A Cult of Tea 0

Chauncey Devega reads the tea leaves. An excerpt (emphasis in the original):

First, the Tea Party is easily lampooned; However, their songs, folksy misspelled posters, embrace of ignorance as authenticity, and love of costumes are a type of political theater. Consequently–and this is a point that many in the pundit classes and other professional bloviators seem to miss–“the show is the thing.” Reasoned discussions of policy and good governance are made secondary to a sense of belonging. For folks who feel alienated, scared, and “want to take their America back” (from “the blacks, the gays, the atheists, the Socialists, the liberals” etc.) a sense of belonging is a powerful salve for alienation and anomie.

A key point. When the ghouls in the audience at the last three Republican debates howled for murder, death, and hatred of Americans who happen not to be straight, they were marking out the boundaries of their political community. Their cheers were not those of outliers; they were the id of a community that stood silent in complicity and agreement.

Second, as I argued elsewhere, the Tea Party with its hostile faux populism is a cult-like organization whose ethos has infected the Republican Party as a whole. Emotion trumps reason. Faith has been mated with ideology to create a worldview that is immune from critical interrogation and intervention. Heretics are burned at the proverbial stake of Right-wing talk radio and Fox News. And ideological orthodoxy is the prime directive, even if it means destroying the U.S. economy (as was seen during the debt ceiling hostage taking by the Tea Party GOP), or believing in fictions such as cutting the federal budget in a time of the Great Recession will magically create economic growth.