You may want to reconsider, lest you fall into the characteristic hubris that so defines our generational archetype.Originally Posted by AlexMnWi
Although since that attitude is nigh unavoidable it is best applied to things outside yourself, which is why my self-righteousness is applied mostly to science and human ingenuity.
Right-Wing liberal, slow progressive, and other contradictions straddling both the past and future, but out of touch with the present . . .
"We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know." - Donald Rumsfeld
Heh, I'll shut up for the 2T. Till then...
1987 INTP
Nothing from FreedomWorks has been as incendiary as an Operation Rescue document.
Let me put this in historical context. During the Awakening, the big political shift was the GOP's "Southern Strategy" where the party reached out to authoritarian types who were previously part of the New Deal coalition. Out of the success of this strategy and the public histrionics of the hippies grew two myths:
1) That conservatives are the "real Americans" who are defending the world's most awesome country against a fifth-column of elitist, liberal city-dwellers.
2) That liberals need to "get through" to working class social conservatives and remind them of their class interest in preserving the welfare state, but the Right tricks them into backing the wealthy.
Both of these myths are nonsense, and I'm afraid the "astroturfing" meme plays into myth #2. The assumption is that if the conservative leadership was somehow gone, that it would be like killing the head vampire and all the thralls would return to being human. All, I'm saying is -- they're not "tricked." If anything, its the right-libertarian folks pushing these events that have tricked themselves into believing they are leading a movement of people concerned about liberty. They're not.
The conservative movement is full of lower-right and true-bottom types whose primary concern is the maintenance of an idealized "community." Their ideal community isn't Galt's Gulch, it's Leave it to Beaver. The right-libertarians and paleoconservatives in the GOP seem to have a delusion about "taking back the party" and getting it back to limited government principles. But there's no future there, because the Southern Strategy was too successful. The GOP reached out to the South and the South swallowed the party whole.
I suppose this means I'm being kind to FreedomWorks, but to the protesters? The only way to explain their behavior is by recognizing that deep down it's not really about health care at all. This is tribalism, pure and simple.
I'm sure you still voted for Bush in 2004 even though he won the 2000 election on unstable grounds, and you supported the war despite Abu Gharib and Haditha. Each to their own.
I haven't been "high and mighty" about Democratic political tactics, but sometimes, if they promise bringing the United States to a place that is closer to my ideal, I will just simply look the other way.
I supported Obama because, in part, while he was campaigning, he would give people the facts if they were available to him, instead of patronize them, and would admit his mistakes. So far in office he's been acting more like every other politician, and that disappoints me a little.
That's about the biggest bullshit I've ever read, and I have read a lot in my days.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
This post is one big fat LIE. "Obamacare Goons"? you are off your rocker....BS, and...
-BS. I'll note (again) that the violence only started at these meetings when the Obamacare goons started showing up to attack Teabaggers; something which both of the above posters avoid mentioning.
-You are wrong; it looks like the the thug detachmnets which attacked Tabaggers at the Tampa & St. Louis town hall meetings got their recruits from SEIU & ACORN. Or didn't you know?
-What sort of hacks are SEIU or ACORN members?
And I never got a real reply to this point, made by Jonah Goldberg:
-If using snitch websites to track opponents, and using goons to break up protests doesn't marginalize the administration, what would?
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Quoted for Truth!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
That's a scary thought.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
As long as someone brings a Host, a Midget and a garden Gnome, sign me up.
Yes, I did.
I agree, to each their own.
I supported the older and wiser politician.
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 08-11-2009 at 10:43 PM.
No, it means that a conservative Republican introduced a common-sense provision that liberals like. That's one manifestation of democracy at its best. To keep things from spiraling out of control it is best that we have two major parties, both similarly dedicated to democratic practice and to being enough off-center to not be wishy-washy but close enough to not be extreme so that we have practical as well as formal checks and balances. Note well, though: just as a Communist Party is an ineffective and unwelcome check to conservatism, a Fascist Party is a poor check upon the excesses that tempt liberals.
Oh, by the way -- Obama did not win solely by winning over either the poorest of Americans or the most fortunate. It's odd that economic status has rarely so decided who votes for whom in a Presidential election in 2008. Draw your own conclusion if you wish, but I've got mine: cultural divides determined more than anything else where one was on the Left-Right continuum. Martin County, Kentucky, one of the poorest counties in America, voted for conservative Republican John McCain by a huge margin; Loudoun County, Virginia, the richest county in America, voted for the liberal Obama.
