Help me understand the tea party

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

That's a pretty good summary.  Her novels weren't written tongue in cheek at all, though.  She really believed her philosophy and almost lived up to it, you know, except for that one time she got really sick and couldn't afford to pay for her own medical treatments, so she accepted government assistance under a fake name.

I'm surprised I don't see more Tea Partiers smoking.  All the supermen and superwomen in Rand's novels smoke like chimneys, and I can't recall any scenes that mentioned any of the looters or parasites smoking.

Oh yeah, Ayn Rand was totally pro-choice on abortion.

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?"

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_faq#obj_q5

WOW. 

That's gonna get...used. 

[Doktor Howl]

That's a pretty good summary.  Her novels weren't written tongue in cheek at all, though.  She really believed her philosophy and almost lived up to it, you know, except for that one time she got really sick and couldn't afford to pay for her own medical treatments, so she accepted government assistance under a fake name.

She also cheated on her husband, but condemned her boyfriend when he in turn cheated on her.

So much for "objective morality".   

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Ayn Rand + sex =

Thanks, Dok. Never hurts to shed a couple of pounds. 

[Doktor Howl]

Ayn Rand + sex =

Thanks, Dok. Never hurts to shed a couple of pounds. 

Hey, bitter, androgynous sociopaths need some lovin' too, ya know.   

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

That's a pretty good summary.  Her novels weren't written tongue in cheek at all, though.  She really believed her philosophy and almost lived up to it, you know, except for that one time she got really sick and couldn't afford to pay for her own medical treatments, so she accepted government assistance under a fake name.

She also cheated on her husband, but condemned her boyfriend when he in turn cheated on her.

So much for "objective morality".   

The funny thing about that to me is that, according to "objective morality", the part where she condemned her boyfriend was the immoral action.  The Objectivist thing to do would be to be happy for him and congratulate him on finding someone better.

[BabylonHoruv]

Thanks for the help. I've read Ayn Rand. I have a hard time not thinking that it was written tongue in cheek, like a modest proposal.

Let me try to channel my inner tea party member.

I work hard, but I don't get everything I deserve for this hard work, because there are lazy people mooching off me through taxes and other bullshit economic policies put in place by the looters. These lazy people want to enjoy the fruits of my labor. What they need is a fire lit under their asses. If they had to live in fear that they would wind up torn apart by wolves or die of exposure and the flu living in a cardboard box because no one is going to help them at all, then they would stop being lazy and get to work. This is because the world is ultimately just, and in the absence of economic interference, all hard workers will be rewarded with the best our modern technology has to offer. Nobody could ever end up poor despite working hard and being intelligent. The fact that I work so hard, and am reasonably intelligent, but lack an even nicer car and an even nicer place to live than the one I have is the result of lazy people taking my money to fund abortions -not because greedy people are raking in billions of dollars by profiting off a society that has well-educated, healthy, happy people and refusing to pay back into that society in order to keep it that way. I am self righteous. I do the right things, I live the right way, I follow the right rules. Other people don't -and they are the ones that should suffer. They should suffer. I want people to suffer, unless they follow the same damn rules I do. Suffering provides the necessary negative feedback to give us all a kick in the pants when we need it. The world would be a utopia if we all worked as hard as me and stopped trying to get something for nothing. Also, I at least moderately agree with or am not completely offended by the following ideas: Christianity right, other religions are wrong, gayness is wrong, abortions are wrong, many poor people are poor because they are lazy. My ideas may not be politically correct, but I know the difference between right and wrong. If you work hard and don't completely flaunt all morality by being a homo (which is just gross, what the fuck is wrong with you people?) or doing abortions (which kills babies, how is that not clear?) then every thing will work out for you (unless some baby killing homo takes what's yours).  

Okay. I think I've done it. The problem is, in order to think this way, I have to shut off my critical analysis facility and become intransigently sure of myself. I have to be completely obsessed with the fact that I deserve more than I have. I can't empathize at all with the poor black woman who has three kids and makes minimum wage and lives in a shitty neighborhood, or with her kids who can't read or write and don't have money for lunch, because she is mooching off of me with her food stamps. She deserves the situation she is in. Her kids deserve it too. Maybe they won't be so lazy and stupid when (if) they grow up because they will learn from their experience that only hard work gets you food. I can't accept the idea that we the people could vote to each pitch in a portion of our income to help those kids out. Only lazy people would think that way.  Nor can I accept the idea that they are in an impossible situation, lacking the same opportunities I was given at birth. I have to be completely ungrateful for all that has been given to me and insist that absolutely everything good that has ever happened to me in my life is the result of my deserving it. I deserve everything good that has or will ever happen to me, and everything bad is someone else's fault, because I am one of the good guys. I am on the right team, I believe in the right God, and I am a winner.

