, there will be another Lexington and Concord"

As for the topic question, they are both theorists and patriots, they are not mutually exclusive.

Ruby Ridge and Waco were government actions which created the Alex Jones and Tim McVeighs of this world.

 

[MaGZ]

As a political science geek I have been fascinated with the Tea Party. It isn't every day in the American political system that a "third party" (and I use the term loosely) manages to maintain national media attention. I've been trying to listen to the far right/far left sources (I was listening to Air America, but they went off the air!) to try to see how each frames the Tea Party people.

There doesn't seem to be an "average" Tea Party person yet. The type of self-professed Tea Party goers that call into say, Rush Limbaugh's show are entirely different from the ones that show up to Glen Beck's rallies. And those are often different from how far-left progressive talk portrays them. The only general pattern I've noticed thus far is you have more "traditional" conservatives (low taxes, less government) who seem to like Limbaugh, and the more wacky ones showing up on the Glen Beck TV/radio show (these ones think Obama is a communist and the government will round us up into CT camps).

There seems to be three types of Tea Party members:
(1) The Hysterical Populist: These are your garden variety "get the pitch forks and storm the castle" types who are raging against anyone they perceive to be more wealthy or affluent than they are. The "bank bailouts" ignited their rage against the affluent class that they had always been angry with for being richer than them to begin with. They direct populist hysteria towards intellectuals, banks, government, etc. This is the least covered aspect of the Tea Party movement IMO.
(2) The Classical Liberal: This one seems almost libertarian to me, and focuses completely on the smaller government part of the movement and doesn't get into the social issues.
(3) The Conspiracy Theorist: This is the conspiracy type wingnut that Alex Jones would be proud of. This is the part of the movement that the left wing party hacks tend to hyper focus on.

The problem for the Tea Party movement is each of these types of people are all aiming at radically different goals. Which is probably exactly why the Tea Part won't last, because with three different factions like that you will run into trouble. Not a scientific analysis by any means, just what I've noticed listening to the fringe on both sides.

You really have to add the Christian conservative/Christian Zionist to that list. One of the speakers at the Nashville event was Judge Roy Moore and his Ten Commandments.

 

[MaGZ]

No Ruby Ridge was a case of a man breaking federal law through the illegal modification of a shotgun for profit. He could have manned up and actually surrendered when the cops came arrest him, but he decided to sacrifice his family on the mantle of insane militia movement believes.

He was setup by the FBI and his family was executed by the FBI.

 

[MaGZ]

I have been reading the first book of Bruce Catton's Civil War history, "The Coming Fury" and I am fascinated by the similarities between groups like the know-nothings and the southern democrats of 1860 and the tea partiers of today.

While I doubt that the 2012 elections will play out like the 1860 election, I have no doubt that there will be some who will push the similarities.

If there is a total economic collapse within the next few years then the country will break-up.

America is held together only by the "almighty dollar".

 

[MaGZ]

The Milwaukee Tea Party burning the 9/11 Commission Report:



The Nazis burned books, so this is saying something!

The 9/11 Commission Report is a good book to burn. It shows our contempt for the government which expects us to believe their lies. There should be rallies across this land burning this bundle of lies.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166811