My blog’s been ‘dead’ since the end of May, and yet still JD has the burning, corrosive jealousy going on.

It’s just beginning to look obsessive, rather than merely sad, don’tcha think?

After the previous two stolen elections, it was surely a relief that there was a clear winner. Perhaps awarding Obama a Nobel peace prize after just 2 weeks in office was premature, but the guy is at least making a difference.

If you feel the way you do about me and what I said, it’s probably a good idea if we don’t bother with these exchanges and articles about politics which overlap and mutually reference.

Further to that, I think it has become crystal clear that you and other ‘libertarian’ bloggers hold us in low esteem, and think us only out for stats and blog traffic. In view of that, I suggest that you take us off your blogroll. We don’t want or need any of this bullshit.

So don’t insult us anymore and just fuck off, ok?

As someone living rural North Carolina, I feel particularly qualified to describe the Tea Party.

The members of the Tea Party are most simply this: republicans pissed at Republicans*. For one reason or another, they feel abandoned or betrayed by Republicans. Some of them never were Republicans but are generally conservative or conservative/libertarian. Others were formerly Republicans because they believed that party most resembled the philosophy of the founders and the strictest interpretation of the Constitution**. This belief of theirs has been eroding since Vietnam and Nixon and was destroyed during the two Bushes’ presidencies. There are relatively small pockets of genuine libertarians (who founded the movement, ironically) and liberal democratic types.

What I think of the Tea Party is this:

They represent America’s oldest political roots. Some of them still venerate both of the American confederacies***. Some of these are deeply patriotic and well read in American political history (often citing the Federalist Papers in conversation.) They romanticize the Good Old Days. They want the gold standard back, the abolition of income tax and dozens of federal agencies, and strict adherence to the Constitution for the congress and the president. I think, as influential political movements go, they are listless and rather petty in both internal power struggles and endless bickering with race organizations like the NAACP. This movement is a fragment of the GOP fused with libertarians on the conservative end of the libertarian spectrum. It may well come to replace the dying GOP but is hardly the glorious revival of the founders’ simple design for the American government.

I’m disappointed by this, personally, because I found my way into libertarianism by reading Jefferson, Paine, and Henry and I’d like to see their philosophies represented by more competent advocates. I have a sentimental attachment to that old America like so many of the tea-partiers. However, I no longer romanticize that time. It was probably the largest step in the right direction history has ever taken but it was less than half perfect. Because of the time and place, these enlightened men failed to show any respect for women and coolly rationalized their practice of chattel slavery. Furthermore, they barely managed to resist violating the Constitution by the time the ink on its pages had dried.

What we need in America is a modern movement that takes the best of Enlightenment America and improves and modifies it. The Tea Party might have been begun with this intention but quickly outgrew anyone’s ability to control its trajectory. It probably does represent the new republican* movement, but I don’t think I’ll be voting for them any time soon.

*The word ‘republican’ with a lower-case R is the literal sense of the word whereas ‘Republican’ is the political party which may or may not actually be ‘republican.’

**Such a person is not necessarily a self-described libertarian but is almost always the same thing in the basic sense.

***For those unaware of the first confederacy in America, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation .

I kept it reasoned. I asked harsh questions and made difficult points. What a shame it has come to this.

I’ll bow out now, there’s no sense in continuing this charade, and your tactic of using moral equivalents is just too depressing to contemplate.

Of you go, join hands with your ring-a-ring-a-roses circle of faux libertarian hypocrites and bullshitters. Obo and the like. People who claim to have the last, final, definitive word on everything political, except when we speak, and suddenly it is US who claim a monopoly on the truth.

Thanks Bella. Thanks a bunch. I really thought you a cracking lass, too.

I might well ask what’s your motivation, for seeing accusations where there are none?

And if you don’t think your patronising little ‘you were insulted and wounded’ remark wasn’t a blatant attempt to discredit my argument, in one of the most underhanded tactics I’ve ever witnessed you using, then I think you ought to seriously reconsider who you’re calling emotional and blindly ignorant.

Furthermore, you clearly haven’t noted that all of my blog posts pertaining to the US are labelled with ‘US-bashing,’ whether they have anything to do with bashing the US or not. It’s such a feature that it’s a fucking category, not a tag I threw on there for this post alone. You wouldn’t understand that, of course, considering the absolute shit state of the code and design of your own blog.

And finally, here’s my honesty: I was addressing your points. The fact that you take every disagreement as a deep and irrational criticism of your Solomon-like self says a lot more about you than it does about me. You have some nerve complaining about fuck yous and abuse as well, as if you don’t drop that on every commenter who dares to disagree with your monopoly on correctness. And you seem to think I would consider it an insult to be lumped in with CF and Obo. Actually, I consider it an honour.

So on their behalf and mine, seriously, fuck off.

Secondly, the non-Black electorate that voted for Obama did so for largely emotional single-issue reasons: Some non-Hispanic Whites voted for Obama because they hated Bush and were determined not to vote Republican. Some Whites, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, voted for Obama because he is Black, and they thought it would be cool to have a Black president. Some Hispanics voted for Obama in reaction to the anti-immigration stand of some Republicans. If even a part of those non-Black Obama voters had considered other issues, as they are doing now, they would not have voted for him then. Now that those voters are beginning to see the concrete effects of Obama’s policies, they may not vote to keep the Democrat majority in the House, and perhaps not in the Senate, leaving Obama hamstrung for the next two years. That is not to say that he will not win reelection–Clinton did in much the same situation. But it illustrates that Obama was not–and certainly is not now–a demi-God to all those who voted for him.