Surely there were rich people who believed that the worst behavior of some rich people had put the capitalist system itself at risk, and that as the "anti-Bush", Barack Obama was the one to save the system from its own self-destructive tendencies.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
It's hard to be more incendiary than Operation Rescue.
The Southern Strategy played to the southern Dixiecrat racists who aligned with the agrarian elites who once utterly dominated the Democratic Party in the South. As late as 1976 the Republican Party, most notably the Rockefeller wing, had enough power to win a bunch of Northern and Western states that for the last time went for a Republican nominee in a non-landslide election (CT, ME, VT, MI, IL, CA, OR, WA) and the Democrat relied heavily upon a coalition that depended upon African-Americans. Ronald Reagan won in 1980 by getting a coalition of Southern white racists and enough Rockefeller-wing Republicans to vote for him. While President, Reagan looked the other way as the southern white racists took over the Republican Party, damage to the GOP not manifesting itself until 1992.Let me put this in historical context. During the Awakening, the big political shift was the GOP's "Southern Strategy" where the party reached out to authoritarian types who were previously part of the New Deal coalition. Out of the success of this strategy and the public histrionics of the hippies grew two myths:
1) That conservatives are the "real Americans" who are defending the world's most awesome country against a fifth-column of elitist, liberal city-dwellers.
2) That liberals need to "get through" to working class social conservatives and remind them of their class interest in preserving the welfare state, but the Right tricks them into backing the wealthy.
Both of these myths are nonsense, and I'm afraid the "astroturfing" meme plays into myth #2.
"City dwellers" became a euphemism for a combination of poor minorities who seemed incapable of responsible behavior and for out-of-touch "limousine liberals" (probably itself a euphemism for Jews). Such people became brittle targets for right-wing populist resentment.
The Southern Strategy introduced by Nixon associates may have become a disaster for the Republican Party. Nixon in 1972, Reagan both times, and GHWB (1988) would have won without the South. Carter won in 1980 by thwarting the then-novel Southern Strategy; Clinton and Obama both split the South. The only President who absolutely needed the South enough to pander to the baser drives of racist hacks and the superstitious was George W. Bush, who barely won two elections; his two electoral victories have had disastrous consequences for the GOP.
Of course the GOP has a few reliable constituencies: industrialists, financiers, business executives, big agrarian landowners, racists, militia types, anti-tax cultists, and the Religious Right. The racists and the Religious Right have been hemorrhaging support as young voters run from them. That coalition is still flush with campaign cash or funds for political activism; it has willing shock troops seeking the opportunity to win political skirmishes when they can't win elections. It is as media-savvy as ever.
If 2009 is an off-year for politics, 2010 looks unpromising, and 2012 offers the prospect of the re-election of a President that that coalition hates unless that coalition does something drastic to make a failure out of the President, then Astroturf activism and terrorism are all that can remain. Terrorism is out of the question due to the personal consequences to its participants and backers.
Follow the money and you will find the same sorts of people who supported fascistic movements in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Economic elites may be morally discredited, but they still are flush with cash. Having lost power that allowed them to make gigantic fortunes by treating workers badly, and wanting it back, they will do anything to get it back. The relevant elites in America have cause to fear that they won't get popular support -- but if they can regain power, they might arrange things so that they never lose it. We got a taste of economic fascism under Dubya, and for most of us it tasted horrible. The Hard Right didn't seal the deal with effective suppression of political opposition and repression of dissent. The next time those elites ever regain power, they will not stop at opportunistic legislation solely for economic gain. They will turn to mob violence and to official repression -- with assassinations, show trials, and deportations.The assumption is that if the conservative leadership was somehow gone, that it would be like killing the head vampire and all the thralls would return to being human. All, I'm saying is -- they're not "tricked." If anything, its the right-libertarian folks pushing these events that have tricked themselves into believing they are leading a movement of people concerned about liberty. They're not.
The "Joe the Plumber" and teabagger types may think that they can achieve a conservative 1T society, but that society has too few resources to make "Every Man a King". Those types don't know that, and they are going to get $crewed badly by economic royalists whose ideal is the ante-bellum world of Tara or the pre-revolutionary world at the beginning of Doctor Zhivago Both were paradises for 5% of the population and Hells for the overwhelming majority of the rest. Libertarianism becomes attractive in a 3T only to be found unworkable in a 4T.The conservative movement is full of lower-right and true-bottom types whose primary concern is the maintenance of an idealized "community." Their ideal community isn't Galt's Gulch, it's Leave it to Beaver. The right-libertarians and paleoconservatives in the GOP seem to have a delusion about "taking back the party" and getting it back to limited government principles. But there's no future there, because the Southern Strategy was too successful. The GOP reached out to the South and the South swallowed the party whole.
