WHAT UP IS DOWN

Back again. It's been awhile. I'm trying to not get so mad. Things are messed up right now. I'm preferring to choose hope rather than despair.

The Tea Party movement is having a positive impact, despite the left's multiple and hateful attempts to disparage it.

We've seen the accusations of racism and other ugly name calling.
The title of my blog entry, "What's up is Down", refers to the absolute opposite way the left and right views the world. In a blog entry written in response to an article in the New York Review of Books this article, Mark Lilla is quoted on how he tries to define the Tea Partiers one more time.

Many Americans, a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites—politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers—are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink…the list is long.

I'm reading that and thinking, okay, where's the problem? The blogger sites another quote from Lilla that summarizes his rant,

A new strain of populism is metastasizing [Note the Cancer reference] before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. [SNIP] Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

Left/Right, Up/Down - any stark opposite analogy will do. There is just an absolutely complete disconnect in what is moral and immoral; good and bad; appropriate powers of government and abuse of power of government. There is no agreeing because the base line of correctness is just different. Facts can be agreed upon, but the facts don't bother at least a third of the population (which turns out to largely be the population in control right now). Definitions like socialist and racist are not consistent in the left and right. I believe that many on the left believes their lies. There may be some on the very top who are part of a conspiracy and grab for power, but in the end, the world view is just not the same. Different lessons are learned by different people by the same circumstances.

Back to why the disconnect is a good thing. In the quotes referenced above, Lilla is displaying his ignorance of what is important to the American people. They are showing their true colors, despite themselves. Their definition of the Tea Party is getting closer - but they still think it's crazy.

Despite their attempts to disparage the Tea Party movement, its powerful political effects are becoming a reality as some recent elections and polls of future elections show. I'm going to believe that in the end, good triumphs over evil. Truth triumphs over lies.