British people have a great way to understand teabaggers. Just look at the BNP.

Generation_D: indignant
sure of themselves
scared
angry
intolerant
not self aware
not well informed
often white
often old or middle aged
cognitive dissonance a common theme, example, "get federal government out of my medicare"

and as has been pointed out, magically appeared en mass on 1/20/2009, though all the conditions they say they are protesting have existed for years before.

The one's I know (and I know several) are the same people who, during the Bush years, said it's treason to question a President, especially during wartime.

Wow. Another thread about the Tea Party that lives in its own reality-free fantasy world. I thought all the Digg kids went to reddit...

Cagey B: British people have a great way to understand teabaggers. Just look at the BNP.

Nativism makes a little more sense in Europe; here, a bunch of old white people complain about "their country" that their great-great-grandparents stole from the natives.

Asa Phelps: It sounds to me like they understand it just fine.

Agreed:

"Traditionally there is only one nationally imposed tax - federal income tax - which is designed to pay for those functions that must be carried out by national government. Resistance to the Obama healthcare reforms is as passionate as it is precisely because it imposes a federal requirement to purchase health insurance which seems to contravene the basic economic freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.  The BBC obviously finds it impossible to believe that ordinary people could actually take issues like this seriously. (They can only be racists or hillibilly know-nothings.) The Corporation  really ought to encourage its correspondents to get out more and talk to some of the articulate Americans who don't spend their lives in liberal salons."

That's ok, the Tea Party Movement doesn't understand the origin of the Tea Party either. Hint, just because you didn't win doesn't mean you aren't represented.

Sounds like the BBC is spot on.

Cagey B: British people have a great way to understand teabaggers. Just look at the BNP.

Came here to say this. The Tea Party is the BNP but stupider and more popular.

Racist is as racist does.

See she is falling into a very stupid trap.. that of taking everyone at their own stated face value rather than looking at what they do and say. Just because the Tea Party declares itself to be a politically independent group only interested in tax and sensible limits on government does not mean that this is true. It is not journalism to just parrot people's press releases as the silly article seems to demand.

In a British context this is like defending the BNP (British national party) because after all its stated mission is to be a 'patriotic, democratic alternative to the old parties that have wrecked our great country.' rather than seeing through to the racist neo-fascist puigfarkers beneath this marketing skin.

GAT_00 (favorite) 2010-09-07 06:58:17 PM the BBC sets about the American Tea Party Movement as if it were a cross between the Klu Klux Klan and the German neo-fascist brigade

Harsh, but on the right track.
=============================================

It's a sad pity that our media doesn't portray them like that.

Because they're right...

Is it just me, or do more and more persuasive articles use name-calling, shock-value logic? "If you believe in this, then you're a fascist/hippie/traitor." I sincerely wish I could backhand these lazy writers with little intellect to rely on such shoddy technique of rhetoric and writing. And it's even worse as they work for media sources. I guess they're just smart enough to bang on keyboards, and dumb enough to swallow whatever they're told to write.

GAT_00: Yet they were 'created' immediately after Obama came into office and lowered taxes for 95% of working Americans.

That is very similar to the original Tea Party, actually. The dumping of the tea followed a reduction in the overall taxes on tea.

Previously, Dutch smugglers had the cheapest tea because they paid no taxes, and they were the primary supplier of tea to the colonies. The Tea Act reduced taxes throughout all British territories and allowed the British East India company to sell directly to the colonies without a middleman, which meant they could now undercut the Dutch. This reignited furor over a long-existing excise tax that the colonists had to pay on British tea.

Antithetical Inquiry: Is it just me, or do more and more persuasive articles use name-calling, shock-value logic? "If you believe in this, then you're a fascist/hippie/traitor." I sincerely wish I could backhand these lazy writers with little intellect to rely on such shoddy technique of rhetoric and writing. And it's even worse as they work for media sources. I guess they're just smart enough to bang on keyboards, and dumb enough to swallow whatever they're told to write.

Yes, those people who just namecall, bluster and generalize to make their points sure are annoying.

Let me explain it to them.
You know the BNP and the EDL?
Imagine those guys except not as organized or intelligent.

Generation_D:
indignant
sure of themselves
scared
angry
intolerant
not self aware
not well informed
often white...
cognitive dissonance a common theme...


Nice summary of FARK.

"This is not some funny redneck eccentricity: it is fundamental to the Constitution which gives individual states much greater sovereignty than the countries of the European Union enjoy."

The Telegraph: Europe's Bizarro world version of Fox News- exactly the same, and yet competely different.

Antithetical Inquiry: Is it just me, or do more and more persuasive articles use name-calling, shock-value logic? "If you believe in this, then you're a fascist/hippie/traitor." I sincerely wish I could backhand these lazy writers with little intellect to rely on such shoddy technique of rhetoric and writing. And it's even worse as they work for media sources. I guess they're just smart enough to bang on keyboards, and dumb enough to swallow whatever they're told to write.

THIS. So much this. I've been wondering lately what they're teaching in Journalism school.

FilmKitty: Antithetical Inquiry: Is it just me, or do more and more persuasive articles use name-calling, shock-value logic? "If you believe in this, then you're a fascist/hippie/traitor." I sincerely wish I could backhand these lazy writers with little intellect to rely on such shoddy technique of rhetoric and writing. And it's even worse as they work for media sources. I guess they're just smart enough to bang on keyboards, and dumb enough to swallow whatever they're told to write.

THIS. So much this. I've been wondering lately what they're teaching in Journalism school.

The irony here is I'm predominantly a fiction writer, but read "The Art of Rhetoric" in my brief college life to help out in my debate technique.

UNC_Samurai:
Cagey B: British people have a great way to understand teabaggers. Just look at the BNP.

Nativism makes a little more sense in Europe; here, a bunch of old white people complain about "their country" that their great-great-grandparents stole from the natives.

Oh we did the exact same thing in the UK. Moved in and killed all the natives, or even worse, made them move to Brittany and Cornwall. It just happened a millennium or so earlier.

Rockin' and a-rollin', splishin' and a-splashin'

Generation_D: indignant
sure of themselves
scared
angry
intolerant
not self aware
not well informed
often white
often old or middle aged
cognitive dissonance a common theme, example, "get federal government out of my medicare"

and as has been pointed out, magically appeared en mass on 1/20/2009, though all the conditions they say they are protesting have existed for years before.

1/20/09 | NEVER FORGET