The anger of the right

The teabaggers were here on Saturday.  They marched, they rallied and they were really, really angry. 

My roommate and I walked over to the Capitol to check them out.  Our estimate was that there were between ten and twenty thousand people there.  They had signs with Obama as Hitler, calling him a "Muslim - Marxist" (I wish!) and bemoaning our government's descent into --horror of horrors-- socialism!  Besides their wild exaggerated misinformed claims, what stuck out to me was their anger and their homogenity.  They were really angry and they were almost entirely older and white.  

What sort of sociological phenomena are we witnessing here?  What could be motivating these people to come out and apparently without shame hold up signs with wild and outrageous claims about bogeymen in Washington out to kill their grandmas?  The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Department of Homeland Security are documenting a rise hate group activity since Obama's election.  Angry protestors are waving Any Rand books and shouting about the government taking away their guns. The philosophy behind this movement is utterly revolting.  Why in the world would any grown up in this day and age embrace it? 

Bernie Sanders was on MSNBC last night offering one explanation.  He said simply, people are angry.  They have a right to be angry.  The economy is in shambles and they're hurting financially.  I think Sanders is on to something.   I think they're lashing out at thing they've been conditioned to hate: the government and black people.

After eight years of the Bush Administration's costly and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are in debt as never before.  As a result of many more years of deregulations of the financial markets and unbrindled capitalism, the economy has nearly collapased.  Obama has turned out to not own a magic wand and has not been able to clean everything up in 8 months and our country is still a mess.  Unemployment is still high (though no longer increasing) and many, many families are suffering.  Of course people are angry.

The problem is not that people are angry; the problem is that their justifiable anger about the state of the country is being exploited by powerful special interest groups, namely the insurance industry and right-wing elitists.  Most of the people at Saturday's rally haven't actually read Ayn Rand and I think they would be revolted by Objectivism if they knew anything at all about it. They don't know much about the health care debate either beyond a couple soundbites from Glen Beck.  They just know they're angry.

The thing is right now that anger has coalesced around two things that this particular audience is prone to distrust.  But for the most part, this is not the USA of George Wallace and despite this vocal minority Ayn Rand has never had a very large following here.  As a whole, we're better than that.  This is a country that yes, is flawed and has been hugely, tragically, immensely wrong in the past but, in the end I believe, we're a good people and we're getting better and right now we're blessed with a wise leader.  Despite the rally of hate on Saturday, this is still the country that united as never before on January 20th to celebrate the inauguration not only of our first black president but of a great statesman, plain and simple.  

These are tough times.  There's going to be ugliness.  There's going to be anger.  There's going to be racism.  It's part of our baggage as a country.  But it's not what defines us.  And for all their noise on Saturday, the angry tea-baggers waving racist signs and threatening armed revolution are not representative where this country is at today.  They're just not.

EDIT: for more of a sense of the march on Saturday, watch this video:

Comments

[Daniel R. Fackler]

Yes, they are afraid and angry. Who wouldn't be when one section of the population is attempting to essentially tell another sector what to do. U.S. law is based on the Constitution, and what was the primary goal of the document? To curb the growth of centralized government power, and history has seen too many dictators rise under the guise of social welfare, or the will of the people, for me to believe more huge government subsidies would not reinforce existing power structures, and be damaging to the liberty of the individual. Thank you for your time.