Understanding America -- Faith, Economics and the Tea Party I wonder about the gulf between me and the Tea Party, and have, since before the Tea Party. I say that because just being white Southern -- with the reverence for less government we are raised on, is most of the way there. I am very familiar with the themes, from birth. Heres where they lose me. Tea Partiers seem to be a generation of folks who were pretty obviously raised on Ronald Reagan, and more specifically, Reaganomics. You can tell they believe faithfully in the concept that if our taxes were a bit lower, some grand entrepreneurial wonderfulness would overtake the economy. Listening to TP rhetoric, is like going to the LIBERTY Church, and worshiping the Reaganomic tooth fairy. Where Im different on that is, lower taxes are nice, but its insane to think that would be a panacea, and the Tea Party idea of debt and taxes is simplistic and it was always a fiction of half-truths. They got it from a 30-year Republican repetition of a political theme -- the politicization of a decent, short term economic idea that only ever worked imperfectly and for a short time. Reaganomics addressed a unique situation, a long time ago, and then it depended on record deficit spending. The Tea Party thinks Reaganomics is all they ever need to know about economics. The constant repetition and misunderstanding of the total, accumulated national debt has freaked out the Tea Party, who seem to be worried about the bank noticing our account is overdrawn. The bank -- the world economy -- already knows better than the Tea Party does. TP folks seem to have no concept about how the economy actually works, Keynesian economics, or what the FED does. Tea Party politicians are either shameless about scaring these people and whipping them to a frenzy, or the politicians are clueless themselves. You cannot explain anything to these folks, once they have the model working in their head, and that brings up the most important part of the Tea Party reality. The Tea Party represents a faith-shifted, specially selected part of the electorate, and once they think they know something they believe it on FAITH, and if you disagree, you are the enemy of their faith. There will be no listening, except to fight, and NEVER expect a Tea Partier to change a conclusion, because it almost never happens. This trait makes twice as many people oppose the Tea Party than support them. Its also why so many of them continue to be birthers, Muslim-haters, climate deniers, Benghazi freaks, FEMAphobes, and think Obama is coming for their guns. Tea Party faith in their own ideas makes them fight others, and think they represent the entire nation, instead of only being about a fourth of the population. They simply have no humility in these matters, and cannot be worked with, on issues of governance. So they must sabotage. What saved me, even though I was raised in the nations Tea Party nesting grounds, is I was fascinated early on by science, and recognized how to separate matters of faith from matters of fact. Its just that simple. My religious faith had to stand a scientific test early on. I never thought there was a conflict between faith and science -- I always knew I should only apply faith AFTER the science verified what was true, or at least likely. It never stopped me from spiritual growth, but it did stop me from being a Tea Partier.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 13:43:12 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015