tea party patriots

Reality is fuzzy for Bachmann

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I’m really ashamed that this woman is even electable in this country.

“The media wants you to believe that tea party patriots are toothless hillbillies,” said Bachmann, who instead cast the tea partiers as intelligent, educated and professional people. “This is a very sophisticated crowd. And then these charges from Democrats that they were spit upon, that there were racial epithets — there’s no one who saw anything.”

– Michele Bachmann

(source)

Sure, “toothless hillbillies” is over the top (and I haven’t seen the media make that accusation, anyway), but to say that they are “intelligent, educated, and professional people” is just as over-the-top as the hillbilly comment.

I’m sure there are some intelligent, well-educated tea partiers (well… I assume there are), but if there are, they are being grossly overshadowed by their ignorant (and sometimes bigoted… and sometimes borderline psychotic) counterparts… and it’s not the fault of the media.

Michele Bachmann fits neatly in the “ignorant” slot, though at the risk of being accused of ad hominem attacks, she’s been said to fit neatly in the “bat-shit crazy” slot, too. Bachmann’s ignorance, lies, and misguided rhetoric combine to demonstrate a perfect example of one of the big problems in our country.

That she actually got elected is equally dire.

(via)

The Satisfying Purity of Indignation

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From Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech (emphasis mine)…

The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

Thanks to M. Duss at the Wonk Room for pointing out the highlighted text. Duss says about the highlighted bit…

That’s a wonderfully succinct description of the simplistic and destructive ideology that drove George W. Bush’s foreign policy, and which Bill Kristol is still trying heartily to convince himself and others hasn’t been discredited. This isn’t to say that Obama hasn’t retained some troubling elements of Bush’s national security policy, which progressives will continue to challenge and debate. But I think it’s hugely important to recognize that the key foreign policy conceit of the Bush years, the idea that America is in an existential struggle with a monolithic, undifferentiated Islamofascist other, has been discarded. And America — and the world — is safer for that.

I’ll go a step further and say that it applies to many of the “Tea Party Patriots” and their vitriolic outrage toward anything and everything surrounding Obama, non-Christian religions, homosexuality, abortion, and a number of other issues. Their arguments and manufactured controversies, mostly vapid, provide for them the “satisfying purity of indignation” that rational thinking and critical analysis do not.

Hardly befitting someone claiming to be a “patriot.”