I have been trying to persuade the S.O. for this entire week that we need to head up into the mountains in Tennessee. She resisted it all week-till she called me up yesterday and said she wants to go.
So off we go today- I had to put the details together less than twelve hours ago by phone and internet. One of these days Alice! One of these days!
Speaking of internet-I’m not taking a computer with me. Going to try other pursuits this weekend.
In the meantime-why not read Matt Taibbi’s most excellent article about the Teabag nation-which can be found here. Its a great read-made even better by a lot of great quotes that prove the “movement” has no ideas, not that it ever did have any. Lots of money quotes but this one probably epitomizes the frustration of those of us who see through the charade the best:
You look into the eyes of these people when you talk to them and they genuinely don’t see what the problem is. It’s no use explaining that while nobody likes the idea of having to get the government to tell restaurant owners how to act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the tool Americans were forced to use to end a monstrous system of apartheid that for 100 years was the shame of the entire Western world. But all that history is not real to Tea Partiers; what’s real to them is the implication in your question that they’re racists, and to them that is the outrage, and it’s an outrage that binds them together. They want desperately to believe in the one-size-fits-all, no-government theology of Rand Paul because it’s so easy to understand. At times, their desire to withdraw from the brutally complex global economic system that is an irrevocable fact of our modern life and get back to a simpler world that no longer exists is so intense, it breaks your heart.
There is a lot more. Read it! And have a nice weekend.
