Looks like the Tea Party has notched a major victory in its quest to change the course of American history. Yes, I certainly am referring to the debt limit extension and deficit reduction plan approved by the House and Senate and about to be signed into law by President Obama. <\/p>\n
I just read an article on the Daily Beast<\/a> site that is right on point. The \u201cBeast\u201d (a spin-off of Newsweek Magazine) and its writers are very much on the liberal side, and thus have a lot of admiration for the Saul Alinsky dream of grass roots organizing, of ordinary people rising up to take power from the elites who control our government. One reason why \u201cBeast people\u201d (and \u201cHuffPo\u201d people and \u201cDailyKos\u201d people and NPR people, etc.) love Barack Obama so much is that he was once a community organizer himself, who cut his teeth going door to door and attending countless evening meetings in church basements, right on Alinsky’s home turf (i.e., Chicago). <\/p>\n OK, so Beast writer Peter Beinart points out that the Tea Party is one of the most incredible, stupendous examples of the Alinksy dream realized. It just rose up from the grass roots and organized itself, crossing town lines, county lines and state lines assisted by modern techno-communications (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, messaging, etc.). Kind of like the \u201cArab Spring\u201d. <\/p>\n The reason that Alinsky is now rolling over in his grave is because the roots have gone reactionary. The people are grabbing power, but they are not using it in an edifying way. It’s getting ugly. Beinart points out that the Tea Party won because there just isn’t an equivalent nationwide grass roots movement on the liberal, pro-welfare state. By comparison, in the 1930s, the grass roots were on the side of socialist and communist agitators, and FDR had to appease them with as much social legislation (Social Security, jobs programs, the pro-union Wagner Act, etc.) as he could. <\/p>\n Obviously, things have changed from the 1930s. Even though we are presently in economic straits that seem just about as dire, there are a lot more middle class families out there today. And they feel very threatened, as they should. These families know that a lot of families like them have fallen back into the ranks of the ‘working poor’ (or not-working poor) over the past two or three years. <\/p>\n Actually, that trend may go back even further; I took a look at some stats regarding the number of \u201cworking poor\u201d families in the USA, defined by the US Census as family units where at least one member works regularly, and where the total family income is less than 200% of the poverty income level. Between 2002 and 2008 (just before the big financial crisis hit), the number of such families went up by a total of 7.2%, whereas the total number of family units in the USA only increased by 4.3%. So, it looks as though the ranks of the ‘working poor’ were expanding faster than the population as a whole, even before the big economic crisis started. I’m hoping to see updated numbers for 2009 and 2010 before long; obviously the working poor rapidly expanded in those years, as more people lost their regular jobs and had to take part-time work or get a job at a much lower pay scale. <\/p>\n The American middle class knows all of this, and wants to react. They don’t want to storm the palaces of the rich, as in Bolshevik Russia back in the early 20th Century. They know that the rich will protect themselves very well. They know that the rich control the industries that they hope to keep working for, so they need to look for some other group to beat up on. The obvious candidates are the growing ranks of the poor, unemployed, and working poor. These are the people whom the federal welfare state mostly protect. And that protection costs a lot of money, money that requires taxes. <\/p>\n The Tea Party gives the panicky middle class household some feeling of control, by promising that the government mechanisms that would otherwise need more and more tax revenue to help the growing ranks of the needy, will NOT demand more and more of their weekly paychecks. In fact, the Tea Party will rend the welfare state, and thus CUT the tax burden on the middle class. Ah, what a relief!!<\/p>\n This is when I wonder if government by the intelligent elite, insulated from the cries of the mobs, has it’s place (so who is surprised that NY Times commentator Tom Friedman so admires China, complete with its elitist, non-democratic rulers). Of course, what the Tea Party is doing is going to make things worse in the long run (and not really that long, actually). Any number of economists have pointed out<\/a> that a fiscal cut-back in the midst of a long recession triggered by a financial market collapse will serve to exacerbate and lengthen that recession. Yes, the 1937 argument, when FDR decided to go fiscally conservative and GDP growth tanked while unemployment skyrocketed again. Only when the stimulus package of federal borrowing and spending in preparation for WW2 got the factories humming again did the Great Depression come to an end. <\/p>\n The old fashioned idea of using government to invest in growth infrastructure, e.g. education, research, better transportation, new high-tech industries, financial stabilization measures, etc., never had a chance in a reactionary economic panic. It’s just too “long term”; Obama still makes the argument, but the middle class is no longer listening.<\/p>\n I can’t help but savor the irony of it all. The middle-class Tea Party supporter is very often a member of my own Baby Boom generation. Yes, the generation of \u201cpeace, pot and microdot\u201d. The generation that spoke of love and community and sharing. Yes, the people who demonstrated against the Vietnam War on the campuses now probably drive Prius’ and support Obama; but the ‘silent majority’ of Boomers out in the heartland, who once grew their hair long too and nodded in agreement with the \u201cWoodstock Nation\u201d sentiment of the 60’s and early 70’s, have turned. <\/p>\n The Prius-driving Obama supporters who once made their stand at the dean’s office love the idea of organizing. But instead of actually organizing, they were content to settle down and ‘teach their children well’, and take care of their own wounded souls. And now they’ve been out-organized by ‘those other Baby Boomers’, the ones who have to deal with rust-belt towns and military veterans and uncertain prospects in the heartlands. Even worse, lots of the \u201cDoonesbury<\/a> Boomer’s\u201d own kids have joined in with the Tea Party crowd; they too know that the future is VERY uncertain for them, as they now try to buy houses and start families.<\/p>\n I wish I could end this post on an optimistic note. But for now, well . . . I’m starting to imagine a tragically failed Obama Presidency, followed by years (perhaps decades) of continued American decline and turmoil . . . for all but the rich. The ‘true Boomers’ will lament all their navel-gazing while the nation changed around them, while the Tea Party Boomers may well live to regret their reactionary ‘last stand’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Looks like the Tea Party has notched a major victory in its quest to change the course of American history. Yes, I certainly am referring to the debt limit extension and deficit reduction plan approved by the House and Senate and about to be signed into law by President Obama. I just read an article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2242,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions\/2242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}