Tea Partiers are now targeting zoning meetings and transit debates claiming global conspiracies.

[davidm]

They are harassing low-level bureaucrats accusing then of being part of some global conspiracy.

“We Don’t Need None of That Smart-Growth Communism”

First, they took on the political establishment in Congress. Now, tea partiers have trained their sights on a new and insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force citizens into Orwellian “human habitation zones.”

At the root of this plot is the admittedly sinister-sounding Agenda 21, an 18-year-old UN plan to encourage countries to consider the environmental impacts of human development. Tea partiers see Agenda 21 behind everything from a septic tank inspection law in Florida to a plan in Maine to reduce traffic on Route 1. The issue even flared up briefly during the midterms, when Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes accused his Democratic opponent of using a bike-sharing program to convert Denver into a “United Nations Community.”

Agenda 21 paranoia has swept the tea party scene, driving activists around the country to delve into the minutiae of local governance. And now that the midterm elections are over, they’re descending on planning meetings and transit debates, wielding PowerPoints about Agenda 21, and generally freaking out low-level bureaucrats with accusations about their roles in a supposed international conspiracy.

<snip>

The scene in Maine is repeating itself across the country. Only sometimes the activists are less polite. One planning consultant I spoke with, who requested anonymity, recalled a recent meeting where he was on the receiving end of tea party rage. “I got called a communist,” he says. Someone in another tea party-heavy area recently told him, “We don’t need none of that smart growth communism.” The people he’s been encountering are new to the process, short on solid facts, and many are “spitting mad.” Combined with what they see as an “elitist” bent in planning consultants, he says, it makes for a toxic and intimidating mix for local officials who aren’t used to being accosted by conspiracy theory wielding activists.

[VinylTurnip]

If it was devised 18 years ago, I guess they can be forgiven for not foreseeing the kind of rampant idiocy we’re mired in today. That said, I really wish they hadn’t named it something that sounds like a scorched-earth containment plan for an outbreak of zombie plague.

[dhkendall]

The people he’s been encountering are new to the process, short on solid facts, and many are “spitting mad.”

… Isn’t that all Tea Partiers?

[davidm]

This is how you get people to vote against their own interests. Get them to believe in huge existential threats to their “way of life” and convince them that you’re on their side in fighting those threats and that the other party is an active part of those threats.

Piddly little concerns like health care and employment take the back seat to “OhMiGodOneWorldGovernemnt”[sup]tm[/sup].

[DianaG]

Stupid, crazy people believe stupid, crazy things, act in stupid, crazy ways. Film at 11:00.

[Chicagojeff]

Offer them several states to move too… just give them the option of taking their illiterate asses into some wilderness somewhere we they can have a “real america” . I have a supervisor who believes this kind of shit. It use to be funny listening to him four five years ago… not OMG he has followers…

[Balance]

@dhkendall

… Isn’t that all Tea Partiers?

I think you’re mixing “spitting mad” up with “barking mad”. Easy mistake to make, since many of them are both.

[misterkrc]

i like coffee better.

[Scuba_Ben]

So the Tea Party movement is mutating into claiming Global Illuminati Conspiracy for such things as bike-sharing? :rolleyes:

Hmm. Maybe this can be put to a good use.

Item: The TP movement takes claims that make the term “crackpot conspiracy theory” look weak, and turns them into major issues.
Item: The TP movement opposes just about anything coming out of the Obama administration, with minimal (if any) regard to facts, cause-and-effect, or when something started.
Item: The TP movement gets all in-your-face with their issues vs. The Government.

Maybe taking a real issue (the federal debt? quality of school education? TSA? the oil standard?), inventing a stupid CT claim behind it, and making it go viral will turn the TP into an inadvertent force for Useful Change. Or at least Comedy.