Despite endless discussions about the tea party movement in newspapers, talk shows, blogs, magazines, radio etc, no one has been able to clearly describe the unified ideology behind it all. Not even the members themselves seem to agree. Some say they joined their local Tea Party to "fight taxes" or "fight health care" or "fight socialism" or fight whatever. Everyone in the Tea Parties seems to at least be united in their anger and rage, a vile disgust with where they see America headed. As I look at images of their rallies and interviews I've noticed something else that unites them; they're all Caucasian.
Sure, I'm generalizing. There's got to be a person of color somewhere in that ugly mess but it seems like they're harder to find then a sensible truth in a Sarah Palin speech. Not that I think it's really their whiteness that unites them. It’s the fantasy they share, the “American White Fantasy” that unites them the belief that this is a "white" country, that an American, a true American is tall; blue eyed, blond haired, straight laced, just like, like, Tim McVeigh. I'm getting way off track and losing my point.
The "White Fantasy" is a real thing. You see it in Norman Rockwell artwork and in the sitcoms of the nineteen fifties. You see it in almost all movies until the early sixties. There was truth to it in the sense that white men had most of the power but the idea that this was ever really a "white" country was never true. Never ever. And I'm not just talking about the Native tribes, I'm talking about the Chinese, the Latin folks, the Africans and everybody in between that rambled in (not always by choice obviously) and made America the wild, ugly, bloody, mixed up, tragic, beautiful, place that it is and continues to be.
The "White Fantasy" still lives on in the minds of a many people even as it slowly dissolves from the real world. The election of a black president really put some holes in it and I think that pissed some people off. I doubt anybody likes their vision of the world being challenged. It makes a person start to question everything and that can be frustrating. Some people may react with renewed interest in the world, while others do what humans do best: they adapt. Still, others react with the basest of human instincts: rage. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Tea Party movement.
I may look like a punk for commenting on my own ish, but I popped open the paper this morning and caught something that ties right into this post above.
ReplyDeleteThe article is titled GOVERNORS' CONFEDERACY EDICTS DRAW FIRE and was about how Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi was defending his call for making April CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH. There's not many white people angrier than those that still harbor bitterness about the Civil War and i thought this quote from Gov. Barbour was interesting:
"The War Between The States was fought for the same reasons that the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT today is voicing their opinion. And that is that you have large government that's not listening to the people, there's going to be heavy taxation."
I don't think this is helping their cause.
You want to see something else from the article that caught my eye? This is some tidbits from the state of Mississippi's declaration of session from the Union at the top of the Civil War:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.....products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.......a blow at slavery is a blow to commerce and civilization."
The fantasy lives on in the mind of Governor Haley Barbour.
amen, brother. from over here in my little psychoanalytic worldview what it looks like to me is an anxious white masculinity meltdown about the big black man and his big black phallus coming to get them. you only have to consider the hysterical rape language in right wing punditry to hear the terror in its most concentrated form: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/20/right-wing-talkers-obsess_n_365212.html need i say more?
ReplyDeletebook club suggestion: http://books.google.com/books?id=ErBhc6jREPcC&dq=the+wimp+factor+review&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=s8jES7-GOYHWsgP0qc3zDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=the%20wimp%20factor%20review&f=false the wimp factor: gender gaps, holy wars and the politics of anxious masculinity. former professor of mine from new college. amazing deconstruction of the stuff you're talking about from a freudian perspective. cheggitowd.
Some people just love that rape language don't they? And the assasination talk like: "We got 'em in our sights!" or "We're gonna reload and cock back!" or whatever the heck it is. Good stuff. And it's time to get book club cracking big sis. How about right here? This is the new book club!
ReplyDeleteMy buddy Tom Griessor had this to say on the old Book Face:
ReplyDelete"Straight up, mang! Most of the people who bellow (and they DO bellow) about wanting "their" country back don't realize or don't want to acknowledge that it was never "their" country in the first place. The people they want to identify with are the Montgomery Burnses of the world, but the real-life version of Monty Burns would view them Tea Partiers as utter refuse to be ignored, discarded, or plowed under. That is, if history is any guide..."
The Tea Party "movement" is founded on the fear of white people. Fear that they are losing control in this world. Fear that they will not be eligible for as many of this world's goodies going forward. Fear that they are losing.
ReplyDeleteErr, I'm not sure that black phallusesss have much of anything to do with it.
Well, as an angry white woman I can tell you, if there was a party that stood up and said, "Let's get those nagging, whining kids off that lady's back!" I'd be out on the street singing and dancing their praises. But there is no such agenda that I've seen. Thanks, Dubby, for sending a bow shot out against those Tea Party people. I love reading the Thoughts of Dub, almost as good as hearing the Thoughts of Dub.
ReplyDeleteThe Pierce Family has spoken!
ReplyDelete@robert pierce: just to be clear, the word "phallus" in psychoanalytic theory does not refer to the organ itself, but to the locus of control and power that the organ has come to represent. like what you're saying white people are afraid of losing.
ReplyDelete- nerdy freud girl