The GOP And The Tea Party Go The Way Of The Whigs

Throughout the past year I had developed a fascination with reading facebook pages and blog sites with names like "Tea Party Patriots" and "Obama is a Terrorist". Luckily for me, I don't have to "Like" these pages in order to post on them. I decided that I wanted to get into the dialogue. My plan was not to troll these sites and belittle them but to ask questions and attempt to understand why they feel the way that they do. Needless to say this was an unbelievable waste of time. My hours would have been better spent throwing large stones in the air and attempting to catch them with my face.

Here are some facts that I have extrapolated from my experience.

It doesn't matter how many real facts that you provide to support your argument, they will never accept it. For example in the case of questioning their reluctance to accept man-made climate change I presented a fairly well thought out argument with links to NASA, The Intergovernmental Panel on Science Change, The National Academy of Science and others. They claim that NASA was taken over by the Obama administration, defunded and filled with European style communists bent on destroying America. All of the other Scientific studies were debunked because FOX News had a show about a guy who found e-mails from another scientist guy who said all the climate change studies were wrong. They presented this link as undeniable proof.  http://www.friendsofscience.org

They all think that they are constitutional experts when in fact none have them have any real grasp on the document or The Bill of Rights. In one instance I was trying to make the point that all free speech is protected even in the cases of flag burning and the KKK. I said that however distasteful we find this form of speech, we must protect their right to do it and the ACLU is there to help in these cases. The response was unbelievable. The threats and the name calling was incredible!! After being threatened with violence and asked to leave the country, I had given up on that subject, which leads me to the next point.

Tea Party followers and ultra right wing conservatives are socially paranoid and religiously  schizophrenic, almost to the point of being delusional. I have had the most venomous vitriol thrown at me by people who claim to be Christians. And believe me when I tell you that at no point did I ever name call or belittle anyone on these sites. All I did was ask for clarification on statements they would post. If I had a dollar for every time that I was called a Marxist or a socialist or a libratard I could probably put a bid on that authentic Lenin autographed Ushanka hat I saw on EBAY.

But the icing on the cake was their complete insistence that Romney would win this election. They would always talk about November 6th when Obama loses the election and how glorious it would be.
I would point out in the final weeks of the election that Romney will lose New York, California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey right off the bat. That's 145 votes and the election hasn't even started yet!!! Math doesn't matter. Early exit polls didn't matter. Romney was down by 10 points in Ohio a week before the election by all accounts! Nothing mattered except for the flow of disinformation being regurgitated in the right wing snow bubble.

When the election went to Obama there was utter shock and disbelief. 332 to 206. Romney wasn't just beaten, he was ass raped. And this was a case of legitimate rape. Romney spent 25K on victory fireworks and had not even written a concession speech. This guy was so arrogant that he didn't even consider that he may lose and that he should be prepared for it. He was running for president of the United States for fuck sake!! By all counts, history tells us that he should have won. Presidential elections that take place during times of  recessions always lead to an incumbent being replaced. The difference here was that the majority of America wasn't buying the bullshit that Romney was shoveling. The Fox News watching Tea Party dimwits were so deafened by their own party's propaganda that didn't hear the sound of the Obama reelection locomotive bearing down on them.

What we are now left with is a bunch of angry tea party wackos who now believe that secession is the only answer. These people refuse to accept the fact that the country is getting more ethnically diverse, more progressive and more secular. They claim that the America that they loved is gone and it is the beginning of the end for the United States. The fact is that they are the ones who will soon be gone. America will move forward and change just like it always has. America will fight for the rights of immigrants like Latinos and Asians and Muslims just like we did for Germans and Irish 100 years ago.  Americans will fight for sexual equality for gays just like we did for women during the suffrage movement and for African Americans when we abolished slavery. We will fight for health care and fair pay and worker's rights just like we did in the 30's with The New Deal. What they don't understand is that they represent the people who were on the losing sides of those battles and they will be on the wrong side of history. Our children and their children will look back with scorn on the people who fought to stop Gay marriage, Gays in our military, Healthcare for all, The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, The new G.I Bill, The 9-11 first responders bill and a hundred other good progressive pieces of legislation. The Tea Party and the GOP will be castigated by future generations as small minded people out to destroy our form of government in an effort to disgrace our first African American leader.

Listen up conservatives. You lost this election because you were crushed by the African American vote, the Latino vote, the Gay vote, Young women, People under 40, atheists and Catholics. And guess what? It's only going to get worse, so keep up the crazy talk. Keep calling the president a Marxist. Keep trying to stop gay people from having marital rights. Keep trying to pass ridiculous personhood bills and denying women their reproductive rights. In four more years you will have another 20 million voters coming of age and they ain't buying your bullshit either. Keep being the opposition party because that is what you will face until you have gone the way of the Whigs.