Barrett Garese

People would walk by my booth and say ‘TARP, TARP, TARP, TARP!’ But when you tried to talk to them about it, they did not know any of the details. They confused TARP and the stimulus plan. They confused TARP and the omnibus bill. They confused TARP and the president’s budget.

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who lost his primary race to Tea Party candidates

realitychex

(via brooklynmutt)(via apsies)

(via ericmortensen)

[BG note: You know, I tried just so hard to leave this one alone, but…I’m me, so I’m writing something anyway.]

What do you expect from a movement that quite literally requires ignorance to participate? That’s all the Tea Party is; a movement which revels in and requires from each and every participant a certain amount of ignorance to things like “facts,” “figures,” “reality,” and “common sense.” I’m not even talking about the really deep details either, I’m talking about things like whether or not a universal single-payer healthcare system was recently signed into law by the President. I’m talking about when TARP came into being and who voted for it. I’m talking about when certain states were added to the Union. I won’t even get into the hypocrisy and short-term memory loss that’s so common in this movement that I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll soon discover there’s a carrier gene.

It’s the last bastion for the idiots. It’s the savior of those too stupid or unwilling to manage the very simplest of google searches. It’s the refuge for those who don’t require facts or critical thinking to be mad about something and are just looking for a direction; so the Tea Party gave them one and marketed it as “grassroots” under a name that brings to mind a great mental image (literary references would have been too complex, I’m sure.) Granted it ignores the facts around the actual historical event it pretends to emulate and it’s followers are literally surrounded and guided by some of the dumbest people in the country, but the community warm-fuzzies help stamp out what I imagine to be a deep-seated knowledge that almost nothing that comes out of their mouths has any basis even tangentially close to anything approaching reality.

The Tea Party is “Patriotic™” in the same way that “Cheez™” is a dairy product. It’s the land of the frequently wrong, and the home of the blissfully ignorant. So why are we surprised that their tirades on TARP or birth certificates or taxes or stimuli or budgets or InsertReallyAnythingHereBecauseICouldKeepTypingForQuiteAWhile have once again been demonstrably proven to be based on their own imaginations?

You’ll notice I never once played the “Tea Partiers are all racists” card - I don’t need to. I’m sure some are racist and some aren’t, but I frankly find it so much easier to damn them with their own stupidity and unwillingness to bow to (or even acknowledge the existence of) logic and reason. We live in a time where ignorance to fact is no longer an excuse in this country. You have what is very nearly the whole knowledge of all of human existence at your fingertips and you’re choosing ignorance over intelligence? And then you want me to trust your opinion on healthcare?

It’s like living in some weird-ass twilight zone where “Well that’s just like, your opinion man” is considered a valid counterargument to “here is where the figures you provided are demonstrated to be factually inaccurate to a ridiculous degree.” You’re welcome to your own opinion, not your own alternate reality.

Source: brooklynmutt