Tea party contradictions

Great reply by George R. R. Martin in response to a comment from a reader on his blog.

The blog post was about the eerie similarity he observed between a video of a Tea Party political rally or town hall meeting, not sure which, and the biergarten scene in Cabaret where a Hitlerjungend sings "Tomorrow belongs to me". I think George's observation is spot-on. He's picking up on the emotionalism of people, the kind of emotions that lead to fascism, as people cling ever more strongly to failing narratives about American individualism and American exceptionalism.

Pugix says (in his serious, professorial mode) that the Tea Party is a type of libertarianism. They want minimal government; they want to be left alone. The desire to be left alone by government was the founding impulse for Americans to move West. This may be why the Southwest part of the country demonstrates so well the consequences of libertarian pressure on government: note Arizona selling off their government buildings to try to meet debt obligations as a consequence of both economic downturn and severe cutting of taxes.

As liberal democracies decline into fascism...

I love this Daily Show.

What more can I say?

Well, since you asked, I'll try to be succinct:

Democracy requires an informed, educated, active, healthy and nourished population. As our newspapers and new outlets succumb to journalistic mediocrity and underfunding, there is a natural tendency for journalists to collaborate with corporate and government interests in controlling information and the cultural narratives. It is the most basic aspect of human nature to cower before authority, to seek protection and guidance from leaders. The challenging of authority and questioning of the accepted world-view is a perilous undertaking and usually regarded as a threat of the highest order. That, my dears, is why Socrates was put to death.

As people become less educated and informed, they become easy subjects for manipulation by those who wish to exert power and control. The means of that control is to use fear to encourage citizens to willingly surrender their freedoms and rights. You can read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine to see how cataclysmic events and engineered false flag operations are used by governments and autocrats to grab control.