Even Frank Rich can see the obvious; what's their excuse?
Frank Rich, of all people:
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of "traitor" and "off with his head" at Palin rallies as Obama's election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry's kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to "You lie!" piercing the president's address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama's first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It's not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend's abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan "Take our country back!," these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can't. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven't had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that's their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that's their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can't emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can't pretend that we're talking about "isolated incidents" or a "fringe" utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.
Look, if
Frank Rich can figure it out, I'm not sure what to say to some of my conservative neighbors here at Sciforums. Okay? Because
Frank Rich is an idiot. He should have stayed an art critic. To the other, his years of reviewing Broadway have helped him bury the obvious in turns of phrase.
It's not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend's abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan "Take our country back!," these are the people they want to take the country back from.
I quoted that a second time to make sure the Tea Party and its allies are clear on what they're missing, and nearly everyone else is already aware of.
This isn't about health care. Or taxes. Or the size of government. This is about cultural supremacism. Once upon a time, normalcy had some certain outward indicators. Normal was white, heterosexual, and nominally Christian. For decades, now, that spiteful grip on social acceptability has been under assault. This assertion of normalcy has in the last sixty years lost its efforts to keep nonwhites out of decent schools, women pregnant and out of the workforce, gays out of sight, and, above all, their own sense of what is normal as an iron-fisted king of the hill. They are running out of people to hate, counting down to having zero groups that they might arbitrarily kick off the island, or push away from the table. Their religion is in disarray; their economy lay in rubble; their principles of justice are a mockery around the world. After how many years, these people have just
had it. Not only did we elect a black man to the
White House, we didn't elect someone with a familiar name like Bill Cosby or Frederick Douglass. Those names, they could have handled. Good people, even for blacks. Christian, American,
familiar names. Black parents. The kind of people you can look
good for supporting, helping, or admiring. No, we just
had to go and elect a guy with a funny-sounding name. And
nothing they could do to scare everyone could stop it. And therein lies the key. Once upon a time, it didn't annoy the conscience to be racist because
everybody was racist. But one day these folks woke up and the stereotypes didn't work. The waffle boxes didn't work. The secret-Muslim conspiracy theory didn't work. It got to the point where
Democrats like Joe Biden and Harry Reid were defining the edge of what is acceptable racism. This formerly "normal" class felt as if they were cast out in the cold, and even though that would have made them
actually normal, they were infuriated. How
dare they be treated like everyone else!
And so it has been. The election of an educated, well-spoken, capable black man with a name they wouldn't give to their kids was the last straw. It was the seventh sign of the "normal" people's apocalypse. Suddenly they, and everyone who was dancing along with them trying to pretend that they, too, were part of this privileged class, needed to do something. And quick.
Which is why we heard about "white slavery", or why a bunch of people who go throwing bricks through the windows of people they don't like could possibly throw the word "Nazi" around with a straight face. Hell, up in Seattle, a Tea Party advocate assaulted a woman who rightfully tore down a flyer. I mean, when the argument is, "How dare you outrage me by not letting the people I support break the law," the argument is pretty desperate. I've sat through people's attempts to explain how one is specifically
not racist because they use racist arguments, terminology, and accusations against their political opponents. In other words, the immense stupidity of the Tea Party and its sympathizers is the result of a comfortable ignorance suddenly finding itself under intense pressure.
No, really: Is it any mystery why the same people who scream, "Give me back my country!" didn't do anything until Obama was elected? Even if you want to pitch about the insanely stupid rhetoric that throwing racist arguments around somehow proves they're not a bunch of half-witted bigots, you still have to concede that their sudden alarm matches an American pattern.
These folks had the comfort of believing themselves a majority. The same majority that didn't prepare for international terrorism. The same majority that didn't see the obvious dead ends in their rube goldberg economics. The same majority that didn't foresee the Iraq quagmire, or that was surprised when someone finally hit the U.S. in 2001.
In other words, there is a reason we in Washington state waited until
after a Tacoma boy was sexually mutilated by a mental patient who should never have been released before trying to fashion laws addressing such problems. There is a reason why communities all across America are waiting for someone to die before they put in a stop sign or traffic signal at a certain intersections. And no matter what we might say about the Catholic Church's complicity in the widespread abuse and exploitation of children, there is a reason some folks were only surprised by the fact that so many people were surprised when the scandal broke yet again several years ago.
And there is a reason why the Tea Party waited until their day was
over before crawling out from under their rocks. Just like there is a reason nobody thought to look in a dictionary until
after the rest of America and the world were laughing hysterically at the phrase, "tea bag".
Acting after the fact is an American tradition inherited from old Europe. Indeed, we had to place a limit on how we might behave after the fact in our Constitution.
For years, progressives at home and abroad have criticized American intelligence. And plenty have resented that criticism; there is no shortage of third-world countries they might point to and say, "Well, if you're so unhappy here, why don't you go live in _____?" But what we see in the Tea Party, that ugly, cruel spirit not of dissent but rather of infantile temper tantrum carried on by alleged adults, is actually an American tradition dating at least to the 1920s, though some might suggest the 1860s, or even the 1770s.
The Tea Party and its allies are examples of that hideous ignorance and mean spirit so many have criticized of Americans over the years. The America they want back is one in which the white, heterosexual, nominal Christian could expect the comfort of sociopolitical advantage. And now that they are expected to stand equal to their neighbors, they feel oppressed.
Poor them. They ought to consider themselves lucky since, now that it's their turn, they only are expected to be
equal, instead of second-class. They are the embodiment of America's shameful ignorance. They are the spirit of its toxic hatred. They are a disgrace upon America.
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Notes:
Rich, Frank. "The Rage Is Not About Health Care". The New York Times. March 28, 2010; page WK10. NYTimes.com. March 29, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html
