Ask Ty...November 20 [The Teabagger Question]

It must be Tuesday Friday, Middlespace Cadets, because I'm answering your questions

Q: Dear Ty,

I'm curious about your take on the lunacy of this "Teabagger" portion of our populace? I mean - in my opinion, they all come off as a bunch of terribly misguided and angry people - some of whom are openly racist, while others attempt to mask their racism under the banner of "Christianity" or even "Constitutionalism."

I've also started to notice how often the media is portraying them as Evangelical Wing-nuts - which, if I were a Regular Joe Christian, I would be really pissed off about. Why are we not seeing Regular Joe Christians standing up and distancing themselves from this movement? Why are they just letting these people cold-jack their ideology and dogma, and using it for overtly racist and selfish means? I know I would want to distance myself from any kind of extremism, you know?

What I mean by that, is this - The correlation I am making between Regular Joe Christians and Regular Joe Muslims is a simple one: people reacting to extremism by immediately saying things like:

"ALL CHRISTIANS HATE OBAMA AND THINK HE IS A SECRET MUSLIM SOCIALIST WHO IS KILLING AMERICAN VALUES!"

or

"EVERY MUSLIM HAS A BOMB UNDERNEATH THEIR CLOTHING AND WANTS TO KILL EVERYONE WHO IS NOT A MUSLIM!"

The Teabaggers keep on crying that there is a "Liberal Bias" in the portrayal of their movement. But really, all I see is a gang of inarticulate thugs trying to force their agenda down everyone's throat, because they didn't win an election - kind of like the kid who gets the short end of his wished-for stick on his birthday or something. "Ma - I WANTED A PONY, and all I got was OBAMA!!!"

Also - in the spirit of Alanis Morrissette - isn't it ironic that Regular Joe Christians are starting to feel the same fear and shame that Regular Joe Muslims were feeling in the earlier part of this decade?

Love,

- The Ghost Of Thomas Jefferson (Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful)

Ty: It's Headphone Friday. So strap on and cue one of these up before you start reading. Either will fit:

Kids in the Street
The Greatest Story Ever Told - Live

Extremists are crazy, huh? In plenty of cases, the leadership of extremist groups and the followers of the leadership of extremist groups are clinically, diagnostically crazy as hell. Imagine if Glenn Beck and Tracy Morgan got gay-liberal married and had a baby. That baby would either be an accountant or the leader of some loud, ugly fringe group.

You mix any sort of mental illness with ignorance, and insecurity and you have the potential for a pretty messed-up situation. Now add The Fear that the [most-feared and oppressed group of choice] is somehow “taking over America!” (the women, the blacks, the Muslims, the Jesus Freaks, Jews, or whatever) and man-oh-man, we got ourselves a doozy. Now open the righteous umbrella of religion. Oops!

Welcome to 2010: the beginning of America’s Doozy Era. Seriously. We voted for the world’s coolest and smartest eloquent black president and what did we get? Not a lousy t-shirt or a fist bump, but we got a complimentary bag of nuts. Bitter wing nuts. It's like we painted ourselves into a corner with black-face [Ed. note: I've been waiting weeks to use that line]

So, and directly to your query, TJ (NNSBB), what is my “take on the lunacy of this "Teabagger" portion of our populace?” Shit, that’s like some automated, new-fangled fancy-ass, self-answering question there, don. These kooks are lunatics braying at the moon. But it’s not the moon that science explained is a spherical chunk of rock (now with water!) orbiting our spherical planet through the algorithms of gravity. No, these fools are braying at a liberal Jew conspiracy designed to send our babies to hell and take away guns. And the whole “fake space program” was proof too, they say. Some of these poor folk are the same people who believe that Satan had something to do with Hurricane Katrina and that dinosaurs are the product of a hoax. These ignorant rubes are all, "I need me some proof the world is flat" and stuff. Oh yeah, boo to Harry Potter too. But they are TeeVee news gold.

So when it comes to the idea that Barry Oh!® is a Socialist and a Nazi, they blindly run with that baton as some sort of "fact" when they can't even define the word "fact."And the Socialists and the Nazis—who also don’t like the president for different reasons—are like, what you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?

And at the same time, Barry Oh!® somehow hates white people and is going to enslave them because he is racist. It’s so fucking crazy that it’s not even morosely funny anymore. I mean, to some of these kind people, our president is somehow a Muslim but the Muslims are like, what you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis? You ain’t gonna see any Hope & Change bumper stickers in the Westboro Baptist Church parking lot or on a donkey cart in Khewa.

I thought we played-out that phrase, “you can’t have it both ways” during the Clinton administration. You remember that vast right wing conspiracy. Where was the so-called liberal media then? In fact, where was the so-called liberal media during Bush's administration?

Oy! Let’s forget the media. Liberal Elitist or Fair & Balanced or whatever, the MSM generally sucks. So let’s take the media out of the discussion for now. Too maddening.

So, you are so right, TJ (NNSBB). Regular, good guy "Joe Christian" should be pissed as hell. If I were "Joe Christian," living my life, paying my taxes and wearing my Sunday Best every week, I’d be kind of frightened by how a weirdo but very loud minority of zealots are branding the faithful as idiots and kooks. I know plenty of intelligent, thoughtful, and fair people of all faiths. It is possible. It is even the norm, perhaps. As a Christian I'd feel ashamed and embarrassed of the teabag kooks (as I already do as an American).

Now take the Ft. Hood shootings. One of my first reactions was how much that crazy-ass meltdown must make regular, good guy, "Joe Muslim" feel so ashamed and embarrassed. TJ (NNSBB) is right: Ideology has been cold-jacked like a motherfucker in this, our planet's Doozy Era. I'll say it again, the only voices being heard are from the SurroundSound extremes. Turn that volume down, DJ!

I don't know if it will be an overall positive or negative long-term outcome but the extremes have made themselves the subject of ridicule and scorn (Sarah Palin and the rest). The sad thing is that same ridicule and scorn trickles down like Reaganomics never did to the people who are just trying to live their lives faithful to their gods. Just because you go to church or mosque or synagogue shouldn’t mean that 1) you hate everyone else’s gods and the people who worship in that particular manner, or; 2) that you’re a just plain crazy as hell.

The whole crazy-as-hell thing only reinforces my decision to not believe in gods or sticks or séances or the Mayan calendar or anything other than peer-reviewed data-driven SCIENCE (hello mathematics, I love ya!). No diss to anybody's religion but my science is kind of like my religion and science is whispering in my ear for me to blow anything up or pray for anybody to die because they scare me. Science already proves that we're all going to die anyway. Shouldn't our reaction be to have some fun? Enjoy the ride?

Bottom line is that we have become a mal-educated species. We developed our collective brain to a point were survival became easy. So some of us lack the fundamentals of reasoning and logic because it was never taught to us. Some of us are not able to make simple connections or perform thoughtful cognitive analyses. It's sad yet the tr00f. We've all become so ADD, paranoid, and reactionary. And in America, obese. We can update Facebook at 80 MPH on the freeway but we still think that dragons were real. So we rely on the loudest people on the TeeVee or the village to tell us how to think.

And for my "educated" extremist friends I ask, what are you so afraid of?

And to answer your question with a question TJ (NNSBB), "Isn’t it ironic?" Don't you think?

I could go on and on. I open the discussion to the comments. Have a good weekend with science.

Just a guess,

-ty


[Buy your shirt for the holy days]