the year of reading tea leaves V: political style

What I think distinguishes my analysis from that of Hofstadter and Lipset (but primarily Hofstadter) is that I think there is a reasonable element in economic and social status anxiety. One is not a kook, a paranoiac, or an extremist for worrying about one's present and future in economic and social terms. Where the Hofstadterian analysis is useful, I think, is in characterizing the modality through which these otherwise rational concerns are articulated. And, hence, the lack of interest in genuine debate is a telling sign of something like a paranoid style. The demonization of political opponents is also a sign of this style.

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So whereas randomly sampled Republicans may identify with some of the opinions expressed by the Tea Party, they are not necessarily likely to turn up at a rally with a poster that refers to the President by a racial slur. However, the activists in the Tea Party (and some segment of its rank and file), who may not be identical demographically with the individuals sampled by the NY Times poll, appear to be more extreme, open to expressing their concerns in extremist images and words. And more disturbing to me is the presence of Republican politicians who also seem willing to engage in (if not incite) the same mode of symbolic violence that pops up during Tea Partysan events.

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Why does the anxious, white, middle-class college-educated male not argue in favor of an expansion of Medicare, a peace dividend dedicated to funding library construction, and amnesty for the immigrant underclass that services his comfortable lifestyle? I think the key factor here is that not all individuals of this sort react in this manner or hold these views. However, those who do also have a party identification that is Republican. They have an ideological framework (a justice frame) within which to make sense of their predicament: government is to blame. This has been the conservative mantra since Reagan. Government is given faces: Pelosi, Reid, Obama. These three individuals by themselves have created all sorts of problems, some of which will arrive on a Day of Reckoning, the national domesday that will occur at some unspecific point in the distant future. Why is this happening? Because Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are socialists.

Continue a bit further down this rabbit hole and one winds up at a Tea Party event, cheering Palin, Bachmann and Beck, wearing a silly hat, and holding a poster with a misspelled, uncivil message.

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The Tea Party is clearly more than a tax rebellion, given the Partysans' obsession with birth certificates and other symbolic phenomena that reach far beyond the vagaries of deficit spending and the income tax. It is part poujadisme, and part classic American paranoid style, the latter of which is manifested in the Chicken Little Syndrome that infuses Tea Partysan and Teapublican rhetoric. If one were to turn over some of the Partysans, old-fashioned Dixiecrats would crawl out.