01-31-2021, 12:58 AM
(01-30-2021, 10:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Tea Party is the opposite of "populist," a term that has been horribly deformed into meaning an ignorant populace that favors dictators. That's not its true meaning. Its meaning is a movement to bring power back to the common people.
You are allowing your dislike of their proposed solutions to color your understanding of what the movement actually involved. Primarily, it was a reaction against TARP and bailouts of Wall Street paid for by imposing taxes on the independent middle class along with an increasing regulatory burden that benefited big business. Yes, since it is on the right, it tends to take an 'anti taxation' approach but that doesn't turn it into a movement of the elites.
You could say the difference between the Tea Party and OWS is that the former aspired to become the 1% through their own efforts while the latter sought to make them pay for the systemic advantage they'd been given. Both had in common the feeling that the system was rigged against the common people and wanted to bring power back to them. The left through refactoring the system to advantage those they saw as being oppressed and the right by restoring what they saw as the fundamental values that had made the country work. IMO, neither side was fully right or fully wrong in their proposed solutions. They also had a lot more in common than either wanted to admit, but in the 3T slide into 4T era it became increasingly difficult for each not to point to one side of American Politics and blame it for all the problems.
Divide and conquer. There's a reason it's listed in the 36 stratagems.