The Origin of the Tea Party

I don't know how the Tea Party began, but in America it has always been there. We've had, from the start, a segment of our population steeped in ridiculous religious alarmism, in a loathing of job-stealing immigrants, in a sense that our culture or race will be rejected by newcomers, in a certainty that women are inferior, in a belief that new people are mental and moral brutes, in a sense that outsiders hate our liberties, in a hatred for our elected government. 

The political strength of the Tea Party has differed in different eras, but it's always present. It was there among our founding families, who thought those with dark skins were three-fifths of a real person. It was there when Irish women were told they were too apelike to work as servants (no Irish need apply).  From time to time the Tea Party would fully surface--as a political party--and win public office. In the 1850s the American Party or Know-Nothings won three governorships. That period deserves a close look.

In the 1850s our political parties were disintegrating. The voters had lost faith in them. Two new parties formed to fill the void: the Republican Party (based on abolitionism) and the American Party (based on nativism). The Republican Party became dominant. The American (Tea) Party, I guess, eventually found a home among the Southern Democrats, much as the current Tea Party is at home among our current Southern Republicans.

Today our political parties may be disintegrating. The voters have lost faith in them.  The Republican Party, as a leader said the other day, may be falling apart, creating a three party system: a Business Party, a Tea Party and the Democrats, unless the Democrats split, too. It's happened before. It might be happening again. That works for me.

Get Out of My Country

A few days back we saw on TV the Univision anchor, Jorge Ramos, being shoved out of a Trump news conference by a hired Trump goon who looked about seven feet tall.  There was a follow up that didn't see much air time, an unpaid large white fellow in the hallway who shouted at Ramos, "Get out of my country." Ramos, of course, is an American citizen.

Two days later I saw on TV a sheriff who wanted to deport not only undocumented workers but also American citizens he considered unworthy. He wasn't talking about babies. He was talking about you and me. I kind of understood how he felt. I wanted to deport him--but who would take him?

All right, we have strange people holding office or running for office and trying to deport citizens, both babies and adults. The divide in this country is growing more bitter. The deporters are unlikely to win, but they aren't harmless. The next step, white vigilantes attacking the helpless in the dead of night, has begun to surface. It's up to each of us to intervene.

Laughing While Black

This won't be news to local people, but maybe some on Facebook haven't heard of the incident. A day or two back, a women's book club, mostly black women, took a ride on the Napa Wine Train. The train rumbles slowly up and down the Napa Valley serving expensive wines to tourists. Anyway, apparently this group of women laughed too loudly, some genteel wine zombies complained, and about halfway through the journey, the book club was ejected from the train and met by local police, who did not arrest them. The women were bussed back to their starting point, and their money was refunded. 

The publicity has been negative, so the Wine Train has apologised several times. I find--and I think the book club women found--the sort of 19th century racism the Wine Train zombies exhibited to be astonishing. Racism is supposed to be more subtle these days, based on special code words and ancient lifted eyebrows. 
    

Turner

Yesterday a friend drove up from Aptos and took Susan and me to the Turner exhibition at the de Young.  This was in honor of what would have been our friend's sister's birthday. We had lunch at the de Young. All three of us ordered gazpacho, but only Susan could get it down (hers and mine). My salmon salad was okay--all of the food had been fancied up with extra ingredients that provided just enough disappointment to make the meal mediocre. San Francisco cuisine at its worst.

The show was large and interesting. My favorite was "Burial at Sea," which was no doubt very popular. There were many small watercolors Turner had painted as samples to show wealthy patrons in case they wanted him to complete a similar oil. Even I could see that Turner took a big step toward the major art movements just ahead of him. What most impressed me, though, was a huge video screen, maybe 18 by 24 feet, that dominated the entrance. On it gray waves under a gray sky kept rolling toward my feet. It was like standing on the beach at Avenue C. You know how mesmerizing that is, just watching waves break over and over, never the same twice. I stood there for a long time.

The System

In the August 24 NEW YORKER, Lewis Menand wrote about Joan Didion and her insight into why media focus on sensational events. "It's not because the stories tell us who we are. It's because they don't.  They leave unexamined and untouched the class antagonisms and economic failures that are the underlying causes of socially destructive events. Personal stories feed the American illusion that the system is never the cause of anything."

This is Republican doctrine: each of us is solely responsible for whatever happens, and the carefully constructed system that helps to create us, our environment and Donald Trump remains invisible.
 

Donald Trump Speaks

Donald Trump speaks: "Let me tell you about the wall I'm going to build, because I am a builder. I build things. That's my job. Do you know the Great Wall of China?  That's a big wall, but it didn't keep out the Chinese. It wasn't tall enough. Now you can see that I'm a tall person, a big guy. That's just the way I am. Bill Clinton is tall--he is tall, really--but next to me,  he looks like a footstool. I don't take credit for that, but I'm tall and I'm going to build a wall that is really really really tall,  taller than any ladder. Let's say it's forty storeys high. I've built taller buildings. Easy. It will be a beautiful wall, and the Mexicans will love it. They're going to pay for it. I won't build an ugly wall. My name is going to be on it. It will be gorgeous. The Mexicans will love it, and they will thank me for building a wall that is thicker than Rick Perry's thinking process. I'll tell you the truth. I went, you know, to the Wharton School of Finance. It's not really a school. It's more like a college, and they taught the smartest people how to think and how to take an inheritance, say a hundred million, and turn it into a fortune.  Rick Perry attacked me, and he went from two percent in the polls to nothing. That's very weak. I didn't ask him to attack me. He has no percentage. I didn't know that was possible. He's running behind Dez Nutts in the polls. I'm twice as tall as Dez  Nutts. That's just something that happened, that some people are taller and smarter than others. The Chinese are smart people and. . . ."

