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Help me understand the tea party

Started by Worm Rider, September 14, 2011, 01:19:12 AM

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Worm Rider

I live with my head in a hole in the ground. Please help me understand the mindset of a tea party member. I want to understand what it feels like to think like a tea party supporter. I ask because I have absolutely no empathy for them. For example, how is the idea that all people should have access to health care a worse idea than the alternative that the quality of one's health care should be proportional to one's income? The gay thing and the abortion thing are religious nonsense, and the immigration thing is racism, but I really struggle with the socialism thing. The only reasonable solution I can come up with is that they are fucking morons. How do I move forward with this model? If I'm surrounded by morons, why can't I work that to my advantage? Because I am not an isolated individual, but a part of something bigger -a pack of morons. I have only one reaction to political discussion in the U.S. -fear. Is there an alternative? Is there a way to find common ground with these people?

Iason Ouabache

You cannot fathom the immensity of the fuck i do not give.
    \
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Luna

Quote from: Phlogiston Merriweather on September 14, 2011, 01:19:12 AM
I live with my head in a hole in the ground. Please help me understand the mindset of a tea party member. I want to understand what it feels like to think like a tea party supporter. I ask because I have absolutely no empathy for them. For example, how is the idea that all people should have access to health care a worse idea than the alternative that the quality of one's health care should be proportional to one's income? The gay thing and the abortion thing are religious nonsense, and the immigration thing is racism, but I really struggle with the socialism thing. The only reasonable solution I can come up with is that they are fucking morons. How do I move forward with this model? If I'm surrounded by morons, why can't I work that to my advantage? Because I am not an isolated individual, but a part of something bigger -a pack of morons. I have only one reaction to political discussion in the U.S. -fear. Is there an alternative? Is there a way to find common ground with these people?

Easy.  Stand up.

Now, bend at the waist.  Further.  A little more...

Now, shove your head so far up your own ass that you can see daylight.

Got it?  That's it...
Death-dealing hormone freak of deliciousness
Pagan-Stomping Valkyrie of the Interbutts™
Rampaging Slayer of Shit-Fountain Habitues

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Quote from: The Payne on November 16, 2011, 07:08:55 PM
If Luna was a furry, she'd sex humans and scream "BEASTIALITY!" at the top of her lungs at inopportune times.

Quote from: Nigel on March 24, 2011, 01:54:48 AM
I like the Luna one. She is a good one.

Quote
"Stop talking to yourself.  You don't like you any better than anyone else who knows you."

Precious Moments Zalgo

They are people who know enough about how fucked the US is to know that they ought to be angry, but they don't understand the who or how or why of it, so they don't know exactly what to be angry about, and they believe everything they watch on a news channel that misdirects their anger away from those who are causing all the shit, and projects it onto "socialists", deadbeat homeowners, and illegal immigrants.
I will answer ANY prayer for $39.95.*

*Unfortunately, I cannot give refunds in the event that the answer is no.

LMNO

Hold on a sec, let me get into character...

:cheney: :bankster: :perry:
:rush: :oilpig: :mullet: :mccain:
:teabagger1:


Socialism is bad because that means lazy people will take the money you worked hard for.  Eventually, no one will work anymore because they expect someone else to do it, and the economy will collapse.

Socialism is also bad because it implies regulation of business -- and regulations are bad because it impedes the free market system, which is the best system for self-correcting bad behavior.




How'd I do?

Cain

Because people worked hard for their wealth, and so have deserved healthcare.

If someone doesn't work hard, what are they doing instead?  Leeching off their family, their friends and, ultimately, the state.  Which means our taxes.  Taxes are basically theft anyway, but they serve some basic purposes, like paying for the military, the CIA and police.  Oh, and roads.  But the more leeches there are, the more taxes rise.

If you have a basic system of welfare, an entirely socialist concept, then the incentives for hard work are decreased.  Less people will be incentivized to work, meaning there will be ever increasing taxes on a steadily decreasing tax base.  The Soviet Union tried such distributive economics, and look at what happened to them.  Economic malaise, corruption, dictatorship and collapse. 

Furthermore, welfare is fundamentally unproductive economic activity.  Look at how Obama rewards his deadbeat, unemployed supporters.  He is using the bottom 25% as a weapon against the rest of the nation.  There is no reason you cannot succeed in America, if you work hard, unless government interferes.  But these people want government to interfere, because they cannot handle economic freedom.  They want a Big Daddy government, giving them cash handouts they don't have to work for, when they could have a lot better quality of living if they just bothered to get a job. 

Why do parasites like that deserve any of our sympathy whatsoever?

AFK

What's funny is when they whine and complain about class warfare but all the while are completely blind to the fact their leaders are using them as pawns in class warfare.  
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Luna

You forgot that we have to give more money and tax breaks to rich people and corporations, because they'll use it to make jobs.  (Yeah, it hasn't worked so far, but that's just because we need to give them MOAR, oh, and we'll give everyone jobs if you get rid of the minimum wage and we can pay a dollar an hour...)
Death-dealing hormone freak of deliciousness
Pagan-Stomping Valkyrie of the Interbutts™
Rampaging Slayer of Shit-Fountain Habitues

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Quote from: The Payne on November 16, 2011, 07:08:55 PM
If Luna was a furry, she'd sex humans and scream "BEASTIALITY!" at the top of her lungs at inopportune times.

