As reported yesterday on TPM, Democracy Corps released a report that outlines a case to be made that the GOP base is "being motivated by a fundamentally different worldview than folks in the middle or on the Dem side."

This report is particularly helpful in getting the discussion about teabaggers and other right wing "activists" past simple attributions of racism and ignorance and other uni-dimensional explanations for the extreme hatred, fear, contempt and outright whackiness we seem to encounter from the Glen Beck/Michael Steele/Congressional Leadership Wing of the GOP Party. (Did I miss anyone?)

I'm not quite ready to accept the report's premise, however, that this anger and degree of incivility in GOP politics is an aberration. Whereas it is indeed a serious threat to our democracy if allowed to fester and burst forth from its present attitude, we act at our peril if we now attempt to simply de-legitimize the anger, fear and contempt expressed by this "persecuted minority" that we see showing up at various corporate-sponsored "teabag" events.

We best understand that there is a genuine foundation beneath this "angry, persecuted mob" that needs be addressed. In many ways, they share the same feelings of powerlessness that the Left rails about regarding the debilitating corruption in Wall Street and Washington; the ever-increasing economic injustice within our system; the lack of any sense of community that a healthy democracy (dare I say socialism?) offers in terms of an ability to have effect on one's own environment.

In essence, what I am saying is that in observing some of the "tea bag" activities and rallies and rhetoric, I found myself uncomfortably looking into the eyes of what might be considered my bastard brothers and sisters. Their anger is too painfully legitimate to be ignored. Yet they are perversely set upon by demagogues like Beck and Dobbs and other corporate "sponsors" and handlers who encourage them to identify the very tools of self-determination and class empowerment that would improve their situation (i.e. anything "guvmint" or "socialist") as the source of their oppression. Like mad dogs on a leash, they lash out in every direction to which their handlers project them - an exercise that conveniently keeps them occupied in a way that precludes any risk of having them turn on their handlers and at last slip their leash to good (albeit perhaps bloody) effect.

Ultimately, and without trying to go all meta, I have to say there is a real whiff of revolution in the air unlike anything I've felt in my years. This report offers nothing to diminish that sense of foreboding, but it does clarify a perverse opportunity for such a "revolution" to go horribly wrong in institutionalizing the very injustices that it seeks to remedy. The threat presented by this "persecuted minority" in the GOP base, after all, does not arise from the source of their anger and their fears but instead in the way these are being dangerously manipulated in effort to actually preserve an unsustainably unjust status quo. This is the most alarming aspect of the political landscape outlined in the Democracy Corps report. 

Indeed, my biggest fear as I look into the eyes of these "bastard brothers" comes not from so keenly understanding the pain looking back, but instead in a realization that they lay beyond any effective remediation of that pain for so long as they are encouraged to seek the revenge offered by fascism as their preferred treatment. If we are to truly reach out and diminish this threat as we must, we need to more effectively identify the source of the pain we all feel in today's political reality. We must then encourage justice for ALL as the salve that can ameliorate this pain that we so commonly share with one another.

But guess what? Even we progressives have little to offer at present in terms of effectively countering the oppressive interests that rein over the middle class. Nearly 20 years of Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) style triangulation and compromise has installed a "liberal" elite more interested in political expedience than democratic rule. We need an aggressive populist movement that strongly and unremittingly challenges the incredible abuses perpetrated by Wall Street over Main Street; that finds wholly unacceptable - illegal, even - the democracy-defeating pay-to-play politics that allows legislative goaltenders like Baucus, for example, to stand in the way of any legitimate health care or other reform efforts; and that disallows even a popular Obama from perpetuating the overall Washington corruption and all other manner of unacceptable injustices that are now too often accepted as simply the way business is done.

We need, ourselves, to at last determine that we are going to take no prisoners in our OWN search for justice. And then we need to invite these "bastard brothers" to at last join with us in a political showdown that finally pits the "good guys against the bad" in an alignment where justice has at least a chance to prevail.

Yes, if you want peace, work for justice. It really is as simple as that.

And every bit as difficult, as well.