The point -- it is tribalism. Tribalism in modern societies is the exploitation of divisions that need not exist except for the benefit of exploiters and outright criminals. It depends upon people believing falsehoods... such as that the Democratic programs for some public model of health care includes such monstrosities as "death panels". Tribalism may be the only possible means of keeping hunter-gatherer societies together; for a modern society it implies disaster. Witness Rwanda (where the tribalist butchers used the high technology of radio and effective organization to hunt down and slaughter enemies). Witness the former Yugoslavia. Witness Nazi Germany. Look at failures of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we Americans are a "tribe" that doesn't really belong there. Someone who blunders across a border in a hunter-gatherer world might die of a curare-laced blow dart with nobody knowing what happened. Tribalism with machetes, poison gas, tanks, and bayonets leaves far too much misery.I suppose this means I'm being kind to FreedomWorks, but to the protesters? The only way to explain their behavior is by recognizing that deep down it's not really about health care at all. This is tribalism, pure and simple.
Angry mobs are nemeses of democracy.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Calling Mr. Reed or other historians
Back to a focus on saecular dymanics rather than ideological posturing...
I'm wondering -- during the early first term of the Roosevelt administration, were there equivilants to the Tea Parties and town hall protests against any of FDR's initiatives? Is this is a case of history rhyming or is this something new?
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
May I point out two things:
1. The vast and much broader areas are relatively empty of population.
2. With rare exceptions (Texas and Alaska are two), the vast and much broader areas live off of the Democratic blue state ones. The blue states pay more federal taxes than they receive--the situation in the red states is the reverse. Secession would actually be a terrific boon to the blue states. Social Security and Medicare, obviously, are two of the biggest transfer programs that favor the red states, many of which are subsidized retirement homes.
David Kaiser '47
My blog: History Unfolding
My book: The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
One thing is becoming increasingly certain: at the rate we're going with the protests and counterprotests over Health Care Reform (which has been turned into 'the decisive battle' by both sides), somebody's going to be either beaten to death or shot before too much longer. Either a protester on one side or the other (or protesters on both sides), or worse yet, an innocent bystander who will be guilty of nothing more than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
When this happens, what happens next will be absolutely crucial. If both sides respond to said incident with alarm, and a 'Hold on a minute! We're not down for this!' attitude (as happened after Oklahoma City), we can avoid Civil War II. If, however, either one of the two sides takes a 'Blood cries out for blood!' attitude, or else acts as if the taste of blood had whetted their appetite for more, Civil War II becomes pretty much inevitable at that point.
Last edited by SVE-KRD; 08-12-2009 at 11:12 AM.
FDR was called a fascist, a commie, a stooge of the "International Conspiracy of Jewish world domination" even if he wasn't Jewish*, a destroyer of capitalism, and the ultimate stooge of plutocracy. Obama gets called much the same, but add the "secret Muslim" intent on selling out America to Islam, and "False Messiah" stuff.
You ought to look at some of the names that Lincoln got, especially in the South.
Obama has yet to do what defines a great President, but he has done little to suggest that he is below-average. He has time in which to establish what he is. Some will of course hate anything that he does, even his accomplishments.
*FDR wasn't Jewish. I know much about his ancestry. He was a distant cousin of Sir Winston Churchill; his ancestry was more English than anything else, and the rest was Dutch, German, and French (Huguenot).
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
-He had it coming.
From his buddy, Stuart Chase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Chase
"...famous for the quote, in the end of his book, A NEW DEAL(the anecdotal source of the name for FDR's signature policy), 'Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?'"
You also forget that FDR was the first POTUS to regularly use the IRS to harass his political enemies.
-Uh, not exactly:
1) Much of the so-called "transfer" relates to with military spending, which of course, is merely payment for goods and/or services rendered;
2) DK considers the Ponzi Scheme to be a "transfer" program? Yum, yum! Grist for the Ponzi thread!
-The two are not mutually exclusive.
1) There is nothing in Obamacare which is not compatible with Fascist social policies.
2) I've yet to see Odin or anyone else address the fact that the violence at (and outside of) the meetings is carried out by Obamacare supporters, and the victims are Teabaggers.
