02-03-2021, 02:34 PM
(02-03-2021, 02:11 PM)But Eric the Green Wrote:(01-31-2021, 12:58 AM)mamabug Wrote:(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.
I'm not aware of any tax on the middle class that was instituted to pay for TARP, most of which was loans that were paid back anyway. I would not say "primarily," but at least initially the Tea Party included some resentment against bailouts of Wall Street, in common with OWS. But again, what difference did that resentment make if the loans were paid back by those companies that received them?
Reduction of taxes was a long-term goal of these Republican Tea Party people all along. They gave Obama no chance. He was black, so they resisted him. They were the same people who supported Bush, Gingrich and Reagan. They just felt entitled to the White House, so they rose up against Obama almost immediately.
Lowering taxes only benefits the elites. The rest of us need government and its programs and investments, and they should be paid for, at least ideally in my opinion. The Tea Party thinks it can become the 1% through their own efforts. They never will. Self-reliance is a fine virtue, and small business and entrepreneurs have their place, but this virtue alone is not a basis for economic policy.
The elites are economic. Big business. Teachers and professors and actors and such are not elites. They are just people whom Tea Party types hate because they spread knowledge, and that hurts their social conservatism and the power of their self-reliance ideology. A regulatory burden does not benefit big business; that's why big business is the leading opponent of regulation and taxes. The Tea Party opposing taxes and regulations benefits only big business. That is why the common folk in the Tea Party (and the Trump Cult is again the same people) are in the Republican Party, always the Party of Big Business.
Regulations are not always just and correct, but most of the time they consist of requirements for behavior that business should adopt voluntarily anyway. Taxes can be too high, but the Democratic Party generally raises taxes on the more-wealthy people. Republicans oppose this on the trickle-down, "job creater" philosophy, which they benefit from. It is Republican borrow and spend-on-war policies that raise the national debt, which is what the Tea Party supposedly opposes because it might raise taxes.
Nice try there. But divide and conquer is about social conservatism; dividing us by race, gender, age and education. Bringing out the base that supports Trump.
Was the January 6 insurrection the last gasp for Trumpageddon?