I was skimming a thread in GD and came across this post:
There’s a guy I’ve known since we were four years old. He just had a birthday, and I left a greeting on his Facebook page. Now, you may be wondering why I didn’t email him. Because I blocked his email address. See, he was flooding me with anti-Obama shit, racist ‘jokes’, jingoistic glurge, etc. After numerous requests to be removed from his spam list, which he ignored, I had no alternative.
So he calls me to thank me for the birthday greetings, and I remind him that I could unblock his address if he’d only remove me from his spam list. This turned into a political argument. He’s convinced that Obama is a Secret Muslim, who was Not Born In The United States, and so on and so forth. :rolleyes: (I wonder how his Teabagger friends would react if I related the story of the time he had a crack whore over to the apartment and they clogged the bathtub drain shaving her pussy? Or the scary way he moved in slow motion, looking for crack that might have fallen on the carpet?)
Um, well, I’ve been to a few tea party rallies. So I guess I’m a “teabagger”. But I don’t think Obama is a Muslim, nor do I believe he was born in Africa. :rolleyes:
I have an uncle who considers himself a Tea Party member, but he does not buy into the birther stuff. From what I can tell, he is mostly concerned that Obama is a closet socialist who is going to destroy the country’s economy with his socialist policies.
I recently heard or read that the Republicans are deliberately trying to ‘destroy the country’. The strategy is called ‘starving the beast’, where they demand lower tax revenues so as to force the abolition of popular programs so that they can… something. Not have to pay for anything? I don’t recall.
Problems of the World Game AKA: Pin the Blame on Obama
Problem: My dog pooped on the living room carpet.
Why is it Obama’s Fault? Your paycut, because of the economic downturn brought on by Obama-nomics, forced you to go from Deluxe Organic Kibble $28 a 5 pound bag to $5 for a 50# bag of cornmeal and exlax, giving Fido the runs.
My neighbor, who likes to put up huge tea-party banners 1 inch from my property line just to make it look like I put them there.
But, to be fair, he was an A-hole long before there ever was a tea-party.
I know several of these. They think that cutting spending before the Chinese sell their US treasuries to buy Saudi Arabia is goal #1. They also think that social security is a giant ponzi scheme.
A few months back I googled some old friends I’d broken up with back in 2001. The wife is apparently a rabid tea partier. Well, she was always an arrogant know-it-all, while at the same time, failing at so many things, so I guess it fits. I found it immensely humorous.
It took me a minute to figure out WTF you were talking about here and then realized, oh yeah, “Teabagger” is a derogatory term. Seriously, it doesn’t even register with me anymore.
I know a guy who attended the Hawaii Tea Party rally a couple tax days ago. He had what I would consider a first-rate mind, but somewhere in the last ten to fifteen years he decided evolution is a liberal lie (he literally believes that “your atheist teachers and Hollywood have told you to believe it with no proof”) and that the US government was designed as a Christian theocracy.
I knew this guy before he went off the rails and he was normal as can be. But he joined an Amway splinter group and the cult of personality they have includes huge pressure to “get right with God” and attend Church socially with other Amway members. As an aside, he’s still working at a retail job to fund his Amway-Get-Rich-Quick-Scheme, which he has been pursuing for almost 20 years. He lives with his parents and refuses to have sex outside marriage because of his Evangelical beliefs, so I understand why he’s so pissed off.
He’s not a bad person, just ignorant, angry and confused. So I’d say he fits right in with my read of the Tea Party.
My coworker hasn’t officially declared, but I imagine he leans that way. A week doesn’t go by without him quoting Glen Beck or mouthing the latest Fox News anti-Obama talking point. A while back he was telling everyone how dangerous George Soros was.
I only know one. He has never publicly expressed any belief that Obama is a Muslim or that he was not born in the United States. Nor have I heard him say much on social policy, and I know he is vaguely agnostic. He was born Jewish but his family was very secular and when he was 21 he married a 17 year old girl from the sticks and became ultra fundamentalist Christian. During long periods of time overseas she cheated on him repeatedly and they got divorced about 7-8 years in after having two kids. When he found out about her infidelity I note that he hasn’t expressed a single fundamentalist Christian idea since that time (this was some 30 years ago now) so I guess that broke him of religion.
Most of the time I’ve known him he’s been what I call “moronic fiscal conservative” i.e., he’s a fiscal conservative (and I am too) but he doesn’t understand how the market or economies in general work at all. So he buys into things like “any national debt is national ruin” and “gold uber alles.” He’s a super gold bug right now and despite missing out on the massive appreciation in gold prices he has converted vast portions of his retirement portfolio to gold despite my many warnings.
He also believes that oil is not a fossil fuel but instead it is created in the center of the earth and bubbles up to the crust which is where it is found. He believes that more exploration for oil will always find more oil and that there is never a need to consider non-fossil fuels as an energy source because of this.
