The Tea Party 'spirit'

In the perhaps flawed belief that, however tentatively, I should begin reconnecting with the world, I struggled through the Tea Party presidential debate last night.

You no doubt instantly see the flaw in that line.

"The world" and "the Tea Party" are discrete elements, as utterly foreign to each other as are I and advanced astrophysics. To select an encounter of political elites ingratiating themselves with the Tea Party asylumites as my reintroduction to reality was an enormous cognitive error. Fortunately, my acute grief subdued both laughter and outrage at the pseudoconservative nincompoopism I heard from the Tampa stage; I lay in bed, gazing half-mindedly at the television screen, trying my best to comprehend how these presumably social animals could be so strikingly, even proudly indifferent to human needs.

Rick Perry, you won't be surprised to learn, puzzled me the most. His peculiar antagonism toward Social Security I find unfathomable. Because of my dear wife's passing, my daughter, age 12, will soon be receiving survivor benefits through this magnificently successful program of collective caring. For some time to come -- a long story, part of which is my own health -- her benefits may be our only income. Our gratitude to, and our sense of salvation from, virtually all of our fellow Americans -- who, after all, are the Social Security "system" -- are boundless and inexpressible. Without those benefits, she and I would be, to put it in the vernacular, in quite a fix.

Yet it is over this very method of caring that Gov. Perry seems to lose sleep, as do so many in his cheering section. I'm baffled. I was baffled last night, I'm baffled today, and I'll remain baffled, even as my general bafflement clears. I simply do not comprehend the inhumanity of the Tea Party "spirit." 

Comments

[You Don't Say]

You're a brave man! I can hardly watch the clips. Loving the clips of Obama, though, firing up the crowds the last few days. Reminds me: must call senators tomorrow.

[steve duncan]

To be profanely blunt, the Tea Party is composed of a gang of sick f#*ks. Nutshell.

[Susan SC]

On NPR this afternoon, there was a segment interviewing several Republican party officials from Ohio right after the debate. All of them were big fans of Rick Perry, thought he won the debate last night, and their dream ticket was Perry/Bachman. The interviewer treated these folks like rational people, with sane, mainstream opinions. The fact checker from Politico was also on, debunking much of what was said by these two at the debate.
We seem to inhabit parallel universes right here in the USA. I think the dividing line is those who get their news and talking points and attitude from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and those who don't.

[CK MacLeod]

Susan - if only thing were that simple. I sometimes think we inhabit around 300 million partly overlapping parallel smithereen-universes.

We're testing, as ever, whether we can self-govern. It may always have been a close call.

On another note, tho, pm puts his bafflement beautifully, and ties it to his personal situation movingly. Rarely I have I felt more like the unnamed listeners from Kierkegaard's description of the Bull of Phalaris, who beg the poet (being roasted alive in a hollowed-out metal bull) to suffer some more, since his cries of torment are so delightful.

[SueMe]

I am baffled also. At the age of 27 I lost my young husband to cancer and had two little girls (ages 3 and 5)to raise. They collected survivors benefits from Social Security and I collected widow's benefits for the year it took me to finish my degree and get a job. In the 40 years plus since that happened, I have worked, paid taxes...including payroll taxes..and with the help of the small SS survivors benefits my daughters have been educated and both have good jobs...paying back into the system that helped us in time of our greatest need. Don't the Rick Perry's of the world get it? Most of that money goes back into the ecomony and it keeps some of us from living in poverty...most of Social Security payments to the elders of our nation help them live independent lives while putting what little they get back into the economy. I guess some just do not have to live like us!