Quote from: Nigel on March 24, 2011, 01:54:48 AM
I like the Luna one. She is a good one.

Quote
"Stop talking to yourself.  You don't like you any better than anyone else who knows you."

Precious Moments Zalgo

Quote from: Luna on September 14, 2011, 01:44:46 PM
You forgot that we have to give more money and tax breaks to rich people and corporations, because they'll use it to make jobs.  (Yeah, it hasn't worked so far, but that's just because we need to give them MOAR, oh, and we'll give everyone jobs if you get rid of the minimum wage and we can pay a dollar an hour...)
Also need to get rid of regulations and labor unions.
I will answer ANY prayer for $39.95.*

*Unfortunately, I cannot give refunds in the event that the answer is no.

Cain

Actually, while the Tea Party as a rule supports lower taxs for corporations and large employers (increasing their economic resources invariably increases their potential economic activity, which is more likely to produce jobs than putting people on welfare forever and ever without employment plans), it does not support handouts for corporations and banks, even though those handouts are less offensive than welfare, because it goes towards companies and groups which produce more wealth, which ultimately makes us all wealthier.

Regulations and minimum wage are a form of raising barriers to the possibility of employment, putting it beyond the means of some employers.  It also encourages inflation, by setting certain minimal standards of pay, whereas if pay were more flexible, prices would drop as production costs dropped and sellers sought to appeal to less high-earning buyers.

As for unions...don't you socialists ever learn from history?  Unions are nothing but fronts for corrupt mobsters and gangsters.  Their policies on minimum wage and other conditions also lead to what was described above.

Luna

Death-dealing hormone freak of deliciousness
Pagan-Stomping Valkyrie of the Interbutts™
Rampaging Slayer of Shit-Fountain Habitues

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Quote from: The Payne on November 16, 2011, 07:08:55 PM
If Luna was a furry, she'd sex humans and scream "BEASTIALITY!" at the top of her lungs at inopportune times.

Quote from: Nigel on March 24, 2011, 01:54:48 AM
I like the Luna one. She is a good one.

Quote
"Stop talking to yourself.  You don't like you any better than anyone else who knows you."

Disco Pickle

#11
lol, asking people here to explain the Tea Party is a bit like going to "insert conservative web forum here" and asking them to explain the people and thinking behind say...  MoveOn.org.  Can't think of a better example at the moment.

There's not a single person here who identifies with the Tea Party, or if there is they don't post about it much.

I can tell you that it began as a splintering from Neo-conservative, Bill Kristol, George Bush, Lindsay Graham style Republicanism.  Before the Tea Party began to emerge as a group if there was an anti-war wing of the Republican party, it was so muted and drowned out by decades of neo-conservative commentating and indoctrination so as to be nearly mute.  To be conservative and anti-war was anethema and to be shouted down.  Not so anymore.  Except for Israel.  War in support of Israel is one of the few things the Democrats, Neo-Conservative Republicans, and the Tea Party all (publicly anyway) agree on.

Basically, the big government conservatism of the type that's dominated since Barry Goldwater's famous ass kicking was getting enough backlash internally to cause a schism.  It's been called paleo-conservatism, and I suppose that label fits as well as any.  Classical liberalism also fits.

As to what you see now, what it's become..  It appears to have been nearly completely co-opted by enough religious types to completely dilute the social libertarian streak it started with (the primary reason I divorced myself from any association with it after the 2008 election) and enough big money interests are involved to shape their message on a national level.

It is still mostly split from the neo-conservative thought (neo-conservatives would tell you it's a split from "intellectual conservatism") and that may be it's most redeeming quality.  

I would suggest going to a website that Tea Party identifiers frequent and asking them what they stand for and to help you understand, if that's really what you're interested in doing.

[ETA] Cain, as always, will provide an extremely thoughtful response, even though he doesn't necessarily agree with the thinking.  Most everyone else will take pot shots.  Because it's funny.
"Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter." --William Ralph Inge

"sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it." -- John Von Neumann

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Disco Pickle on September 14, 2011, 02:21:48 PM
lol, asking people here to explain the Tea Party is a bit like going to "insert conservative web forum here" and asking them to explain the people and thinking behind say...  MoveOn.org.  Can't think of a better example at the moment.

:lulz:

Those poor racist bastards.  We should really stop dogging on them.

:lulz:
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Disco Pickle

Quote from: Doktor Howl on September 14, 2011, 02:27:39 PM
Also, we're JUST LIKE moveon.org.

:lulz:

It was an analogy, not a correlation, asshole.  You wouldn't go to a christian web forum for an explanation of Discordianism.

But feel free to continue to generalize about..  well, about everything.
"Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter." --William Ralph Inge

"sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it." -- John Von Neumann