By AATTP Guest Contributor, Han Chimpson
TEApublicans are known for their use of buzz words. They throw around words like “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Marxist,” etc. in reference to President Obama, and most of them do not know the actual meaning of the buzz words that they mindlessly repeat amongst themselves and thus consistently misapply them.
Of course, the TEApublicans are universally terrified by those words when President Obama is involved in the context. Remember their furor over the word “czar” that was mostly fueled by gasbag Glenn Beck? Apparently President Obama was the first president ever to appoint those scary czars to various cabinet positions, and it was somehow part of an evil plot that involved ending all of our freedoms… or something. Too bad it was lost on the TEApublicans that so-called czars have been around since FDR. Or at least the term has been.
So that brings us to the latest Teabilly Freakout buzzword… Drum roll please… EXECUTIVE ORDERS. When President Obama announced that he would seek to use EXECUTIVE ORDERS as part of a plan to curb gun violence, the Teabilly gun nuts went into a state of frenzy, as if they had just been told that the Daytona 500 was being blacked out on their televisions, as we all are well aware of. We heard tough talk about protecting the 2nd Amendment, revolutions, civil war, and the oft-repeated phrase, “He ain’t takin’ MY guns!”
Of course, the so-called EXECUTIVE ORDERS that may not have been executive orders at all did not amount to much. But that hasn’t stopped the TEApublicans freakout over the fact that President Obama has the power to use them, never mind that he has done so at about the same rate Teabillies mount animal heads on their walls – a total of 147 times so far.
TEApublicans: “Wait, 147 times? That’s tyranny! He should be impeached! He’s a Fascist Dictator!”
Well, except that every other recent president has used them many more times than President Obama has so far. In fact, Saint Ronnie has used them the most out of any president since Eisenhower.
So when you see TEApublicans flip out about EXECUTIVE ORDERS, hit them with the facts. It still won’t end their paranoid delusions, and it won’t stop them from thinking that Obama has a nefarious plot of some kind to do… something… but you can at least get that warm fuzzy feeling of having tried to help those less fortunate than you.
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Progressive Populist
Certain things are just so horrific, they are just not tolerated by the TeaHags: rational thinking, alternative opinions, good-natured joshing, correct spelling, polite disagreement, a 2012 election, logical conclusions, equal opportunities, Reagan being dead, slavery being outlawed, Mexico being on the planet, schools without assault rifles, women in shoes, any book that doesn’t have the word “Bible” in the title, gay Earthlings, coal not described as “clean” …..and any birth certificates issued by the State of Hawaii.
I throw up my hands in disgust when those clowns mix as additions, opposites in their speech … fascist & communist, for example. Millions of fascists and communists died in World War II fighting each other. All the speakers do I crying out such strings is prove how ignorant they are. As a descendant of people who fought on land and sea in the Revolution I resent their use of “Tea Party” and am appalled by their co-opting of the Rattlesnake Flag … I have one of those I used to fly on the 4th of July, but I can’t any more for fear of being labelled as one of ‘them.’
Can any Teapublican explain the difference (or similarities) between communism and fascism?
No, because to do this you need to understand the history of the two, which would be difficult because the concept of class doesn’t exist for them – it’s an essentially leftwing concept on which to base worldview, as opposed to a one based on loyalty to tribe, blood and soil, which form the base of the rightwing mindset.
The genius of the neoliberal right, whose goal is to smash 19th and 20thC social reform movements which until a few decades back had blindsided them, has been to conflate the extreme right with the left down over the concept of ‘collectivisation’ which all share. This leaves the field of play free for the capitalist centre-right (and their allies on the extreme right on many occasions) who are able to argue that socialism is basically fascism by any other name and Hitler was therefore a socialist – LOOK AT THE NAME. All rubbish, of course, but by that logic it holds. Likewise when democratic leftists are threatened by violenece by extreme rightists linked to commerce, as happened in Venezuela, Bolivia and Honduras, the people doing the threatening are able to argue they represent the interests of liberty. Instead of Left and Right, old French style, it’s far more useful to look at politics, as Hayek said, as a triangle, with collectivisation, authoritarianism and libertarianism in each of its corners. Then things start to make a lot more sense. Even the Tea Party.
As the author stated, some of those were not technically executive orders at all;.
In any case. he ain’t talking guns, and in most cases just invoked the application, or the execution of existing regulations or legislation.