Odds and ends

I recently discovered that Twitter has... some utility. I'm not sure yet what that utility is. But it does give my information addicted brain another source of possible links and stories to pass through. What I have discovered is that using it, primarily to link to this blog or to my reading list of the day, results in a motley group of people who will try to link to you. Perhaps some of them are spambots, maybe most. And some are more or less link repositories themselves. A few however are actual human beings somewhere (I think). I've mostly been getting people who appear to think "libertarian" means something like "quasi-conservative", and then blocking or otherwise removing their attentions while they post links to the Corner or complain about immigration. But yesterday I finally encountered the dark side of the Ron Paul-esque corridor of political support that libertarians are supposedly occupying: Neo-Nazis and racists. It is rather discomforting. I had no illusions back during his insurgent campaign in '08 or during the various media defamation over the Tea Party folks that there were somehow all good decent Americans here. I've seen my share of racists right here in Ohio who magically became involved in politics more because "that black guy from Kenya was about to take over the country". Still it gets annoying that a political philosophy which has its roots in classical liberalism and the extension of freedom in as many ways as possible to as many people as possible gets tied up with these nutcases who think the Jews are behind everything and health care is a secret reparations bill or whatever. I have...some interest in listening to the rantings of the elderly who are afraid the government is going to take away their Medicare (that they subtly ignore was provided by that same government) or the confused philosophy of conservative and religious fundamentalists who think Christianity involved a doctrine of free market capitalism (which wasn't my reading on Jesus. I'm pretty close to a "biblical free marketeer" as far as Americans are concerned, I'd think having the religious cover would be a useful deception and I don't see one to be had), but I have no time whatsoever to listen to modern forms of Nazi propaganda and racist sentiments. There is not much as it is to learn from the previous two groups. There is nothing to be gained except a rising sense of rage and anger that there are human beings who have trained themselves to believe such things in dealing with the last group. The only recourse is to repel oneself away as quickly as possible and not to be drawn in by the attraction-repulsion dynamics of hideous things (sort of like torture porn type movies).

The trouble is that these are the same folks who surface publicly and in the media whenever there's an apparent resurgence in "anti-government" or "libertarian" leanings in the general public. We get the Wacos and the McVeighs and the Stormfronts and this then tars the "don't tread on me" flag with some sort of radical and racist language. Free speech absolutism I have, a tolerance for the existence of these people I have. But a tolerance for proscribing active and violent hatred of others I don't. We don't need to put up with it. Cultural and social pressures have conspired to put racial epithets in the place of reviled language once occupied solely by the infamous "7 words you can't say on Television", with a special sort of penalty held in reserve beyond that still for people who cross racial boundaries to say them in public, a form of social and public suicide. This must be continued and extended. No daylight should be held up for these antiquated notions of racial supremacy and hate.

There are lots of strategic and political problems within the cohesion and messages of those Tea Party people. I guess they figured out that teabaggers was a "profane" reference. That was progress. They still haven't figured out what needs to be cut from the budget and told us how they would do it. They still seem to like anti-intellectualism from Palin and Bush. And they, despite a great deal of self-assessment bias, still have some racially motivated assholes in the mix. Now there's not much I think can be done about the folks who claim to want fiscal discipline and somehow think Palin or Bush provided such things. I guess eventually someone will have to come up with a platform of policies informing us of what they want to cut in order to save us from fiscal oblivion, but that won't happen if they continue to operate as an independent wing of the Republican party anyway. What they can do is tell the racists to shut the fuck up and stay home so that it does not allow a narrative to form which tars their politics as potentially harboring racist motivations. Ron Paul has not done this affirmatively enough which, along with his fetish for the gold standard, is pretty much why I was looking for anybody else resembling a libertarian to vote for back in '08 (there wasn't much out there since the LP nominated a guy who had voted for the Iraq War and was still basically a conservative Republican even after leaving Congress and that party) and why I'm rather settled on "somebody else" for '12. Among other factors (two I listed above, and the fact they're still much too supportive of Republicans/Conservativism rather than a true third party like the Perot vote was reflective of), it's a big reason why I'm not all that impressed with the Tea Party as a meaningful movement.