John Fund, apologist for the lunatic right, has an op-ed at the WSJ that tries to discredit the protests in Wisconsin. To Fund, it's nothing to do with informed people getting justifiably mad over a genuine case of big-government overreach. Says he:
[T]he left observed the impact of the tea party last year and seems determined to unleash a more aggressive version of its own by teaming up with union allies.
Fund makes me wonder that wingnuts always attack what they characterize as the "left" for doing exactly what they do themselves - in this case mobilizing popular anger for their own ends. It's an age-old conservative trick that Limbaugh's perfected over the decades that goes like this: Fund sells his reader the Tea Party as a real grassroots movement while slamming the anti-union protests as a cynical front for special interests. And the reader will get mad at the "left" while failing to spot that Fund is presenting a balls-on accurate representation of reality in reverse. It's hypocrisy taken to the level of genius: you get people mad at other people for doing exactly what you do yourself... only they aren't doing it, you are.
But read between the lines... Fund and his ilk must be getting nervous these days. The Tea Party has had a huge impact on politics over the past couple of years (picture a Tunguska event of dumb). Armed with nothing more than a false premise, false outrage and a big ol' pile of real Koch brothers cash, they've pretty much re-shaped politics. So just imagine, as does Fund, that a 'reverse Tea Party' has now been born in Wisconsin. What more of an effect could a real popular movement of legitimately pissed off people with legitimate grievances accomplish?
I'm wondering whether we'll all be thanking the Tea Party in a couple more years for softening up America for the real thing: a real movement of real people demanding real rights?
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The problem is, the tea baggers have huge sums of cash at their disposal. The unions are much less financed.
ReplyDeleteThe other things is: the people who are really in charge and orchestrating all this don't really give a shit if you are a tea bagger or a union joe. They just want you focused on something other than the foot they have on your throat.
True. But the problem is there's a two-sided fight and the owners have the unfair advantage of being able to ban unions and cut off one side's financing by making sure they have fewer members and less dues coming in. That's what pisses me off every time some working schmuck goes on about "not needing unions" - they may as well just wave a white flag and give up.
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