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The Silent Majority, 2011
This weekend, GOP presidential candidates are groveling at the “Values Voters Summit” in Washington, a noisy minority with frontrunner Mitt Romney defending his faith from attacks as “a cult.”
All this is reported with a straight face by media large and small, who a generation ago would have dismissed such fringe doings as a crackpot sideshow.
Today, the Tea Party and the Religious Right hold America hostage, with few signs of dissent among America’s real Silent Majority (not the one Nixon trumped up in the 1970s).
What’s changed?
“The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness,” Cesar Chavez said decades ago while trying to lift West Coast grape workers out of virtual slavery.
Back then, sympathizers stopped eating grapes, and it made a difference. Now, Wall Street protests sputter on, but there are few other avenues of expression for those who feel their government has been the victim of a hostile takeover.
The Koch brothers, funders of the Tea Party, pull strings from their hundreds of billion dollars a year redoubt, barely noticed let alone punished by a consumer backlash.
If we stopped buying Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups and Stainmaster carpet, they wouldn’t notice. We only hear of their empire when they are caught, as they recently were, trading with Iran and paying bribes to foreign countries.
MORE.
7 Responses to “The Silent Majority, 2011”
-[well-meaning but disorganized]-
PERFECT!
Organization means control. Control means manipulation. There are those trying to control it, but it ain’t working.
This I will tell you; This is only the beginning. These people are way to docile. When nothing improves in this country, demonstrations will get more and more troublesome. More and more polarized and more and more scary.
Ah yes, the evil Koch brothers again. Sorry, but even if they (and George Soros) died today, nothing would change. You might as well rail against human nature.
Prof….I have still not identified your mission here.
It would be very helpful if you would explain what you are getting at.
Koch virtually created the “Tea Party”, and if that’s not “influence” than I cannot imagine what is.
These demonstrations are not orchestrated and funded like the Tea Party gatherings. These are true demonstrations not political theater. These are grass root events in the literal sense.
Prof-
These demonstrations make the Tea Party both laughable and illegitimate regarding intent as well as by their shear numbers of people.
@Allen
If you know where to get that Koch brothers funding, I’m sure my tea party would be interested.
My tea party was started by a couple of people putting together a meeting with some friends (unpaid, and frankly, not that organized). When I’ve met people from other tea parties, that’s also how they got started. How is that NOT grass roots?
Because you decided to name your awful, misdirected and selfish group a ‘Tea party’ group? You joined a throng because that throng was organized and stimulated by Koch money.
And why is it that you dismiss their business with an enemy of Israel and the US as “Oh those EVIL Koch brothers again”? Are you consciously dense?
These “Family Values” grps that seem to keep popping up kinda creep me out. I listen to what they talk about sometimes and all they seem to envision is white, christian america when they talk about traditional american values. Its like listening to a watered down Klan rally. I have a big chunk of my family that really sides with those grps, and I gotta say they have this crazy leave it to beaver esque view of how the world works and how the world used to and should be.