Bitter Tea

Why do the tea baggers behave the way they do? It doesn't make sense.

There are two general principals in economics and in sociology: People make rational choices and act in their own best interest.

We use these principals to predict behavior. So, if government programs help people, the people it helps will vote to sustain them. If laws, regulations and tax codes favor the few very wealthy Americans at the expense of the many middle-class or impoverished Americans, the many will do everything in their power to ensure these laws, regulations, and codes are revised to better serve the people.

So, why isn't this true? Why don't tea baggers want to tax the wealthy and fund Planned Parenthood and Social Security? It doesn't make sense; they are voting against their own best interests.

Unless they are playing a deeper game. And they are.

Tea baggers are everything we hate. They are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, proudly ignorant and unwilling to change. They have no place in the future of this, our American Life, and they know it. They know the day of gay-bashing, woman-hating, bigoted asshole-ery is dawning, and fast.

Unless they can stop it.

You know a good way to stop the progress of African and Hispanic Americans? Kill some jobs. Studies show that the jobs we are losing are low-level jobs that immigrants fill, and that black Americans have been disproportionately affected by unemployment (as have women, and Native Americans). The effects of job losses in these demographics are going to retard the progress we have made in minority rights and quality of life for years to come. This is not a small thing. It's an awful, awful thing. But effective if you hate Mexicans and black people.

For all their talk of hating government intervention that hasn't stopped them from inserting government squarely into the middle of every woman's womb taking away a woman's basic rights over her own body, and welp, that's a good way to send a very strong message. And that message is medieval. And I cannot stress strongly enough how hateful it is. There is not one person on this planet who supports anti-choice that cares about women. Not one. And they do not care about babies either. Progress never happens in countries where women are oppressed. 

It's also to their benefit and probably only to their benefit that the economy and government collapses. Because in a power vacuum, anyone can emerge. The powers that be did not include them. If everything falls apart, there is so much more room at the top, and those positions will go to those who are ready and eager and willing to burn down the village to run the hut.

Also, I think religion is always the language of home invasion.