talkpolitics | Bigotry at the Tea Party Protest

readherring.livejournal.com posting in

Given some of the discussions generated from my last post, I wanted to share with you one last picture from the April 15 Tea Party protest.

But first, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the positive comments. I was trying very hard to be open minded and fair, and I am genuinely happy that people found my post to be so. I am even more happy that people from "both sides" liked it for that reason. This is an incredibly positive political sentiment - that we have a common preference for fair and balanced presentation. It gives me some hope that this hyper-polarized climate might collapse one day.

I also wanted to apologize for not being on line much after posting - I'm on limited internet these days.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't destroy the fair and balanced vibes, but a lot of the commenters believed that the Tea Party is a bigoted movement. Not only do I insist that this is wrong, but I also believe that making this wrongful accusation needlessly pushes Tea Partiers and their liberal counterparts further away from ever listening to each other, or making any compromise. I therefore wish that I could say that I saw no evidence of bigotry at the Tea Party, but I can't. Here's the last picture:

This is one of the counter-protesters. Her shirt reads "F*ck your God". I didn't intentionally leave this out of the original post because I was embarrassed by it, although I am embarrassed by it. I only left it out because in choosing from my hundred photos to post, this one was just va poor quality shot.

I'm not trying to make liberals look bad with this picture. I'm just trying to show that while there are people with ugly beliefs on both sides, these ugly beliefs don't define those sides. The Anti-Tea-Party movement (or Coffee Party, or whatever) isn't an anti religion movement, even if some members of the Atheist Takfiri show up in the crowd. The same goes for racists (of which I saw none) or anti-abortionists (of which I saw the nutter truck driver - his rear billboard was all about fetuses) who show up for an anti-tax movement. The movement isn't about those other things, even if some of the participants go way off message.

Sorry if this post doesn't offer much new information over the last one, but given that there was such a strong belief in Tea Party racism in the first set of comments, I felt that I had done everyone a disservice by leaving this picture out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

enders-shadow.livejournal.com

Ya know, if God was not invoked to do all sorts of terrible things, I wouldn't mind the religious folks. I'd still disagree with them--cause a theistic God is absurd--but whatever. If it harms no one and makes them happy, AWESOME.

Problem is, the first part is not true. It is not the case that religion harms no one.

I like her socks.

From:

underlankers.livejournal.com

Neither is it the case that Communism harms no one. But nobody craps on people like Gillen these days. ~~Because reality itself did so in the years 1989-91~~.

Re: first? as if it mattered....

From:

enders-shadow.livejournal.com - Date: 22/4/10 02:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: first? as if it mattered....

From:

underlankers.livejournal.com - Date: 22/4/10 11:19 (UTC) - Expand

From:

readherring.livejournal.com

Leaders invoke whatever they can to get the masses riled up enough to kill. The religion-free communist regimes were every bit as brutal as their religious counterparts. The British fought bloody wars under the belief that British culture was superior.

Some people have a psychological need to be a warrior for a cause. The actual cause isn't relevant - people kill each other over soccer matches. It was an evolutionary advantage when mankind lived in primitive tribes. Now it's just a clusterfuck. I don't blame religion for this behavior.