The Tea Party Stomp

I've said a lot of things about Tea Party supporters, but not that they were violent psychopaths. The Tea Party's candidates are belligerently crazy enough for everyone, what with Sharron Angle and her "Second Amendment remedies" to virtually all of life's complaints.

Having said that, I inherently distrust the judgement of elderly white people who wear tricorner hats in public. When I see shit like that, I understand where their economic positions (see "Government hands off of Medicare") actually come from. They're little more than Trekkies without the sex appeal of someone who waits in line for hours to get Walter Koenig's autograph, but their world view is every bit as demented.

They don't have any easily recognizable beliefs. They want to cut spending on everything but Social Security, Medicare (two hugely socialistic programs that they benefit from more than most) and defense without recognizing that Social Security, Medicare and defense pretty much is everything. If they can be categorized as anything, it would be the childish wing of the Republican Party. I'm sure that they mean well, but they have no earthly idea of what they're talking about. They aren't exactly conservatives and they certainly aren't libertarians, they just ... are, which is what populism historically has been.

The Tea Party has spent over a year fighting off the impression that they're punchy retards, only to see all of that hard work pissed away on Tuesday night in Kentucky. Some hyperliberal harpie from Moveon.org stormed Rand Paul's motorcade, causing two of his supporters to wrestle her to the ground and Dr. Paul's county coordinator to step on her shoulder and head.

If you overlook the humorous aspect of a young woman requiring three adult male Tea Partiers to take her down, it looks pretty bad. After all, a head stomping is a good way to get someone pretty seriously hurt. Then, of course, are the optics of having three men beating up a girl, which rarely reflects well on a political movement.

It was really only a matter of time before something like happened. Anger and stupidity are a combustible combination, and American politics has an abundance of both of late.

I've grown to heartily distrust most political bloggers in the last few years because they've proven themselves to be full of shit over and over again. Republican bloggers go apoplectic when Obama does something that they were fine with Bush doing, and liberals are fine with Obama continuing the policies that made them howl under Bush. Not only are they liars, they're unforgivably bad ones.

That's why I wasn't particularly surprised when I started reading about the story in the Teapublican blogosphere and found that they were active apologists for Captain Stompy, Tim Proffitt. When they aren't actually saying that Lauren Valle was asking for it, they're saying that it's only a big deal because "it's a slow news day." My personal favorite is "What about the SEIU?", which ignores the fact that they might want to consider themselves intellectually and morally superior to some mobbed-up union thug.

Assholes. They're all assholes. If you've ever wondered why I have always maintained that you shouldn't get your news from fucking bloggers, now you know. The overwhelming majority of them aren't merely partisan hacks, they're remorseless fucking liars that justify the very worst aspects of the human spirit, so long as they're associated with their party label. They're no different from the gang over at the Daily Kos and they're not even pretending to be, anymore.

In a lot of ways, I'm glad that we're getting to see it now.


h/t to RightGirl.