Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

The Silent Generation, the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation-X, the Millennial Generation (or Generation-Y) and the Pivotal Generation (Generation Z)
Barion
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Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:19 am

Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by Barion »

I saw an interesting op-ed piece in the L.A. Times and thought you all might find it interesting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 4643.story

Most 'tea party' followers are baby boomers reliving the '60s
A poll debunks assumptions about the movement, showing that it's largely middle-class, college-educated, white and male.

By Jim Spencer and Curtis Ellis

February 24, 2010 | 5:01 p.m.

Oceans of ink, terabytes of blog space and an eternity of television time have been devoted to the latest object of media fascination, the "tea party" movement. Now (finally!), a poll conducted by CNN gives us some hard data on the Tea Party Nation.

Neither "average Americans," as they like to portray themselves, nor trailer-park "Deliverance" throwbacks, as their lefty detractors would have us believe, tea partyers are more highly educated and wealthier than the rest of America. Nearly 75% are college educated, and two-thirds earn more than $50,000.

More likely to be white and male than the general population, tea partyers also skew toward middle age or older. That's the tell. Most came of age in the 1960s, an era distinguished by widespread disrespect for government. In their wonder years, they learned that politics was about protesting the Establishment and shouting down the Man. No wonder they're doing that now.

Look closely at the tea partyer and what you see is a famil- iar American genus: a solidly middle-class, college-educated boomer, endowed by his creator with possessions, opinions and certain inalienable rights, the most important of which is the right to make sure you hear what he has to say.

The tea party is a harbinger of midlife crisis, not political crisis. For men of a certain age, it offers a counterculture experience familiar from adolescence -- underground radio, esoteric tracts, consciousness-raising teach-ins and rallies replete with extroverted behavior to shock the squares -- all paid for with ample cash.

The partyers are essentially replaying the '60s protest paradigm. (We're aging boomers ourselves, so we know it when we see it.) They fancy themselves the vanguard of a revolution, when in fact they are typical self-absorbed, privileged children used to having their way -- now -- and uninhibited about complaining loudly when they don't. It's the same demographic Spiro Agnew called "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

In a flashback of "turn on, tune in, drop out," the partyers reject mainstream culture, don the equivalent of Che T-shirts that say "Don't Tread on Me," and join sects with trippy names like Oath Keepers, Patriotic Resistance and Freedom Force. Instead of getting themselves "back to the garden," they get off the grid and, like the Bill Ayers crew, indulge in fantasies about armed rebellion against the establishment.

But the (often-overlooked) truth about the '60s is that the great accomplishments we associate with the era -- civil rights, putting a man on the moon -- were made not by boomers but by the generation born before World War II, which accepted shared sacrifice and saw it as an expression of their belief in duty, honor and country, not as socialism.

At Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury and the marches on Washington, the boomers socialized rather than sacrificed. They made great theater, and the media couldn't resist them. It still can't.

The tea partyers' pictures and sound bites are so good, no one cares that their math doesn't add up: Cut taxes and the deficit but keep your hands off my Medicare; do something about jobs but don't increase spending. Everyone understands it's about something deeper.

Ah, tea partyer, we know ye well. One of your signs says "Listen to ME!" That's all that's ever really mattered -- the original "me generation" grabbing the spotlight and the world's attention by whatever means necessary. The rest, whether beads, bell bottoms or birther slogans, is just a means to the same end.

Jim Spencer and Curtis Ellis are Democratic political consultants based in Boston and New York, respectively.


Thoughts, John?

John
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by John »

Having been writing about this stuff for years now, I find it amusing
that the LA Times is accusing the Tea Partiers as being a special
category of Boomers who are suddenly reliving the 60s.

Actually, almost all Boomers have been spending their entire lives
reliving the 60s. This was the most erotic times of their lives, with
free sex, drugs, protests, and so forth. Boomers on both the left and
right consider the 60s to be sacrosanct, almost a time of mystical
purity, even though I've shown that it was more a time of enormous
pain.

** Boomers commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love.
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... b#e070612b


The movie "Generation Zero" is getting more notice, and a major theme
that people on the left are using to criticize it is that they don't
like the idea that "hippies" and "flower children" and the "Woodstock
generation" are being blamed for the financial crisis. This goes
against the narrative that in the 1960s the Boomers wanted to change
the world -- and that they succeeded.

John

The Grey Badger
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by The Grey Badger »

As a matter of fact, a Boomer friend of mine who spent the period trying to get out of Hooterville and survive, pointed out that the Tea Partiers weren't the Woodstock crowd; they're the "I did my duty and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" crowd. She lives in the boonies of eastern Oregon and has a handle on how they think out there.

VinceP1974
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Location: Chicago

Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by VinceP1974 »

I would expect to see a lot more articles like this in the MSM. There's a major push by the political left to discredit the Tea Party. It's happening in NV by the establishment of a phony Tea Party political party and the fielding of a candidate for Senator. It's happening in Florida too (the establishment of phony Tea Party political parties)

Unions established the astrotruf "The TeaParty is Over" website.

Obama/DNC's Organizing for America is launching a huge "Infiltrate Talk Radio" project.

I wonder how effective all this deception actually is? I seem to spot this stuff easily since anyone trying to pose as a Constitutionalist but is really a Statist is pretty transparent to me.

(BTW: This is my first post here)

thomasglee
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Location: Texas

Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by thomasglee »

I went to a Tea Party event in Fort Worth, TX on 9/12. It is the first political rally of any type I've ever been to and from what I gathered from talking to many others, it was the same for them. It was raining like mad that day, but still at least 15,000 to 20,000 people showed up to listen to speeches by Judge Napolitano, Debra Medina (liked what she had to say then, but she is sounding like a fool lately) and many others. The Judge was great!

I was born in '67, so I'm not a boomer reliving the 60's. I can only judge from the Texas event, but the people at that even ranged in age from their early 20's (admittedly not so many) to their 80's. I would say the average age were people like me... from the say 35 - 55 range.
Psalm 34:4 - “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.”

OLD1953
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by OLD1953 »

I pointed out to a friend who was pretty much a hippy back in the day, that the Tea Party was the hippy movement grown old and cynical, but with similar aims of "let me do my own thing and leave me alone if I'm not hurting anyone". He went a bit green at the thought, but agreed that it was very similar.

Anyone for a heaping helping of antidisestablishmentarianism?

widestaringeyes
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by widestaringeyes »

"Progressives" in general either refuse to believe or flat-out disbelieve that the Tea Party is comprosed of "average Joes/Janes". I feel, depending on the individual detractor, it may be a little of both. I am no longer amused by the ever present spin. Anymore, it just angers me.
A side note to the topic poster: If you take an article by the LA Times, add data obtained by CNN, and divide by factual evidence, you are left with only factual evidence.

Reality Check
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by Reality Check »

The generations dynamics theory, as I understand, tells us our current politicians running Washington DC do indeed tell us lies, because that is what their generation does, and they do indeed kick the can down the road, rather than take the hard steps to fix things, because that is also what their generation does.

So if the Tea Party is made of people who distrust government, and are fearful the government is not taking the steps needed to save the country, then it must be a combination of people who distrust government because they understand the truth and also of people who distrust the government because they always distrust the government ( whether it is justified or not ).

Those of us who do see "the truth" should be on the same side based on that analysis, even if some in the Tea Party are crazy, anti-government, Baby Boomers.

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Trevor
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Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by Trevor »

I actually know some members of the tea party. Many of them are decent, ordinary people, although admittedly there are some nuts in it.

Secondly, what I've seen is that this is not exclusively a Republican event, although the leaders of that party see them as something they can use for political advantage (so do Democrats, but in a rather different fashion) They're angry and mostly the attitude seems to be "a plague on both your houses".

Reality Check
Posts: 1441
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:07 pm

Re: Tea Party--Boomers reliving the 60s?

Post by Reality Check »

Trevor wrote:I actually know some members of the tea party. Many of them are decent, ordinary people, although ....
Substitute the word "blacks" for the words "members of the tea party" and see how that sounds.

Example:

Trevor says he actually knows some blacks. Trevor says many of them are decent, ordinary people, although ....
Last edited by Reality Check on Sun Jul 01, 2012 4:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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