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Women's March on Washington - is this the liberal Tea Party?


The Kurgan
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So, a mass of protesters have very recently descended on Washington, protesting the recent election of a president whom they feel - rightly or wrongly - is a threat to their constitutional freedoms. Expressions of this worry have gone as far as comparisons to Hitler and fear that fascism has truly come to America. There were protest signs - some of them hilarious in their misconstruing of the intent of the POTUS, many of them very bright and colorful, along with costumes, music and performing artists.

 

I'm referring, of course, to the Taxpayer's March on Washington, that took place back in 2009, following the election of Barack Obama.

 

Had you fooled, didn't I?

 

Can't say I didn't feel a whole lot of deja vu when I watched footage of the Women's March on Washington yesterday. Their ideologies differ wildly, of course, but I can't help but think that the two protest movements are cut from similar cloth, when you get right down to it. One wonders how much influence a mixture of envy and admiration towards the Tea Party influenced the emergent "SJW" movement online, and now as a reflection of an anti-Trump protest movement made, not necessarily consciously, in the image of the anti-Obama mania eight years ago.

 

I personally have a low opinion of both movements, but I suggest this not so much as a personal judgement as much as it is a deeper question regarding politics more generally. Do we ultimately fashion ourselves in the image of our enemies?

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Women's March on Washington - is this the liberal Tea Party?

 

Wasn't the Occupy Wall Street supposed to be the same thing? In the end, I don't really see how the left hasn't been protesting nearly continuously since Bush won Florida. The only real breaks I recall were when Obama first won and a few months after 9/11.

 

Thing is, I'm not really even sure what it was about beyond just not liking Trump and maybe some healthcare tossed in. I mean, I know what the Tea Party was protesting for the most part. I know what the anti-war folks, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, environmental protests, Wisconsin, Ohio, and N. Carolina folks are about.

 

But the protests this weekend had a seriously muddled message. It was more about not liking the election results than anything else. As such, I don't really think it's birthed any big movement. If it's doing anything, it's just reflecting that the 2016 Election continues. Which might make Trump happy.

 

 

 

One wonders how much influence a mixture of envy and admiration towards the Tea Party influenced the emergent "SJW" movement online

 

If they did, then they must have had pretty short memories.

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Wasn't the Occupy Wall Street supposed to be the same thing? In the end, I don't really see how the left hasn't been protesting nearly continuously since Bush won Florida.

Since the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, actually. That goes back to late '99, a year or so before Bush. But I think the Women's March has drawn from a fundamentally different segment of the population. These people, like the Tea Party, have managed to pull together a mass protest that can, for the most part, behave themselves. Occupy seems closer to the Antifa, and Black Bloc sorts that rioted in DC the night of Trump's inauguration. These people are, if anything, even more insufferable. They're even worse than the hard alt-right, if you can believe it. In fact, one of them was caught on camera punching Richard Spencer in the head. There have been something like over two hundred arrests for felony rioting as a result of that. Not a single arrest with the Women's March, and I think the Tea Party managed to keep things fairly civil as well.

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The 9/12 Tea Party was the organizer of the 2009 March. The biggest fear was all the democrat proposals and fear of being taxed to support "dead beat" welfare people.

 

Honestly this is what democracy will always be about. Someone will always be chiming in about something they feel strongly about. The original Tea Party wanted some fiscal responsibility and who doesn't want a balanced budget and to do away with useless departments? In this case the winner in 2017 was the GOP and Trump is its face by extension. So women in pink hats and millennials will feel good about doing this in 2017. What happens now will be based on how long Trump allows things to happen and how well he works with Congress.

 

We'll see how long the GOP hangs on to Trump before they chew him up and spit him out.

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But I think the Women's March has drawn from a fundamentally different segment of the population. These people, like the Tea Party, have managed to pull together a mass protest that can, for the most part, behave themselves.

 

Arguably. It certainly is refreshing for a protest that doesn't rely property destruction, harassment, violence, or prevention of another person's 1st Amendment rights to make their case. Those are not protests protected by the first Amendment, those are crimes and should be treated as such and garner as much sympathy as any other common criminal who would harm others to further their own wants and desires. However, it's still missing an actual point to this. Without that, I tend to think this was just a flash in the pan.

 

It's odd that the party of continuous protest has had such envy for the one mass protest movement that's come out of the right in my lifetime. A protest movement that didn't even really last all that long. Once Obamacare was passed, the demonstrations all but dried up and Republicans contended themselves to trying to win through the ballot box like they usually do. What choice do Republicans have? They're not concentrated in big cities for convenient mass protest. Since early-2010 the term Tea Party has been pretty much meaningless, either appropriated by right politicians or used as a pejorative by left politicians based on little more than a poorly misunderstood label.

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You know, I'm kind of impressed that scientist want to do this march thing next.

 

As for a new kind of Tea Party - I don't really see the March as a feminist thing or even as it is characterized by most people. The Women's March was about people concerned they'd lose rights and a way to show our voice. There was a lot of people who had different agenda's at the March. They are not being heard by the current group in power who want as a minority I believe to institute some really backwards thinking because they feel emasculated. Globalism and economics mean that the new reality is you should realize gays marrying doesn't nullify a hetero marriage's meaning and that the world is not ending and that the abortion rate is nominal in this country who's birth rate is stagnating and only the stupid - people who don't have education to manage their lives and money - are procreating so Planned Parenthood should be funded to provide options and education if you don't want schools to do it and if you have a government that willing to chose the cheaper route for water in Flint that they should be held accountable as well as come on - climate change is a real thing. You see where I'm going with this run on sentence, don't you?

 

It's fear. Both sides are scared now. And Trump as well as the intelligentsia in the GOP don't have the brains to solve it or reach out. They want to just repeal repeal repeal. But I also see fear in the Democratic side too because change is hard and they've never been strong enough to do anything.

 

I will say the Dow cracked 20K yesterday so there is that. If businesses in the US thrive because of Trump I wonder what the US will look like without any regulations when its done. Britain looked horrible after the Industrial Revolution. And minors in coal country with black lung and bad water to drink aren't much better off now. Imagine four years from now.

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