But of course, in order for the obvious to sink in, you need some cold, hard numbers. And those have been produced–-teabaggers mostly identify as Republicans,
or they’re those assholes who call themselves something like
“libertarian” but always vote for Republicans. I’d probably put money
on the possibility that the few who identified as Democrats are also
Republicans; they’re just nursingthe youstabee grievance,
where they pretend they want to vote for Democrats, but Democrats just
make is so hard because they insist on being Democrats.On that subject, it’s worth pointing out that the original sin of the
Democrats that created legions of youstabees was the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1965.
I was having this conversation with Mr. A this week, about something going in meatspace, whereby people respond to arguments they’ve lost with disproportionate rage and claims they aren’t being listened to. I’ve been getting this a lot, usually when someone’s denied something he wants, and while it’s the attitude we usually ascribe to Those Entitled Kids Today Whose Moms Never Tell Them No, it’s primarily from people of Generation Teabag I’ve been noticing it. Which brings me to what Amanda’s saying above.
All the justification rhetoric used around the incidents of violence and intimidating that happened around the country has centered on the idea that old, racist assholes simply aren’t being heard in this country. That they’ve been deprived, overlooked, shut out, and they have no choice but to ram people’s cars and throw bricks through people’s windows and generally act like total assholes outside the law.
We heard this shit fromMcMeghan after the Tiller murder, we heard this fromBeckian morons before, and it’s the same flavor of bullshit now, that other people are responsible for making them be dicks by imposing their irritating viewpoints and drowning out other voices.
We hear you, though. You’re being listened to just fine. You just LOST THE ARGUMENT. You lost the election, you lost the fight to kill the bill, you lost. We heard you loud and fucking clear, with your signs and your costumes and whatnot, but we just didn’t agree. I sympathize, to a certain extent; I lose arguments all the time. I’ve been told for the past nine years that I and everything I represent and almost everyone I love betrays the foundations of America, yet somehow I’ve managed to shoot at exactly nobody.
And instead of telling these people they’ve lost, and should suck it up, and remember how much this hurts so that next time they can be more effective in their tactics and actions (as many leading liberals did after the 2004 presidential election) and more committed and more willing to work, these fuckers are encouraging their followers to tune in, drop out and smoke conservative dope some more. Because the problem wasn’t that their ideas sucked, it was that they weren’t given a hearing.
A.