What’s funny is, they didn’t demonize Saddam as bad as they’re demonizing Democrats and non-wingnut Republicans.

It’s dishonesty, but it’s not lying. The dishonesty is in the pretense that facts have anything to do with the venom that these people are spewing.

Setting aside the hatred for a moment, these people treat everything like it’s a sports game.  They have their team, and no matter what, they’ll support them.  No fairweather fans they!  Good times or bad, they’re Republicans and they will do whatever it takes to win, and if they can’t win, they’ll take their board home and trash the whole country.

Now you put the hatred back, and see the insanity.  It’s not a game.  We’re not playing sports.  We’re talking about democracy and patriotism and human lives, and apparently they’re all forfeit if the GOP isn’t the party in power.

I honestly don’t recognize this place anymore.  I think allowing Texas (really just a small fanatical group within TX) to control the school books was a crucial error.  Too many people just have no clue what the Constitution is, what their rights are, or even what being an American used to mean.

Caren:

I think sometimes in a weird way that democrats and progressives have enabled that transformation (along with the media and a bunch of rich crazies). We fix the shit that conservative republicans break. We do our best to shield them from the consequences of their actions.

Of course, at the media level all the people who report and play at politics as if it were a game whose only consequence is personal and group power are shielded from any actual downside by the enormous wealth disparities in this country. (And by the fact that once you cease being a power player, you become an unperson, so that none of the remaining players has to attend to the lessons that the less-powerful might learn.)

Jesse,

Living in Oklahoma, I’m inclined to agree with you. Never under-estimate the capacity of the average citizen to be dumber than a bag of hammers…

>I honestly don’t recognize this place anymore.
back in the good old days america was great and totally respected human rights

Don’t be ridiculous. None of those people has ever read The Lottery.

It’s a short story for Christ’s sake! By a girl! From San Francisco!!

While I agree that the batshittery is genuine and the protesters are not paid shills, there’s no denying that a lot of money and astroturfing has gone into organizing the teabag mob.  You have Fox News, along with a kajillion local hate radio stations (owned by Clear Channel) promoting these events and in the case of the health care town halls insurance companies have provided nice buses and t-shirts and talking points.  The RNC has sent out emails and prominent GOP leaders like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are going around telling the mob that babies and old people will be killed.

I think sometimes in a weird way that democrats and progressives have enabled that transformation (along with the media and a bunch of rich crazies). We fix the shit that conservative republicans break. We do our best to shield them from the consequences of their actions.

This reminds me of Amanda’s theory about our political parties mirroring gender roles with Republicans as men and Democrats as women.  This particular example is more of an analogy to an enabling spouse married to an alcoholic of either sex.  But on another level, along with another blog post I saw on Alternet’s Peek about Republicans blaming the birther thing on a plot by Democrats to make Republicans look bad (as if they needed help doing that), this is also about taking blame away from where it really belongs.  We can’t exactly stop fixing broken shit, but we do need to stop coddling the republicants.

Expanding on DonnaDiva’s point, I agree with Jesse that these people have the numbers, the craziness, the stupidity, and the energy to go out and act like assholes all on their own.  But what they’ve lacked before now is organization.  That’s what the astroturfing is about: harnessing the widespread and generalized craziness/resentment/paranoia and directing it against specific issues, specific people, at specific events.  Pointing out targets, in other words.

It’s coming from the top down and shows how far the GOP has sunk that their national party machinery has now embraced mob violence (or threats from such) as a legit means to retain power when the democratic process rejects them and their so-called ideas.  Or, what Sara Robinson said.

The people are just crazies.  Their organizers are pros.  Crazies can’t organize.  By definition.

I’ll say it again.  Those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.

“Too many people just have no clue what the Constitution is, what their rights are, or even what being an American used to mean. “

Wow! So you agree that Social security, and govt run health care are unconstitutional,  right?

I really enjoyed this take on things - a reminder that Teh Crazy is always bubbling below the surface of American political life, that it is somewhat muted under conservative governments (we see it, but low-information swing voters don’t), and that it springs into action whenever the status quo is seriously challenged.  They demanded Clinton’s impeachment for the High Crime of being a Democrat.  They hounded Carter for the same reason.  But not so long ago, these were the people who killed JFK and MLK.  That old violent streak is coming to the surface again.

