Teabaggers are Teabagging

Or, This is what happens when you let children play with politics--or, you know, chainsaws and flamethrowers.

...even if Pawlenty gets away with claiming that it’s just a metaphor, his meaning---the overall meaning of CPAC this year---couldn’t be clearer. They’re encouraging their followers to literally believe the only legitimate party is the Republican party, and that this is true even if Democrats win fair and square. How conservatives rationalize this is all over the map. “Jokes” about repealing women’s suffrage are part of this narrative, since women, especially Unwomen (aka, the unmarried) can’t make the “correct” choices. At the big teabaggers’ convention, Tom Tancredo floated the idea of literacy tests, which along with the Palin speak about Real Americans® establishes a racist narrative where non-white voters are considered illegitimate. Questioning the patriotism of the “liberal elite” rounds off the trifecta of rationalizations.


WTF? Do these people not listen to what is coming from their mouths? Have they read no history? Can they not think two weeks -- shit, two days -- into the future? Outside of their own small window of experience?

Well, no, obviously not, or they would not say these things they say.

Also, I admit, I am working with an advantage: I have been in the houses of some of these Teabaggers. I know that they own no books. I know that they do not read. I have spoken with them, asked them questions. I know their body of knowledge is, to use the kindest terms, neither broad nor deep. Even when they have good hearts, and a few of them do indeed have good hearts, their limits curtail them.

You can't make good decisions about your route when you can't see the entire landscape. These folk won't open Mapquest. Shit, they don't even know the program exists. Knowing about their Daddy's backyard was good enough for Daddy and it's good enough for them too.