at long last, a politics post!
julival, this one's for you.
Basically, nothing is new under the sun. The tea party, those rascally "grass roots" conservatives who are currently shaking up American politics, are giving both major parties a scare. But the tea party is nothing more than the latest incarnation of the Oh Shit We're Doomed! brand of conservatism that rears its ugly, paranoid head every generation. The parallels of 2010 to 1994 are almost too obvious, too easy, but that's because they're true, I think. In 1994 there was a Democrat in the White House, commonly called by his opponents "the most liberal president ever," a Democratically controlled Congress, and an economic downtown. All this after a long period of Republican government.
Of course. there are differences. The economy is much worse now than it was in 1994, we're currently engaged in two divisive, draining foreign wars (though combat operations have "officially" wound down in one of them) and, perhaps most obviously, the president is black. But if you take out these things, and plug in various variables from the Republican campaign of 1994, it's hard to miss the similarity in messages: the country is headed down a path to ruin, our government is expanding exponentially in size, the national debt is growing so terribly large that it will cripple our children, intrusions into the daily life of Real Americans (read: white, middle and upper class, Christian) are becoming intolerable, the moral fiber of society is being eroded, degeneracy is beginning to get the upper hand in our culture, and we have to act now or all is lost!
The same things were said in 1994 as they are being said in 2010, though some of the details have changed. Back then, of course, "secular humanism" was the biggest boogeyman, because Clinton's hippy-run government hated Real Christians and was bent on segregating them from civil society. But the most glaring thing that has not changed is that all of this alleged government overreach and intrusion, as well as the economic hard times, started on the Republican watch and were largely the result of Republican policies, while the conservatives of both 1994 and 2010 were to a large extent blind to it during the time when Republicans were in power. They only started screaming and demanding change and threatening violence once Democrats were elected and started picking up the pieces from years of failed Republican governance.
Coming back to the race issue, it's fairly obvious to everyone who isn't a tea party insider or a conservative hack that race plays a big part in the tea party's vitriolic anger. This was, however, true in 1994 as well, though perhaps it wasn't so obvious. Back then, instead of a very visible single individual to focus their hate and prejudice upon (Obama), conservatives had a whole class of people to target: those on welfare. Political winds have changed in sixteen years, and there's nary a word said about welfare reform these days, but it was a big issue back in 1994. Conservatives saw, to their unending horror, seething masses of poor welfare queens and their brood of shiftless, lazy offspring, sucking on the teat of government and draining The Hardworking American Taxpayer (read: white and middle/upper class) dry. This was embodied in the Contract With America's proposed "Personal Responsibility Act," which, couched in language of discouraging illegitimacy and teen pregnancy, was aimed at punishing the poor and minorities for, frankly, being poor and minorities.
Nowadays Obama has become the Big Scary Black Guy in the collective conservative conscience, out to force his attentions (read: impose "socialism") on the delicate white womanhood that is The Hardworking American Taxpayer (again, the white middle and upper class). I don't think I need to go into the deeper psychological issues at hand here, because the racial fear is perfectly patent, in spite of the shrill cries of "we're not racists!" Along with this there runs in the tea party a very common strain of opposition to Those Dirty Mexicans...excuse me, I mean illegal immigrants, who are, if conservatives are to be believed, out to turn America into a Spanish-speaking third-world country where white Anglophones aren't welcome.
But, really, none of this is different in substance from the conservative wackiness of the 1990s; it's only different in form. A big scary government, big scary enemies foreign and domestic, big scary gay people with a hetero-hating agenda, big scary people of color, big scary masses of poor people stealing jobs and money from Real Hardworking Americans (read...alright, you get it by this point, eh?)...I'll just call them collectively the Big Scaries. And those Big Scaries prey on the minds of the unloved, besmirched, downtrodden white middle class, whose undue suffering at their hands never ceases. The Big Scaries of 2010, as in 1994, are the collective scapegoat for everyone who has lost a job, lost their savings, lost the value of their retirement fund, lost their sense of institutional superiority over everyone who doesn't fit into that White, Protestant, Socially Traditional, Middle Class mold.
The healthcare system is broken? Blame the uninsured and the government.
The job market (and every other market) is in a crisis? Blame the poor, the immigrants, and the government.
The popular culture is vulgar, narcissistic, and promiscuous? Blame the gays, the feminists, the secularists, and the government.
Big Scaries have been around since the beginning of the Republic, and conservatives have always responded to them with fear, paranoia, and hate. In the 1790s and 1800s it was French revolutionaries. In the 1840s it was Catholic immigrants. In the 1850s it was (in the North) everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line or (in the South) every black person plus Northern "agitators." In the 1870s through the 1910s, it was (once again) the Irish, the Chinese, and every other non-WASPy immigrant group. In the 1930s and 1950s it was Communists. In the 1960s it was hippies, black radicals, and antiwar demonstrators. The tea party is nothing more than the latest conservative reaction to the Big Scaries. It is neither new nor unique, and its message is merely the same old fears and prejudices wrapped up in shiny new packaging. If the election of 2010 turns into a tea party victory followed by all manner of attempts to punish and marginalize the Big Scaries, don't be surprised. John Adams and the Federalists, horrified at the idea of French radicals and sympathizers in America, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. It's been 212 years, but little has progressed in this regard.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. There will always be tea partiers of one stripe or another, whether they be Federalists, Know-Nothings, McCarthyites, or modern day "grass-roots" conservatives. They will always be around to filter their failures and hardships through a lens of hatred and paranoia, and will always be around to peddle the resulting wares as something new, angry, and glorious.
The thing to keep in mind is that they always fail in the end when cooler heads and hearts eventually prevail. I have no doubt that,.though the tea party may triumph and it will indeed be a painful time afterward, they too will fail in the end.