Is this right? If so, how do we deal with these people? They think we are the dumb ones who just don't understand how the world works. They think they understand what we are thinking, but that we refuse to see things their way. Unfortunately, I think that thinking in terms of us vs. them and using war metaphors is just playing into their way of thinking. We have to think in terms of Us. WE includes them. We the people. That just sounds so cheesy. Fuck it. They are fucking morons.  

Bolded part is not quite right.  Teabaggers are actually one of the few major constituencies that was opposed to TARP.  They don't want rich people to have their money taken through taxes, because hey, they earned it by working hard and they are using it to give people jobs.  They also don't want government propping up businesses through subsidy, if the business can't survive on it's own merits let it fail and don't give handouts to rich people to cover their losses.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Their opposition to TARP was backdated.  They are opposed to it now, I think you will be hard pressed to find a teabagger who opposed TARP in Oct 2008 when Bush signed it into law.

[Elder Iptuous]

You're wrong on that point PMZ.
when i was involved with the Ron Paul campaign (spare me the crucifixion  ), the tea party movement had not yet been coopted by the religious right, and it was uniformly opposed to the TARP

[BabylonHoruv]

Their opposition to TARP was backdated.  They are opposed to it now, I think you will be hard pressed to find a teabagger who opposed TARP in Oct 2008 when Bush signed it into law.

You can't get much more teabagger than Michele Bachmann and she voted against it.

http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/rep_bios.php?rep_id=54464227&category=views&id=20110425110245

[Worm Rider]

The bolded part was out of character. I personally think that those who profit off of living in a society full of well-educated, healthy, happy people with access to what they need for a decent quality of life ought to pay back into that society to keep it that way, just like a person who profits from harvesting natural resources ought to pay back into keeping them sustainable, rather than draining the land dry and walking away. People profit from polluting public lands, and complain about environmental regulations which would prevent them from profiting at the expense of everyone else. They steal our earth, which belongs to all humanity, by polluting it. We cannot get a clean environment back, we can only try to mitigate the damage. In the same way, people profit from living in a society of educated, healthy, happy people. Then, they complain about paying into the institutions that foster the society they depend on. It isn't sustainable. They aren't dumb. They are just greedy assholes.

[Cain]

The Ron Paul aspects of the movement are almost completely subsumed by the more Neocon elements of it, though, right now.

And most of those Neocon types did not really oppose the bailout.  As I recall, there was some opposition to it among the neocon blogs, Michelle Malkin etc, but they had been setting themselves up for entry into a Tea Party-esque organization since about August or so (when I, among several others, noted a surprising shift towards libertarian rhetoric in their articles) and presumably needed to keep in character.

Some of the House Republicans were fairly opposed to TARP as well, as I recall, but the Bush supporters whipped them into line over the issue, in the end.

You can see this reflected in their foreign policy choices as well.  "No subsidies...but the US military (which, uh, runs on contracts to third-party private companies for nearly everything) needs an ever-increasing budget and less oversight!"  So basically they're shilling for military/security Keynesianism, even if they're not aware of it.  This is also why I think a war with Iran is basically guaranteed, whenever the GOP do take power again, because the economy is not going to improve, and a war with Iran may be the only kind of fiscal stimulus the party can be sold on.

[Doktor Howl]

You're wrong on that point PMZ.
when i was involved with the Ron Paul campaign (spare me the crucifixion  ), the tea party movement had not yet been coopted by the religious right, and it was uniformly opposed to the TARP

The Koch brothers were setting up websites in 2006.

Just saying.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Thanks for the correction.  I think it was just that I personally never heard any tea party types say anything about TARP until they could blame it on Obama.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

You're wrong on that point PMZ.
when i was involved with the Ron Paul campaign (spare me the crucifixion  ), the tea party movement had not yet been coopted by the religious right, and it was uniformly opposed to the TARP

The Koch brothers were setting up websites in 2006.

Just saying.

I didn't know that, but I do remember that a pharmaceutical industry lobbying firm registered and squatted on the domain chicagoteaparty.org the day after Obama won the nomination.

[Disco Pickle]

Thanks for the correction.  I think it was just that I personally never heard any tea party types say anything about TARP until they could blame it on Obama.

They were calling for Hank Paulson and Bernanke's head.