The Victimization of Trent Humphries and the Tea Party

In case I haven't already made it clear, I got really tired of the Tea Party really quickly. Within minutes of their first televised rallies, it became apparent that these people had no idea whatsoever what they were talking about.

Perhaps what I resent most about these people is that they took fiscal discipline, something that serious people used to discuss in a serious way, and turned it into a refuge for morons, kooks and Revolutionary War fetishists. Worse, they don't even know what fiscal responsibility is. These assholes really believe that you can keep paying out Social Security and Medicare for the next twenty years, along with plotting the military overthrow of North Korea, Iran and fucking Norway, and still somehow save a buck.

These people are idiots and if, for whatever reason, you're still buying what they're selling, you're probably an idiot, too. The fact that the Tea Party represents "mainstream conservatism" only proves that mainstream conservatism can no longer be taken seriously. Willful stupidity never used to be a conservative value. It is now.

Although I don't tend to respect these people intellectually, I never actually thought that they were evil. That's changed in the days since the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. The "conservative" public relations counter-attack in the wake of that tragedy is among the most offensive things that I've ever seen. To see Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and every chucklefuck of a blogger try to make liberals seem responsible for this makes me throw up in my mouth more than a little.

I used to think that we not only had better ideas than the left, but that we conducted ourselves better (albeit, with several exceptions that have been sadly more frequent in recent years). I've been forever disabused of that notion since Saturday.

Chief among my complaints of the modern conservative movement is its adoption of professional victimhood. I don't think that I ever heard Republicans even mention the words "sexism" or "racism" before 2008 and the rise of Sarah Palin. They've shamelessly taken a liberal tool and exploited it to the hilt, irrespective of how contrary that is to their previous positions about "individual responsibility." If nothing else, at least liberals actually believed in that knee-jerk nonsense. Republicans and their shithead blogging compatriots use it as a tactic.

In the last couple of years, I've seen Republican dickheads try to assert that Fascism really wasn't a right-wing ideology and, in the last couple of days, I've seen them suggest that Timothy McVeigh really wasn't a right-wing kook. That's worse than ahistorical nonsense, they are deliberate lies told to morons that no one should want on their political side. Not only are these idiots victims of liberalism, they're also victims of history. Seven out of the ten presidential elections betwen 1968 and 2004 should prove otherwise, but you try convincing them of that. I'm exhausted by the effort.

The most disgusting, horrible and pathetic fetishization of victimhood that I've ever seen comes to us care of Trent Humphries, the founder of the Tucson Tea Party.

A nine-year-old girl lies in the morgue. A member of Congress faces a lifetime of struggle to recover from a bullet in the brain. A city is bracing itself for a string of funerals as it tries to fathom the carnage.

But Trent Humphries says there is another innocent victim left by Jared Lee Loughner's killing of six people and wounding of 14 others in his assassination attempt against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It is his Tea Party movement and, more particularly, his family. The killings, he says, are evolving into a conspiracy to destroy his organisation and silence criticism of the government.

That's right, poor Trent and his gawdawful fucking Tea Party are just like the the family that gets to bury a nine-year-old girl this week. I see the parallel perfectly. And you would too, if you were dangerously drunk or remarkably dumb.

You know what? When I heard the news out of Tucson on Saturday, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if it turned out that a Tea Partier had snapped. You know why? Because these people parade around in tri-corner hats, "Don't Tread on Me" flags and signs declaring that "It Is Time To Refresh The Tree Of Liberty" signs. Oh, and from time to time Tea Partiers show up and their retarded rallies with machine guns.

Forgive me my historical accuracy for just a moment, but all four of those things have one thing in common: Somebody getting shot in the head. While the natural conclusion that a Tea Partier might have been involved in the assault on a "liberty-hating Democrat" who seeks to "enslave everybody under socialism" turned out to be inaccurate, it doesn't necessarily make that conclusion any less unnatural. I thought that there might have been something to it, as well. The only difference is that I kept my fucking mouth shut until actual facts started coming in.

But for Trent Humphries to equate himself and his group of historically and economically illiterate band of fantasists with a nine-year-old girl, a federal judge and a member of Congress that were all murdered is beyond the pale. That's offensive in ways that even I have trouble articulating.

I went out of my way to defend Sarah Palin and the Tea Party yesterday, although I have a long and storied history of despising both. People like Mr. Humphries are making that harder and harder to do, or even to want to.

Here's what I would like. If you carry around one of those "Tree of Liberty" signs or brought a gun to political rally, just shut the fuck up for a few days. That's not a call for censorship as much as it is a plea for some humanity and common decency. For the love of Christ, can't you fucking people at least wait until the dead are buried?

The public relations survival of the goddamned Tea Party movement isn't as important as the real-life murders of six people. Pretending otherwise doesn't just speak poorly of your politics, it speaks poorly about you as a human being.


Link ruthlessly stolen from Girl on the Right.