JEB!

Donald Trump, leader of the Republican party, has pointed out that Jeb Bush and his campaign have no energy. Eugene Robinson has suggested a cure. As you may know, the logo for the Bush campaign is JEB!  Not enough exclamation marks. JEB !!!!! would rocket the colorless Bush, who has the lack of personal definition common to fat albino rabbits, back into contention. If that's not enough, Jeb's positions in foreign policy and foreign wars. borrowed from his younger brother, will likely induce a huge turnout among America's League of Contemporary Idiots.   

This Is Not Your Mother

Recently I came across a new group called Black Lives Matter. I saw a representative on TV who said that people like me are "liberal white supremacists."  Fair enough. I view every person on the planet as a racist, although some cope with it better than others. But I resent being called a liberal.

In my youth liberals supported war. It was an insult to be called a liberal. But the meanings of words change, and I realize now that the young woman meant well. She added that the opinions of old people like me who support Bernie Sanders, a socialist, mean nothing to her. Nothing. She is clearly the sort of independent person who can think for herself. 

Then I watched another representative of Black Lives Matter, a young man who wore a T-shirt on which was printed "This Is Not Your Mother's Civil Rights Movement." I know what you're thinking: How did this guy find out about my mother?  She died before he was born. He did seem a bit dismissive about women in general, but I'll bet that if he had gotten to know my mother better, he would have liked her. I did.

Gendering Civil Rights

Watching a well-educated spokesman for the Black Lives Matter movement on Melissa Harris-Perry's TV show, I noticed that he was wearing a T-shirt that read, "This Is Not Your Mother's Civil Rights Movement." The spokesman, in his talk, mentioned his pride in wearing the cap on his head backwards. He was rejecting the civil rights movement of the 1960s--which he saw as the soft womanly efforts of MLK and John Lewis--but taking fierce pride in the retro male headgear of the 1980s. Imagine thinking that wearing your cap backwards is still a statement in 2015.  Testosterone abounded. He dimly assigned gender to the two civil rights movements. Melissa had no problem with that.

I can say this out loud because I'm so damned old. 

The basic issue is white privilege and structural racism. When that problem comes to our attention, male privilege and structural paternalism count for nothing at all, as Anita Hill once found out.

In California if you gather together everyone held back by structural racism (the Latinos, the African-Americans, the Filipinos, the Japanese and Chinese, the Pomo Indians and so on), you have a majority. The Black Lives Matter movement, though, rejects with open scorn the idea of including brown ethnic groups in their demand for black justice. They call their natural allies, the political left, "liberal white supremacists." They are going it alone. They will grow smaller and even purer. They aren't after Marco Rubio or Hillary Clinton. They attack Bernie Sanders, a socialist invested in supporting the entire working class. That's safe in America. What could be safer? There's little that pleases the swanky class more than seeing the Left split up into small groups and go at one another in a quest for purity. 

 

The Clown Car

Watching the first Republican debates was freaking amazing. I can't imagine how such a collection of bad people gets put together in one hall.

You have some dopes like Rick Perry. Several narcissists are pushing along, including Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee. Sociopaths like Snot Walker,  Ted Cruz from Canada, Carlie Fiorina and Chris Christie elbow for room. Rand Paul offers a kind of teenager's dimwitted ideology. In place of Bush and Rubio we see empty suits. Gov. Kasich of Ohio attempts to be human, and, finally, there is a surgeon who doesn't know who the cabinet officers are. You'll find a much better assortment of people working at a Safeway or teaching at a high school. It's incredible, really.

The males tried to seem macho, but not one of them objected when Donald Trump spewed his coarse attack on Ms. Kelly.  They remained silent, waiting for the polling. No balls at all. Do you think Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter would have stood there in cowed timidity?

Snott Walker, Android

Gov.  Snott Walker (of some state) isn't sure that President Obama is a Christian. He's never had a chance to discuss the matter with Obama, so Walker is left up in the air.  Some people call themselves Jews or Muslims, and Walker takes most of them at their word, but when the President says he's Christian, he might be lying.

Gov. Walker himself may be an android. He calls himself human, but I've never had a chance to discuss the matter with him. I'm devoutly human myself, and I can't be sure about Snott. He probably is human, as he claims, but he seems to act mechanically.

Why The American Revolution Failed

 The American revolution against Great Britain didn't fail, but it should have. There was a good reason it had to fail.

As you no doubt recall, North and South America were held as colonies by European masters.  In 1776 no colony had revolted, because a successful revolt was impossible. You know why, of course. All of the world's major gun makers and black powder plants were in Europe and Great Britain. It was an insightful European policy not to arm the colonies. They sold the colonies a few guns and a little black powder but not enough to matter.

When Massachusetts grew restive, the first move the British made was to march on Lexington and Concord to collect the guns in the armories. That went badly.

The Americans revolted and succeeded because the French King gave us hundreds of thousands of free muskets etc. The Americans had no money. His government went broke helping us and that brought on the French Revolution.

Once the United States formed, it became a major gun and ammo maker. Our capitalists supplied guns--at a steep price--to the revolutionaries in North and South America. We've been arms dealers ever since, according to a professor at Berkeley.