“The people are just crazies.  Their organizers are pros.  Crazies can’t organize.  By definition.”

That used to be true. Pick a point in history and it was truer than now. But it is becoming less so by the day. One person shouting on a street corner, not much effect. A person with an email list, or something like twitter?

Luckily, these people trail technologically, or it would have been far worse by now. But the perfect storm combination of convincing people to stay after church to learn to use the new technology combined with the laser-sharp dedication some of these people have?

Ants have NO intelligence to speak of, but simple means of communication combined with very narrow goals, and they can accomplish amazing things.

Add in a few Karl Roves?

What I find fascinating is the transformation of the Teabaggers into a general-purpose mob to be deployed against any government programme that threatens incumbent bigCorps.

Less than a year ago, these people were the howling racist morons who’d show up for Palin just because she was a Republican candidate. Then some bright young spark at Freedomworks (one of the Koch family’s wingnut welfare rackets) got the idea that, hey, if MoveOn can mobilise liberals who actually know about the issues, just think what we could do with the typical Know-Nothing marks.

So they register general-purpose teabagger domains, buy mailing lists, line up friendly pundits like Santelli and McArdle, and wait for an opportunity to roll out a “spontaneous demonstration of angry American patriots” against Obama. Eventually, the idea of a consumer bailout to match the bailouts of the financial service corps these people worship provided that occasion.

And now, here’s the same astroturf of suckers, being rolled out to protect the large insurance companies and a health insurance system that binds employees to companies. This is probably going to be a regular occurence whenever politicians threaten American oligarchical interests.

What’ll be interesting to see is whether the GOP establishment and their wingnut welfare allies will continue to deploy these mobs once they’re out of opposition in one or more branches of government. That becomes a very dangerous game.

Casp wins the award for first really stupid comment of the day…

>I honestly don’t recognize this place anymore.
back in the good old days america was great and totally respected human rights

Well, of course not, but at least we had more than 5 media outlets (Thanks again, St. Ronnie) and a journalist corp that all wanted to be the next Woodward & Bernstein and ferret out corruption.

Now we have the equivalent of Klan rallies being marketed by a major media company.  I grew up in Indiana.  The Klan had the since to keep quiet in public generally.  Now they get daily airtime on FOX et. al.

Casp, you’re still a soulless motherfucker.  “Promote the general welfare” is meaningless to you.  Go join the Klanners at a Birthbagger party, why don’t you?

“Congress shall enact no social programs to benefit the people; the government shall essentially be a sounding-board for bigots who benefit from god’s prosperity.”

Nope, don’t recall that amendment.

Gracchus:

Of course they’ll keep deploying the mobs. Not only against democrats but against each other. You’re already seeing that in the right-wing crazies booing right-wing congresscritters for not being crazy enough.  One of the same bright sparks who realized you can organize the crazies against liberals will realize you can also organize them against other wingnut factions. The only question is which one will be robespierre…

Wow! So you agree that Social security, and govt run health care are unconstitutional, right?

Only if you pretend that there’s no constitutional mandate to promote the general welfare.  It’s in there twice, you know, so you don’t get to claim that they didn’t really mean it when they said it in the preamble.

The Constitution isn’t a document that was written to specifically allow only a few things and prohibit everything else. Quite the opposite, in fact.

QFT. Wingnuts and Glibertarians get this assbackwards.

If Social Security and Medicare really were unconstitutional, and were in danger of being shut down as a result, how many weeks do you think it would take to ratify an amendment fixing that state of affairs? And how long before the judges who signed the opinion were impeached and/or left the country? Senior citizens vote at the highest rate of any bloc in the country, and they’ve already paid in.

I doubt any of the teabaggers believe a word of what they shout. If they were afraid of thugs jack booting them on meetings they would have stayed home. They are there at town halls because they know they will be treated gently and nothing bad will happen to them, even if they scream their lungs off and throw racist insults and death threats at elected officials. How do they know that ? They watch Beck, O’Reilly and others do the same every day on TV.

This is pure performance art. They act out knowing full well they are safe. We don’t have to convince them they are safe, they know. They are pretending not to know, just to be able to justify their outrageous behavior.