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"Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party." — Illustration to the fifth chapter of 'Alice in Wonderland' by John Tenniel. (Wood engraving by Thomas Dalziel.)

Instead of pulling out and protesting, my advice to the tea baggers who can’t afford the expense ($549 per ticket and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare) of attending, in person, next month’s national tea-bagging convention is to use your new-found free time to simmer down your boiling kettle of blind populist rage for a sec, take a deep breath, and, using the rational (as opposed to emotional) part of your brain, wonder for a brief moment whether you’re being taken advantage of by this alleged movement you find yourself now steeped in.

Could it be possible, for instance, that you and your fellow hardworking, middle-class friends and family are not actually part of a grass-roots political movement, but instead have been co-opted by certain entrenched corporate interests (e.g., private health insurers, Wall Street investment banks, etc.) and their lobbying arms that are, for purely profit-driven reasons, diametrically opposed to the changes that were promised by the Obama campaign? Continued reading >

Scott Brown's victory party

Those who practice the politics of anger (a.k.a. populists) typically ignore the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” More than anything else, what the tea baggers wish for today is nothing short of a Khmer Rouge-style purge from the G.O.P. of any politician who, in the minds of Beck, Limbaugh et al., is insufficiently “conservative” (i.e., reflexively and virulently anti-Obama). By 2012, they’re likely to succeed; as a direct result, President Obama will win a landslide re-election and the Democrats will recover most, if not all, House and Senate seats lost in 2010. And concerning the special election in Massachusetts, the only a priori truth is this: If you believe the success of the Obama presidency (2009 — 201x) is dependent on whether the Democratic party enjoys a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, then you spend too much time reading political blogs and watching cable news talk shows.

Ooooh, scary!

When it comes to politics, I spend a considerable amount of time alternatively wondering whether I’m being too paranoid, on the one hand, or not paranoid enough, on the other. I’ve always believed that the events of tomorrow are wholly predictable so long as I’m paying sufficient attention to the events of today. Otherwise, history wouldn’t make any sense, it wouldn’t be linear, and couldn’t be captured as a narrative. And then there’s Andrew Sullivan, writing today that “a new, proto-fascist political party [is forming] on television in front of our very eyes,” referring to the Palin/Fox News alliance. 

Sullivan illustrates the difference between having a healthy sense of paranoia and being an alarmist. Palin-led fascism will not, I write with absolute conviction, replace representative democracy under the U.S. constitution. Demographics prove my point: the profile of the average Palin supporter (middle-aged, homogeneously white, uneducated, rural, evangelical) is shrinking. Meanwhile, the profile of the average Obama supporter (young, heterogeneously ethnic, educated, urban, atheist) is growing. In order for Palin to defeat Obama in a general presidential election, the reverse must be true. And in order to stage a coup d’état, she would need to seize command and control of the military (which seems, at best, all but impossible). So my advice to Sullivan is to stop hyperventilating, sit back, and enjoy the spectacle over at FNC for what it is: a political sideshow. Palin is the freak and Beck and his ilk are carnival barkers, willing to say anything just to get your attention.