{"id":37271,"date":"2017-02-13T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37271"},"modified":"2017-02-12T11:58:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T16:58:38","slug":"whatever-it-might-be-its-clearly-not-a-tea-party-of-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/02\/13\/whatever-it-might-be-its-clearly-not-a-tea-party-of-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Whatever it might be, it’s clearly not a “Tea Party of the Left”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jazz Shaw<\/a> on the nascent anti-Trump groups that some in the media are hopefully describing as a progressive version of the Tea Party movement:<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re seeing today is almost entirely different [from the Tea Party]. I do not doubt the sincerity of many of the liberal activists expressing their outrage, but the mechanisms being used to engage and coordinate their efforts are both obvious and very different from the early days of the Tea Party. Social media chains erupt on a moments notice directing protesters to show up at town halls, airports, municipal centers or wherever else they may be needed. These \u201cgrassroots activists\u201d seem to arrive in large groups, frequently with buses provided, carrying pre-printed professional signage and well orchestrated chants which they read off of their mobile devices like an army of Stepford wives whose programming has run into a critical error loop.<\/p>\n

Another key difference is the fact that the Tea Party groups generally had a specific agenda of items in matters of governance which they wish to see changed. They were seeking to throw out the old guard regardless of party affiliation before even beginning a discussion of what the new agenda might be. Conversely, today\u2019s liberal activists seem to have only one thought in mind: finding a way to end the Trump presidency before it even begins. Rather than fighting for change, they are heeding a call from someone \u2013 we don\u2019t know who yet \u2013 to forcibly roll back the clock and replay the last eight years of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

These activities are certainly newsworthy and I don\u2019t begrudge the media for covering them. But let\u2019s not make a mistake here\u2026 this is not the Tea Party. It\u2019s not even remotely similar. This is a finely tuned protest machine, bitter about the recent defeat and seeking to harness friendly forces in the mainstream media to reinforce a daily narrative that the winner of the election as failed before he\u2019s even begun. If there\u2019s any good news on the horizon, it\u2019s the fact that much of the public doesn\u2019t seem to be paying attention, or at least not blindly accepting everything they see on cable news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jazz Shaw on the nascent anti-Trump groups that some in the media are hopefully describing as a progressive version of the Tea Party movement: What we\u2019re seeing today is almost entirely different [from the Tea Party]. I do not doubt the sincerity of many of the liberal activists expressing their outrage, but the mechanisms being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[1037,1020,720,593,327],"class_list":["post-37271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-donaldtrump","tag-progressives","tag-protest","tag-socialmedia","tag-teaparty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9H9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37272,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37271\/revisions\/37272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}