This is written in response to an essay by my friend and colleague Kemstone entitled "What I Have In Common With Obama And the Tea Party".
I was amused to hear Kemstone describe himself as "significantly to the left of the establishment Democratic Party". Oh, I'm not denying that it's true, it's just that being "significantly to the left of the establishment Democratic Party" doesn't put a person very far Left of center these days, given how far to the Right the Democratic Party has swung in the last two years. In fact, it's rather like damning oneself with faint praise.
The problem with staking out a middle position between two conflicting factions is that when the shit hits the fan, you start taking fire from both sides. A certain amount of self-doubt and self-criticism is what separates a decent person from a complete asshole. But too much self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-consciousness can be crippling.
The essential fact is that one cannot compromise with Evil, and the forces arrayed against us are blatantly evil. This is not demonization, this is simple fact. Regardless of the sincerity of those unenlightened persons who are being used as a cat's paw, the individuals and organizations behind the opposition are committed to fundamentally evil goals. Goals directly opposed to the very concepts of Equality and Justice which emerged in the 18th century, (with a nod of respect to the ancient Greeks), and have guided civilized men and women ever since.
The Oligarchs, the Plutarchs, call them what you will, the enormously wealthy men and women behind the Right agenda are attempting to roll back the clock on over 200 years of social progress and return us to an age in which the obscenely wealthy few ruled over the impoverished masses in absolute despotism. An age in which there was no equality, no democracy, no justice, in which the Rule of Law was suspended in favor of the privileges of the aristocracy. In short, to feudalism, the most brutally repressive social system our species has ever known.
This is fundamentally Evil and there can be no compromise with Evil, or we are lost.
That the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that is old news. It does not matter how well-intentioned the Tea Partiers are. It matters only the damage that they can do, and the fundamentally evil men and women that back them, whose tools they are, whose bidding they unwittingly do.
There can be no compromise with Evil, or we are lost.
All that I can say is Don't drink the tea folks... The Tea Party is nothing more than a vehicle for far right elete. Don't drink the tea!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I hesitate to call any person or group of people "Evil", I'd have to say that if anyone deserves the label it's the people behind the Tea Party. At a time when the country desperately needs a functioning government engaged in an honest attempt at improving the lot of the citizens, and a time when the world is still looking to America for leadership (though they won't be for much longer), the fact that a group of wealthy individuals and corporations would deliberately stoke the flames of fear and hatred in a concerted effort to prevent real solutions from being implemented...well, it's just infuriating.
ReplyDeleteI try to use the word "Evil" only when describing actions, not people, because I think all people are a mixture of both good and evil. But sometimes the evil people do outweighs the good to such an incredibly large degree (Dick Cheney, the Koch Brothers, Glenn Beck, to name a few) that calling them Evil is justified.
And no, those kind of people can not be compromised with. The kind of people I think CAN be reached are average conservatives who've just been bamboozled by Fox News and other conservative media into believing the wrong thing about why the country is in the mess it's in. I'd say the vast majority of these people are not evil at all--just a little ingnorant perhaps--and that if we approach them in the right way we might actually be able to break the Fox News-spell and get them to open their eyes a little, at least enough to get them shouting at the people truly responsible for their anger.