I was just suspended from the Tea Party!
I've been a member of Tea Party Nation for quite some time. TPN is the original astroturf organization, headed by a guy named Judson Phillips, who's gained a bit of notoriety for himself as one of the movers and shakers of the "movement".
I'm on their email list, and one of the four missives yesterday was titled "Endorsing Nancy Pelosi". That got my attention, so I went to the Web site this afternoon to read the whole blog post. Turns out that he wants to see Nancy Pelosi become House Minority Leader, and his reasons boil down to the hope that it'll destroy Congress (which, bafflingly, Republicans just wrested control of). Luckily his spittle-flying crescendo was still on my clipboard after I was locked out of TPN:
Give Pelosi another month or two, Nigerian Internet scammers will be held in higher esteem that the members of the Congress of the United States.
Understand, I've kept a low-profile at TPN since I signed up, just reading, never posting. But this seemed like an opportunity to meekly raise my hand and very politely ask an important question. I remember it as going something like this:
Judson, I'm curious why you think that it's in the best interests of the country that "... Nigerian Internet scammers will be held in higher esteem that the members of the Congress of the United States."? Isn't that something to fix rather than promote?
Half an hour later I come back from dinner, refreshed the page to see if there'd been a reply, and instead got this stark notice that I'd been suspended.
Well excuuuuuuse me, Judson.
Wow. Hey Rob, didn't you tell me with great sincerity that the discussions on TPN are reasoned and civil? What did I say that any reasonable person could object to?
Was my sin questioning the Supreme Leader?
I may have squinted my eyes and plugged my ears through most of the final weeks of the election, to spare my blood pressure, but some images did slip through. Like Joe Miller's supporter's marching through the streets brandishing assault rifles. Like Rand Paul's jack-booted thugs wrestling a young woman to the ground while one of them stomped her skull. Like Sharron Angle's impossible-to-misunderstand reference to "second amendment remedies". And another tea partier's demurral to the effect that "we'll wait until after the election to look into second amendment remedies". Sure hope the country voted the "right" way for him.
And I get summarily executed at TPN for asking a simple and non-confrontational question. The very first time I spoke up.
Can anybody with a lick of sense accuse me of being unreasonable when the word "brownshirts" comes to mind?
Those who fail to remember history, etc...