I wonder why.
-No, you [Odin] are one big fat LIAR (or very uninformed); the people who got arrested for assaulting Teabaggers in St. Louis were SEIU goons, and the ones whom the cops are searching for in Tampa were more of the same sort.
I accept your apology in advance.
And, I'll note one more time that the followers of the world's most famous community organizer are hypocritically whining about community organizing.
---
Back to Playwrite:
I'd still love to know: When PW was supposedly visiting SE Asia, did he bother to check out the "Anti-War" movement's handiwork in the re-education camps, and in the killing fields? The answer seems to be NO...
Back to Haymarket':
I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1969. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
Secession would actually lead to a crushing economic blow to the blue states. Blue state secession in relationship to red/purple migration, is what's financially killing the Blue States and creating all the mass deficits right now. Who are you going to live off when a Red State secession sucks or peels away what's left of big business and the bulk of the northern economic progressives. Does Hollywood make enough to feed and take care of its own and feed and take care of you as well?
The liberal Hamptons say, we need more big government spending, more big government entitlement programs and larger big government institutions to manage and maintain for things to work out better for them. The liberal Harlem's say, they need more federal funding, more financial opportunities created, more federal type job programs, more federal advancement and greater opportunities and more financial doors forced open for things to work out better for them.
Here's the problem, the government does not pay me, I pay the government. Now, until the Hampton's/Harlem's figure out a clever way or muster up the courage and strength to flip that social concept around, this will be the way the we's of our world tend to view things and think. Mr. Liberal Happy ran all over the world begging and pleading for our forgiveness when he should have been hanging around home adding strength his image and proving himself to us.
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 08-12-2009 at 02:41 PM.
My point is that FreedomWorks isn't even trying to be that incendiary. It's just that some of the people going to the events are very worked up entirely on their own.
Big Business has plenty of friends in both parties. In fact, such interests have much more of a need for Obama to be successful -- successful, that is, at putting a smiling face on the same old system.
This assumes that the Right thinks that the proposed health care reform will work and be popular. Simple jealousy at the current success of Democrats cannot account for the level of fear and anger. There has to be more than this -- a vision of a dark future looming beyond this "seemingly" minor change. That sort of deep-seated fear cannot be put into place with a few e-mail alerts. At most, the GOP can simply fail to get in the way.
Oh, come now, you don't seriously think the capacity of Big Business to game the system has been diminished by the Democrats being in power? Those boys on Wall Street are feeling so oppressed right now with Uncle Sam indirectly cutting their bonus checks.
You have to understand where these folks are coming from. Small businessmen and highly paid professionals have very high taxes and struggle with obtuse rules all the time. Thus, their opposition to taxes and regulation -- they feel the brunt of those policies. These people are not really "rich" but the parts of our system that attempt to even economic outcomes target them the most. The actual rich avoid the effects of these policies or even benefit from them. Consider how it benefits the ultra-rich to have an economic environment where people with entrepreneurial spirit and specialized knowledge get squeezed and squeezed hard. Banning competition is the essence of real capitalism.
The desire to form tribes and the comfort gained from them is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Elites can, and do, benefit from the cultivation of these divisions. However, society does not turn on a dime. No one is "steering" the tea ship, it sails where it wants to. That's my point about the "astroturf" argument -- it naively, and dangerously, assumes that this movement has no will of its own.
Gee, I live in one of the richest counties in Minnesota that voted Republican. Hennipen County, also one of the richest as well as one of the poorest, voted Democrat. In Hennipen county, the rich and poor tend to vote together a lot. The rich vote for more money and the poor vote for more stuff. In Dakota county, we vote to keep the bulk of our money and stuff from getting shifted to Hennipen County. Duluth and St. Paul also like to vote to shift our money and stuff to them too.
All the right-wing hate radio and people like Lou Dobbs can be compared to Father Coughlin. And also were a lot of "astroturf" organizations calling FDR and Fascist and a Communist. The similarity in rhetoric between right-wingers then and now would be funny of it wasn't so scary.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
-Is Odin kidding? Or going back to "ideological posturing"?!
Father Coughlin was a Leftist, not a Rightie; he started out supporting the New Deal, and only turned against it because it wasn't Anti-Capitalist enough for him.
FDR had no problem with Coughlin the Demagogue, as long as he was his Demagogue.
Sheesh.
1) I already covered this in post #222;
2) What are union goons, if not "astroturfing"?
3) ...and once again, we have a supporter of the world's most famous community organizer whining about community organizing.
