Buzzwords

[paft.livejournal.com]

Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, describing the idea of taxation without representation for “non-property owners” as “wise:”

The founding fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who got the right to vote. It wasn’t, you were a citizen and you just automatically got to vote. Some of their restrictions were, you obviously would not think about today, but one of them was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense because, if you are a property owner, you actually have a vested stake in the community. And if you’re not a property owner, I’m sorry, but they, property owners have a little bit more of a vested stake in the community than non-property owners do.

Judson Phillips, shortly after Talkingpointsmemo publicized his quote:

Watching the left go into hysteria ) (1) over this has been nothing short of amusing (2). Of course, when the left goes spastic (3) over something like this, they either get it wrong (4), or nine times out of ten, they lie (4) about what was said.

(1) Hysteria is the first red flag indicating that he said precisely what Talkingpointsmemo says he said. Rather than deny it, Phillips tries to paint those of us who disagree as irrational (and, of course, unmanly) for disagreeing.

(2) Amusing Any form of the word “amuse” has become an online chestnut used by writers caught in a logical and/or moral cul-de-sac. The poster is here trying to paint himself as a cool and intelligent observer standing above the fray, not even deigning to address the “hysterics” who get so hopelessly neurotic about beliefs like “Muslims shouldn’t hold political office in America” or “only property owners should be allowed to vote.”

(3) Spastic is a bit risky. It’s occasionally used by experienced online debaters, but it does tend to conjure up the image of the poster as an eye-rolling teenager (“GAWWWWD, they’re sooooo SPASTIC!”) rather than an “amused” observer, someone with a tweedy jacket and a just touch of gray in his hair, chuckling amiably as he puffs thoughtfully on his pipe.

Get it wrong – lie about it Having established the theater of himself as the cool, rationalist and his opponents as shrieking maniacs, Phillips now equates taking issue with what he said with lying about it.

To be fair, he may be quite sincere about this. Many of those in the current Republican base (i.e., the Tea Party Movement) seem genuinely unable to distinguish between someone disagreeing with a statement and someone misquoting or misunderstanding the statement. Often they react with “you’re lying” or “you’re twisting my words” when what they really mean is “You make disenfranchising the poor sound like a bad thing!”

This quote from Phillips reveals, of course, what the Tea Party movement is really all about. They don’t just object to politicians they dislike. They object to fellow Americans who vote for politicians they dislike, and they’d like to see something done about it.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes