With less than 3 weeks left before the upcoming Midterm elections, the US political scene resembles Wonderland as described by Lewis Carroll. One cannot help but to think of the Mad Tea Party scene from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Moreover, it seems as if politics have fallen down the rabbit hole which began Alice’s delirious trek into a world of madness.
There seems to be a common denominator to many Tea Party Republican candidates during this election campaign. That common denominator is sociopath and in some cases psychopathic behavior. In other words, they seem to inherit chronic anti-social pyschotic tendencies. From New York to Arizona Tea Party endorsed Republican candidates have been exposed as persons who have neither the sense nor value for human beings.
Carl Paladino, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for New York State, has campaigned on a platform of social destruction. He has bluntly promised to cut Medicaid, the government health insurance scheme for poor citizens unable to afford private health insurance, to the tune of twenty billion dollars during his first year as governor. He has also suggested that welfare recipients be placed in prison where they will “learn personal hygenie.” Earlier this week, as he addressed a Hasidic congregation, he lashed out against homosexuality. Contrasting himself against his Democrat opponent, Andrew Cuomo, Paladino boosted that he hadn’t attended the Gay Pride parade. “That’s not the example we should be showing our children.” He elaborated further saying that children shouldn’t be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.” Paladino would have been the most distinguished foreign guest had he attended the anti-Gay Family March held this past weekend in Belgrade.
Jim Russell, another Tea Party candidate running for a congressional seat in the Empire State was discovered to have written an essay in 2001 for journal where he denounced racial integration with the concern that mixed raced schools and neighbourhoods encouraged interracial dating. “One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact.” Note how both Paladino and Russell wish to instill sociopath tendencies in children in the name of protecting children!
Meanwhile, a Tea Party congressional candidate in Ohio has been outed as a closet Nazi. Rich Iott for years participated in re-enactments of Nazi military operations during the Second World War, where he dressed in a SS uniform. Rather than resigning from the election, Iott defended his actions and that of the Nazis. Iott claimed that the Nazi’s offered to protect Europe from Communism and therefore, the Nazis were defenders of European freedom. If that isn’t alarming enough, despite denunciations from the Republican National Committee, the Toledo and Lucas County Republican party have not denounced Iott nor have withdrawn their endorsements.
It appears that the East Coast Tea Party candidates are much more liberal than their comrades in arms on the West Coast. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Nevada‘s Senate race, has a political background more deranged than Paladino, Russell and Lott combined. Angle not only wants to deny abortions to 13 year old raped by their fathers (family values at their very best!), but she also wants to abolish the Federal Department of Education. Moreover, she wants to bring back Prohibition of alcohol. Like Paladino, she’s not only an incorrigible homophobe, but at one time proscribed to the notion that Sodomy lead to the ruin of the country but also HIV could be spread through the water .Before entering politics as a Republican, Angle was a member of the Independent American Party during the 1990s. While a member, the party undertook a campaign to legalise discrimination against gay and lesbian people in employment and housing.
In Colorado, Tea Party politician Ken Buck believes that rape isn’t a crime, so long as the rapist is neither Black nor Latino. As a District Attorney in 2005, Buck refused to investigate or prosecute an alleged rapist despite repeated appeals from the victim. “A jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer’s remorse,” he told the Greeley Tribune in March 2006. He went on to publicly call the facts in the case “pitiful.” Earlier during the Primary campaign against his female Republican candidate, he boasted he was more qualified simply because he didn’t “wear high heels.” Like Angle, his views on abortion are psychopathic. “I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.”
Try as hard as their members and supporters to deny it, the Tea Party movement is nothing less than fascist. These are not just a few isolated examples. There are many more. However, many of the high profile Tea Party candidates are running in important races which will impact millions of citizens and residents of the country. The Tea Party movement is reactionary to the core. American voters should think not only twice but thrice before pulling the lever for the Tea Party candidates. In spite of the frustration and disappointment many Americans feel about President Obama and the congressional Democrats, voting for the Tea Party will place the United States on a direct path to disintegration.
