Daily Kos Week in Review: What’s Norwegian for ‘Tea Party’?
One week ago, two stories dominated the news. In Norway, a madman had murdered dozens, while in the U.S., the debt-limit debate raged. In Kosland, however, the Norwegian terrorist attacks and the Washington wrangling were to a large extent the same story, since both centered on, you guessed it, out-of-control right-wing extremism. And Anders Breivik wasn't even the most despicable person or entity to which Kossacks likened the Tea Party this past week — see below for the disgusting details. As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym. Leftwing Noise Machine: Fear unites Breivik, tea-partiers …[V]isit a Tea Party website…and you find the very same obsessions that haunted Breivik: fear of being emasculated by feminism, fear of Muslims, fear of nonwhites, fear of multiculturalism, fear of complex economies, fear of science, fear of educated people. Fear… …The Rightwing Noise Machine is belching huge volumes of smoke trying to deal with the obvious connections between Breivik and Tea Party ideology. But it’s all rather hapless…If you have to take pains to distinguish yourself from a man who blew up Norway’s parliament, got a gun and killed dozens of “liberal” teenagers, because otherwise the public might get confused, then maybe you’re espousing the wrong things… Is Breivik insane? Of course he is. Only a lunatic kills dozens of innocent people. And that what’s so chilling: his crazy violent views are not very different from Breitbart’s, or Ferah’s, or O’Reilly’s, or Bachmann’s. And we must never let them forget that. Swellsman: The Tea Party is short on impulse control …Sometimes it seems to me that America is becoming more and more a nation of adolescents. Even scarier, there seems to be an increasing likelihood that these adolescents have actually seized control of the country. The Teabaggers, or course, are the most visible example of this… Of course, there is always the danger of violence when adolescent passion is wed to political causes. We saw that with the Weatherman bombings a generation ago. We witnessed it to a tragic degree just four days ago, in Oslo. But as terrible — and as tragic — as sudden outbreaks of violence can be, their capacity to do real and lasting damage to any nation as a whole is as nothing compared to the amount of damage that can be wrought when adolescent passion is able to seize actual political power… Bare Left: The Tea Party is basically the KKK… …[T]he Tea Party…is really nothing more than the Fourth Ku Klux Klan dressed up as political rhetoric and “anti-government” fervor… John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor (et tu, Jewish guy?), and the rest of that deplorable gang of all-white Republican hate-mongers who call themselves the “Leadership,” are just as guilty, though perhaps they are not quite as “in touch with their feelings” as some of the cruder, more raucous elements they share a bed with. Nevertheless, they all share the same idea: No black man shall be raised to a position of importance and succeed. Not if they can help it… Vyan: …is more dangerous than al-Qaeda… …These people are absolutely off their NUT. Reason doesn't work with these people. Facts Don't Matter… And we thought al Qeada was dangerous to the nation? Not hardly compared to these people… Steven D: …and identifies with a certain Old Testament figure …I imagine [Tea Party congressmen] identify most strongly with as Samson in the Temple of the Philistines, destroying his enemies in a bloody mass murder in order to save his own “people.” They don't look at liberals, Democrats, African Americans, Hispanics, the disabled or members of the LGBT community as part of America, part of the people who need saving. They imagine that government is rigged to benefit these groups and harm their own followers, the “Real Americans” as Sarah Palin so unabashedly called them… Kos: If Obama, House Dems win next year, watch out for the bloody backlash …[W]hat'll happen in 2012 if Obama is reelected and the Democrats retake the House, as is more likely than not? This frothy mix of paranoia, gun fetishization and the belief that violence is a solution will inevitably lead to violence… Mark Sumner: The GOP is a hate group …[Republicans] just hate you. Honestly hate you. Of course, they hate President Obama even more. A thousand blazing supernovas with a side order of big bang? Barely an ember next to how much they hate him, and really, they're completely honest about that. The Tea Party formerly-known-as-Republicans is all about the hate. …[T]hey've done the math — they hate the president much, much more than they love the country. By a factor of, oh, twenty zillion to one… …If the economy flags, if jobs are lost, if there is blood in the streets, its all dandy so long as these guys can look over and see that this will hurt Obama…
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Daily Kos Week in Review: What’s Norwegian for ‘Tea Party’?
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on July 31, 2011. Filed under