Tea Party Patriots Send Out Email With Karl Rove Photoshopped Into Nazi Uniform

A lot of people complain of bread and circuses and cults of personality and endless diversions.

Let me tell you, I see this Tea Party thing as getting to be just that.

So, what we have here is a professional political fundraising organization accusing another professional political fundraising organization of not being pure enough.

This is childishness. This is turf warfare. This is Yankees vs. Mets, for adults instead of young boys.

At what point do I actually have to sign Loyalty Oaths?

Yay team, I guess? Will there be mascots and Foam Fingers at some point? Will they shoot out team t-shirts to us out of air cannons at rallies?

I don't feel like this is politics, or political philosophy, or anything. It seems more clownishly carnival-like at every turn.

I feel like we are collectively being exploited -- and permitting ourselves to be exploited -- by utilization the easily-activated human tendency to think in terms of teams and tribes, which leads to personalization of and emotional investment in subjects which are actually quite impersonal and which ought to be considered with the chilly remove of reason, not the rah-rah of the We'll Get 'Em Next Year zeal of the dedicated fan.

To some extent effectively relies upon just this -- and I wouldn't jettison it.

But this intramural stuff? Does literally everything now have to be Rah-Rah and Go Team Go?

posted by Ace at 02:34 PM

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