---
Back to Playwrite:
I'd still love to know: When PW was supposedly visiting SE Asia, did he bother to check out the "Anti-War" movement's handiwork in the re-education camps, and in the killing fields? The answer seems to be NO...
Back to Haymarket':
I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1969. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
This might occur, and while recent events have made this seem more likely, I'm not convinced we'll go all the way over the cliff.One thing is becoming increasingly certain: at the rate we're going with the protests and counterprotests over Health Care Reform (which has been turned into 'the decisive battle' by both sides), somebody's going to be either beaten to death or shot before too much longer. Either a protester on one side or the other (or protesters on both sides), or worse yet, an innocent bystander who will be guilty of nothing more than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
If such a thing comes to pass, then I doubt this conflict would be anything like the Civil War. Rather, we would probably have multiple competing insurgencies and a hapless government attempting to keep a lid on it to no avail.When this happens, what happens next will be absolutely crucial. If both sides respond to said incident with alarm, and a 'Hold on a minute! We're not down for this!' attitude (as happened after Oklahoma City), we can avoid Civil War II. If, however, either one of the two sides takes a 'Blood cries out for blood!' attitude, or else acts as if the taste of blood had whetted their appetite for more, Civil War II becomes pretty much inevitable at that point.
I agree that this is very unlikely to get to any thing like 1860s. First, because these wing nuts are a minority and getting smaller; that's really what is underlying their rage and anxiety. And second this hapless government bit is just plain silly. The wing nuts that organize into some violent terrorist groups and attempt to implement will get crushed. There could be some localized violence, but generally as a group their political (or possibly otherwise) demise is inevitable - just your typical 4T flush of the toilet.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
Not close to them, I can't know for sure. But think of all the viral e-mails and the whisper campaign... it's easy to understand why people are worked up.
Big Business can adapt to much. It might be the last to recognize the benefits of liberalism as an alternative to inept conservatism. FDR saved American capitalism.Big Business has plenty of friends in both parties. In fact, such interests have much more of a need for Obama to be successful -- successful, that is, at putting a smiling face on the same old system.
47% of American voters voted against Obama, and he has yet to erode some of the passionate hatred for his agenda among a large minority. As for e-mail alerts? As widely as they are passed on the same e-mail may pass around 50 times from one person. All that one needs to do is put such an e-mail in the inboxes of hundreds of people is to press "Send All". Remember -- the most shocking message gets forwarded most, and something bland doesn't.This assumes that the Right thinks that the proposed health care reform will work and be popular. Simple jealousy at the current success of Democrats cannot account for the level of fear and anger. There has to be more than this -- a vision of a dark future looming beyond this "seemingly" minor change. That sort of deep-seated fear cannot be put into place with a few e-mail alerts. At most, the GOP can simply fail to get in the way.
Fear creates hatred. The typical right-wing economic interests fear the worst from liberals and expect the best from conservatives. If someone like George W. Bush goes bad, it is because he is the wrong sort of conservative and not the fault of conservatism. If Obama does fine, then such shows the strength of the System and not Obama's achievement. Liberals just can't win the hearts and minds of tycoons and executives.Oh, come now, you don't seriously think the capacity of Big Business to game the system has been diminished by the Democrats being in power? Those boys on Wall Street are feeling so oppressed right now with Uncle Sam indirectly cutting their bonus checks.
You have to understand where these folks are coming from. Small businessmen and highly paid professionals have very high taxes and struggle with obtuse rules all the time. Thus, their opposition to taxes and regulation -- they feel the brunt of those policies. These people are not really "rich" but the parts of our system that attempt to even economic outcomes target them the most. The actual rich avoid the effects of these policies or even benefit from them. Consider how it benefits the ultra-rich to have an economic environment where people with entrepreneurial spirit and specialized knowledge get squeezed and squeezed hard. Banning competition is the essence of real capitalism.
It's as much sponsored by Big Business as are American Idol, The Tonight Show, and televised sports. Of course one knows that network and most cable television has commercials whose origins are usually well-defined. Such may not be so obvious with mass movements.The desire to form tribes and the comfort gained from them is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Elites can, and do, benefit from the cultivation of these divisions. However, society does not turn on a dime. No one is "steering" the tea ship, it sails where it wants to. That's my point about the "astroturf" argument -- it naively, and dangerously, assumes that this movement has no will of its own.
As for some things being comforting -- heroin is "comforting", too. Such of course can be said of tribalism.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