Basically, nothing is new under the sun. The tea party, those rascally "grass roots" conservatives who are currently shaking up American politics, are giving both major parties a scare. But the tea party is nothing more than the latest incarnation of the Oh Shit We're Doomed! brand of conservatism that rears its ugly, paranoid head every generation. The parallels of 2010 to 1994 are almost too obvious, too easy, but that's because they're true, I think. In 1994 there was a Democrat in the White House, commonly called by his opponents "the most liberal president ever," a Democratically controlled Congress, and an economic downtown. All this after a long period of Republican government.
Of course. there are differences. The economy is much worse now than it was in 1994, we're currently engaged in two divisive, draining foreign wars (though combat operations have "officially" wound down in one of them) and, perhaps most obviously, the president is black. But if you take out these things, and plug in various variables from the Republican campaign of 1994, it's hard to miss the similarity in messages: the country is headed down a path to ruin, our government is expanding exponentially in size, the national debt is growing so terribly large that it will cripple our children, intrusions into the daily life of Real Americans (read: white, middle and upper class, Christian) are becoming intolerable, the moral fiber of society is being eroded, degeneracy is beginning to get the upper hand in our culture, and we have to act now or all is lost!
The same things were said in 1994 as they are being said in 2010, though some of the details have changed. Back then, of course, "secular humanism" was the biggest boogeyman, because Clinton's hippy-run government hated Real Christians and was bent on segregating them from civil society. But the most glaring thing that has not changed is that all of this alleged government overreach and intrusion, as well as the economic hard times, started on the Republican watch and were largely the result of Republican policies, while the conservatives of both 1994 and 2010 were to a large extent blind to it during the time when Republicans were in power. They only started screaming and demanding change and threatening violence once Democrats were elected and started picking up the pieces from years of failed Republican governance.
Coming back to the race issue, it's fairly obvious to everyone who isn't a tea party insider or a conservative hack that race plays a big part in the tea party's vitriolic anger. This was, however, true in 1994 as well, though perhaps it wasn't so obvious. Back then, instead of a very visible single individual to focus their hate and prejudice upon (Obama), conservatives had a whole class of people to target: those on welfare. Political winds have changed in sixteen years, and there's nary a word said about welfare reform these days, but it was a big issue back in 1994. Conservatives saw, to their unending horror, seething masses of poor welfare queens and their brood of shiftless, lazy offspring, sucking on the teat of government and draining The Hardworking American Taxpayer (read: white and middle/upper class) dry. This was embodied in the Contract With America's proposed "Personal Responsibility Act," which, couched in language of discouraging illegitimacy and teen pregnancy, was aimed at punishing the poor and minorities for, frankly, being poor and minorities.
Nowadays Obama has become the Big Scary Black Guy in the collective conservative conscience, out to force his attentions (read: impose "socialism") on the delicate white womanhood that is The Hardworking American Taxpayer (again, the white middle and upper class). I don't think I need to go into the deeper psychological issues at hand here, because the racial fear is perfectly patent, in spite of the shrill cries of "we're not racists!" Along with this there runs in the tea party a very common strain of opposition to Those Dirty Mexicans...excuse me, I mean illegal immigrants, who are, if conservatives are to be believed, out to turn America into a Spanish-speaking third-world country where white Anglophones aren't welcome.
But, really, none of this is different in substance from the conservative wackiness of the 1990s; it's only different in form. A big scary government, big scary enemies foreign and domestic, big scary gay people with a hetero-hating agenda, big scary people of color, big scary masses of poor people stealing jobs and money from Real Hardworking Americans (read...alright, you get it by this point, eh?)...I'll just call them collectively the Big Scaries. And those Big Scaries prey on the minds of the unloved, besmirched, downtrodden white middle class, whose undue suffering at their hands never ceases. The Big Scaries of 2010, as in 1994, are the collective scapegoat for everyone who has lost a job, lost their savings, lost the value of their retirement fund, lost their sense of institutional superiority over everyone who doesn't fit into that White, Protestant, Socially Traditional, Middle Class mold.
The healthcare system is broken? Blame the uninsured and the government.
The job market (and every other market) is in a crisis? Blame the poor, the immigrants, and the government.
The popular culture is vulgar, narcissistic, and promiscuous? Blame the gays, the feminists, the secularists, and the government.
Big Scaries have been around since the beginning of the Republic, and conservatives have always responded to them with fear, paranoia, and hate. In the 1790s and 1800s it was French revolutionaries. In the 1840s it was Catholic immigrants. In the 1850s it was (in the North) everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line or (in the South) every black person plus Northern "agitators." In the 1870s through the 1910s, it was (once again) the Irish, the Chinese, and every other non-WASPy immigrant group. In the 1930s and 1950s it was Communists. In the 1960s it was hippies, black radicals, and antiwar demonstrators. The tea party is nothing more than the latest conservative reaction to the Big Scaries. It is neither new nor unique, and its message is merely the same old fears and prejudices wrapped up in shiny new packaging. If the election of 2010 turns into a tea party victory followed by all manner of attempts to punish and marginalize the Big Scaries, don't be surprised. John Adams and the Federalists, horrified at the idea of French radicals and sympathizers in America, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. It's been 212 years, but little has progressed in this regard.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. There will always be tea partiers of one stripe or another, whether they be Federalists, Know-Nothings, McCarthyites, or modern day "grass-roots" conservatives. They will always be around to filter their failures and hardships through a lens of hatred and paranoia, and will always be around to peddle the resulting wares as something new, angry, and glorious.
The thing to keep in mind is that they always fail in the end when cooler heads and hearts eventually prevail. I have no doubt that,.though the tea party may triumph and it will indeed be a painful time afterward, they too will fail in the end.