Citing one of the links between the movement and extremists, the report says Dale Robertson, the chairman of the 1776 Tea Party, invited Martin "Red" Beckman to be a guest on the Tea Party Radio hour that he co-hosts. Beckman, who was introduced as a "great guy" and "an authority on the Constitution" has been publishing anti-Semitic writings for over twenty years.
Moreover, the report claims that Robertson endorsed a pastor who believes that Jews are a "satanic force" and that "people of color" are less than fully human."
...The report also details the relationship between the white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Tea Party movement.
"The Council of Conservative Citizens promotes the idea that the United States is or should be a white Christian nation; and that Barack Obama and black people generally oppress white people," page 60 of the report describes.
...Anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobia also permeate the ranks of the Tea Party, says the report.
"We are at a point of having to take a stand against all Muslims," the ResistNet Tea Party website claimed. "There is no good or bad Muslim. There is [sic] only Muslims and they are embedded in our government, military and other offices...What more must we wait for to take back this country of ours."
My take? This is almost inevitable when the political centre drifts too far right and society's keel, its moderator, the middle class is eliminated as an effective force. The middle class is the driving force of genuine progressivism. Knock it out and you can feed what remains a rich diet of frustration, fear and anger and - voila! - the Tea Party.
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"Knock it out and you can feed what remains a rich diet of frustration, fear and anger and - voila! - the Tea Party."
Great line.
And you think a migration of Americans into Canada due to draught will cause havoc? Perhaps we will be facing havoc due to religious fanatics sooner don't you think? Anyong
Oh I think there'll be plenty of havoc to go around. Our once generally cohesive societies are beginning to fray, the price of radical, wedge politics.
Inciting people to despise their own people takes a bit of preparation and work but eventually becomes self-sustaining. To undermine social cohesion to advance a radical political perspective is tragic, particularly when it coincides with external challenges that can only be met with powerful unity.
It is rarely mentioned but the global warming that drives this drought map will bring a variety of impacts and repercussions.
Take sea level rise for example. Around the world, populations mass along coastlines. That's typically where mega-cities are found, either directly on the coast or along navigable rivers leading to the coast. We've enjoyed a few millenia of very gradual sea level decline. King Henry's coastal forts are now hundreds of feet inland because of it. The distance that now stands between those forts and today's coastline is built up and heavily populated. Around the world, as the seas retreated, we pursued them.
Now reverse that 4,000 years plus of sea level change and do it in just two centuries. Massive populations are displaced. Today's term, popularized by Iraq, is "Internally Displaced People."
Drought combined with sea level rise will fuel the IDP phenomenon probably for at least two centuries. Whether there's no water or you're suddenly underwater makes little difference - you can't live there. You have to move. You have to seek space somewhere where you can live.
The NCAR map shows that, in just 40-years, the livable parts of our world will shrink enormously. There will be some offset through adaptation technologies but not nearly enough.
Always bear in mind that we're talking about widespread drought that has already arrived in places like the American southwest and the Great Plains. Then consider these are the same regions where we have most rapidly drained the aquifers. After that, weigh in the reality that these regions are our traditional 'breadbasket' where we've grown our staple grains and raised our livestock.
This is all coming on so very quickly. That's consistent with Jared Diamond's observation that, when civilizations collapse, it occurs abruptly.
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