Dear Teabaggers, I’ve got some questions.

Dear Teabaggers,

I watched a lot of the coverage of your protests in Washington D.C. this weekend and I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading about and it viewing the pictures and frankly, I’m confused about some of your arguments.

You seem like such a cohesive, united grassroots* movement and yet some of the arguments put forth, especially on picket signs during the protests, seem completely contradictory. I’m sure you’re reasonable, logical people, so maybe you could just clarify for me, because I’ve got some questions.

1. My political science and history classes in high school and college taught me that socialism and communism were completely different ideologies. As a matter of fact, after Jews, Hitler reserved most of his hatred for communists. How then, can Barack Obama be both a Nazi and a communist? Also, how can he also be a Marxist and a fascist, two more ideologies that don’t jive with one another or with socialism and communism?

Now, I should offer full disclosure, I was educated in the public schools, including a public university. I have heard Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly talk about how public universities are full of liberals. Could my professors, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s already have been a part of the conspiracy to get Barack Obama elected President? Would that be why they would teach us things that about communism and socialism that were, according to your signs, outright lies?

2. During the George W. Bush administration, any criticism of the President that strayed across the line, questioning his judgment, intelligence, ties to cronies in the oil industry, failures in the business world, challenges to his “facts” on the Iraq war or history of drug and alcohol abuse were met with screams from right-wing talking heads and lawmakers that although we may disagree with his policies, we should respect the man and the office, especially in a time of war.

Personally speaking, I agree wholeheartedly that we should respect the office of the President. For example, George W. Bush claims to be sober and a born-again Christian. I respect both things and think that reminders of him being a cokehead are unfair. I do think, however, that it was reasonable to challenge him when it seems he was fudging the facts in the run-up to the Iraq war.

If it was so important that we respected the office of the President and the man sitting in said office while George W. Bush was there, why is it all right for Joe Wilson to shout at the President from the floor of the House of Representatives?

Why is it all right for you to hold up signs with pictures of him with Hitler mustaches and devil horns? Why is it all right for your leaders in the right-wing media to constantly talk about his admissions of youthful indiscretions with drugs and alcohol?

Is he not every bit as legitimate a President as George W. Bush? Are we not still at war? Why then would you demand we offer respect to one President yet offer nothing but contempt and hatred for another? Which brings me to my next question.

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3. Speaking of respect, why is it all right for members of your group to show up at rallies with assault rifles? Why is it all right for people at your marches to hold up signs saying “We came unarmed (this time)” or quoting Jefferson about replenishing the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Why is it all right to threaten the life of the President?

If you don’t agree with him, there’s an election in 2012. Get out and vote for your guy. Actually, I’ll do you one better. Put someone out there worth voting for you and you might actually win.

I’ve got a hint for you, that person is not Sarah Palin. I can’t believe you haven’t seen through her yet.

4. What is with this birther nonsense? We all know these people are crazy, why haven’t you, as a group, come out and said so? Don’t you understand that we can’t have a legitimate dialogue with you until you disavow loons like this?

I hate to keep going back to examples from the Bush administration, but when the election was finally settled by the Supreme Court, you guys on the right just kept saying that he was elected legitimately and that we should get over it.

Yet now, we have a President who was elected not only by winning the electoral college, but also by gaining the votes of a majority of Americans, and you can’t let it go. He has produced a birth certificate and other overwhelming evidence that proves his citizenship and still a very vocal sect of your group will not accept the facts.

5. Speaking of loons, if you want to claim that none of this uproar has to do with racism, why is nothing said and done about the people who attend your protests with signs making veiled and sometimes outright racist statements?

It makes it nearly impossible to take anything you say or do as a group seriously when such a vocal part of your contingent is calling the President any number of racial epithets. Say what you want about not seeing it or knowing it goes on, it has been documented time after time and yet you pretend that it’s not going on.

Until you confront these people and make it absolutely clear that they do not in any way speak for you, your protests will be taken as nothing more than the terrified flailings of a party and movement in its death throws.

We are at time in this country when the shackles of racism are finally beginning to be thrown off. Yes, a black man has ascended to the highest office in the land. Yet blacks, Asians, Latinos, Arabs and many others in this country face the specter of racism every day at the hands of people like those carrying signs around at your rallies calling the President a monkey or a slave.

There is still a lot of work to do and we have all the momentum. If you continue to allow these people to hijack your agenda, history will show that you all were on the wrong side of the moral argument, no matter how good a Christian you think you are.

6. If your gripe with the Obama administration has to do with fiscal policy, where were you when George W. Bush was driving us into a ridiculous amount of debt after Clinton had somehow managed to balance the budget? Where were the protests during the Reagan administration when the national debt more than quadrupled?

I don’t understand why you throw around “tax & spend” like it’s a dirty word when a Democrat is in office (even when Clinton was balancing the budget) and yet when George W. Bush was spending more than any President before him, you didn’t say a damn thing.

7. You accuse so many of us on this side of the argument of being members of a cult of personality. You say that we believe President Obama is the messiah or some such nonsense and that we should believe in the system, not one person. Yet the number of signs in support of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Joe Wilson were overwhelming. How is that different?

It seems to me that many of us in the middle or on the left have no problem questioning the Obama administration’s policies when we don’t agree with them, yet many in your movement take every word out of the mouths of people like Beck, O’Reilly, Palin, et al as the absolute truth. To question it is to question your morality and intelligence. How is that anything but subscribing to a cult of personality?

