MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Meet the Newest Right
By EmmaZahn on Sun, 10/06/2013 - 9:53am |
The Tea Party right is not only disproportionately Southern but also disproportionately upscale. Its social base consists of what, in other countries, are called the “local notables”—provincial elites whose power and privileges are threatened from above by a stronger central government they do not control and from below by the local poor and the local working class.
Even though, like the Jacksonians and Confederates of the nineteenth century, they have allies in places like Wisconsin and Massachusetts, the dominant members of the Newest Right are white Southern local notables—the Big Mules, as the Southern populist Big Jim Folsom once described the lords of the local car dealership, country club and chamber of commerce. These are not the super-rich of Silicon Valley or Wall Street (although they have Wall Street allies). The Koch dynasty rooted in Texas notwithstanding, those who make up the backbone of the Newest Right are more likely to be millionaires than billionaires, more likely to run low-wage construction or auto supply businesses than multinational corporations. They are second-tier people on a national level but first-tier people in their states and counties and cities.
URL:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/tea_party_radicalism_is_misunderstood_meet_the_newest_right/
- 1973 reads
Comments
Thought-provoking analysis, as is often the case with the author. Very much syncs with things I have been reading in the NYTimes the last few days, like:
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-t...
In Rural Iowa, Spending, Not the Shutdown, Raises Worry
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/business/in-rural-iowa-ambivalence-abo...
Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/health/millions-of-poor-are-left-uncov...
by artappraiser on Mon, 10/07/2013 - 5:05am
I managed to catch this essay.
As I wander through the web, knowing that the different sites are luring readers I thought this piece right on.
There is really nothing new about the far right wing.
Mostly white, mostly upper middle class, always funded by big money, spurred on by think tanks. Hell, it could be 1957 when all these folks were mad about the total socialist government we had during WWII and the lasting foundations of social welfare created by FDR. Add on Truman's edict freeing the slaves, so to speak by desegregating the military and we found an angry group of Americans.
This angry group will always be with us; sometimes exercising real power and other times stuck in the minority.
Of course they had to choose the Revolutionary War instead of the Civil War or WWI or WWII or whatever.
And besides, they get to keep using the word revolution.
by Richard Day on Mon, 10/07/2013 - 5:54am