7. Why are you so whipped up in a frenzy about Barack Obama appointing czars for various things? Why is the terminology so important to you?

Again, maybe it was my liberal professors lying to me, but I was taught that Nixon was the first president to appointed the first permanent czars to deal with drugs and inflation. Reagan really took it to the next step, appointing several czars to deal with national policy issues. Why was it all right for those two but not all right for President Obama?

Also, can you please instruct your fellow patriots with a little looser grasp of history than you and I that during the Bolshevik revolution (which ushered communism into Russia) the last Czar of Russia and his family were killed. So all those signs alluding to czars being communist are hilariously wrong.

If you’re confused, ask your kids, they’ve probably seen the Disney movie Anastasia, it outlines the whole thing.

Thanks,

Rusty

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3 Comment to “Dear Teabaggers, I’ve got some questions.”

  1. JLW says:
    September 15, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    Answers:
    1. I’m actually very surprised anyone would say that. Socialism and communism are not “completely different”, they are variations on the same theme. So are fascism, and Nazism. They all are about government having enormous power over the economy and people’s lives. They differ in degree, but are certainly not opposites. Obama’s policies push us in the general direction of all those ideologies. Where we will end up remains to be seen. Probably not total communism. But we already have an economy with (too many) elements of fascism and socialism.
    2. During times of war it is MORE important to criticize Presidents than any other time. I did for Bush. Most Republicans did not, you correctly point out.
    3. I applaud anyone showing up armed at such events. The government needs to be reminded that their power is not unlimited. I have not heard of anyone threatening the President’s life.
    4. Yes, the birthers are whacko. “why haven’t you, as a group, come out and said so?” Because there is no group hierarchy here. These are events with all sorts of individuals attending, for different reasons. No one speaks for the “group”.
    5. This is the first I’ve seen any racist sign or statement at any rally. I hereby denounce it. We good?
    6. I criticized Bush in very harsh terms for his spending. But I am more of a libertarian than a Republican. But Obama is Bush on steroids, fiscally.
    7. Obama is extremely charismatic, an excellent speaker (as long as the teleprompter is running). He can really work a crowd. His supporters I know seem to have no understanding that he is bankrupting the country. Where is the money coming from? But yes, the personality cult exists amongst Republicans as well.
    7. Czars are unnecessary and dangerous, no matter who is President.

  2. Rusty Shackleford says:
    September 16, 2009 at 7:39 am

    Thanks for the comments. I think, though, that you’re still a little confused on political ideologies. The Nazi party ran Germany as a socialist state. There’s no such thing as “Naziism” per se.

    Fascism can take many different forms. In Italy, for example, Mussolini established a one-party state and quashed opposition but still maintained a heavily-regulated capitalist system.

    Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy allowed for private industry based on capitalist principles (supply and demand, etc.) Obviously Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were horrible governments, but to say they are branches of the same ideals is completely false.

    Communism, as we saw in the former USSR and now in Cuba, had an economies entirely dictated by government leaders. Economists in the capitol would tell each factory how much to produce, how much to pay their workers, etc.

    Sparing you the economics lecture, suffice it to say the main difference between socialism and communism is that one allows for private (yet regulated) industry while the other does not.

    Now, I think we can all agree that we don’t want a Nazi-style socialist government here. I’d also think we’d agree that history has shown that when businesses run without regulation, it is almost always at the expense of the public welfare. So the question remains, where is the middle ground?

  3. JLW says:
    September 19, 2009 at 11:57 pm

    Rusty, think of a continuum of political/economic ideologies. On one end you have absolute freedom, i.e. anarchy, absence of government. On the other, an all-powerful government that controls everything (not actually possible, but the USSR came close enough). All the ideologies above, fascism, socialism, and communism, would be clustered toward the “all-powerful government” end of the spectrum. The early US, a constitutional republic with a weak central government, was toward the “freedom” end of the spectrum (ignoring slavery for the moment). Seen in this view, fascism, socialism, and communism are not opposites at all. As I stated above, they are variations on the same theme: that the government should have extensive control over the people. Yes, there are differences, but they are all very opposed to a free society. Increases in government power take us in the direction of all 3. Where we end up, as I said above, is anyone’s guess, but I don’t want any of them. I prefer freedom, thank you. Unfortunately for me, we are already considerably fascist. Hoover and FDR gave us a big push in that direction, and Bush and Obama have pushed ahead further still. And with the bailouts and more government ownership of industry, we have partial socialism as well. So, the tea-baggers name calling may not be super-precise, but so what? They have the basic idea correct. Obama (like Bush before him) is taking the country away from freedom, and pushing it toward government control.

    Just a couple of additional comments to help you. 1) The term “heavily-regulated capitalist economy” is an oxymoron. 2) You say, “I’d also think we’d agree that history has shown that when businesses run without regulation, it is almost always at the expense of the public welfare”. actually, it is when business is run WITH much regulation, it is done at the expense of the public welfare. In a democracy (which we have been since the Constitution died, well over 100 years ago), big businesses buy the regulations they want via campaign contributions and lobbying. These regulations are generally designed to hinder competitors. Of course, they always have some pretense about “protecting the public”, but this is almost always nonsense. Ok, enough.

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