I was recently spammed with an invite to join something called "As a Mom" by someone I know only through my kids' school. My curiosity piqued, I clicked through to the website only to discover some Glenn Beck inspired Mommy Brigade of tea baggers.
Apparently, it's the Facebook of the Tea Partiers.
What. The. Hell.
So, being a tad bitchier than my usual wont (and apparently having far more time on my hands than necessary), I joined. To do so you have to indicate that you agree with at least 7 of their 9 tenets. I, being the good little tea bagger, ardently expressed by support by clicking the "I agree with all 9!" button.
Those tenets are:
The 9 Principles
- America Is Good.
- I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
- I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
- The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
- If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
- I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
- I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
- It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
- The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
So far, so good.
Honestly, I actually agree with several of these. Certainly not all, and definitely not as they've presented them. The idea of America is good, but that doesn't mean that everything done by America is good, so #1 is iffy -- but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Not being particularly religious, #2 is completely off my list. #4 is kind of strangely worded. While family is extremely important in my life, it isn't the end all, be all of the universe. There are some seriously messed up families out there. #7 can fuck right off, self righteous assholes. And with #9, of course we have to answer to the government in certain situations. We have these things called "laws" for very specific reasons.
So, let's see where this heads...
After poking around for a bit and finding the expected Fox Fellating, I stumbled upon the Motherlode of Dumb. (Forgive the pun.) Their forums are hysterical.
Some examples:
Is 'Green Goon Squad' at your front door?
The invasive Census, medical records posted on the internet and next there will be green goon squads at our front doors.
Those "medical records posted on the internet" that they're so pissed off about is actually the EMRs (electronic medical records systems) that many clinics and most hospitals already use and have been around for quite a while. They thought the stimulus legislation created a federal server to hold every citizen's medical information and feared that "comparative effectiveness studies" would use those records to deny them effective care. Except that CE studies only remove the ineffective. Welcome to Opposite World.
Day of Silence in Public High Schools -This Friday, April 16.
Ladies, of all faiths, please be aware of a pernicious practice happening this Friday in most public high schools. The Day of Silence. To quote the announcement at my son's high school: Day of Silence is coming. This Friday, York students who wish to participate in Day of Silence will join with thousands of high school and college students across the country, remaining silent all day to represent the silence felt by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered youth because they fear bullying and harassment.
Yep, you read that correctly. The Mommy Brigade is against a day when kids voluntarily unite to stand up against bullying.
Delving further and joining in these discussions became extremely enlightening. Their anger is strangely misdirected and they don't actually understand even the most rudimentary parts of either the stimulus or health reform legislation language. These women kept arguing that words and phrases meant the exact opposite of their definitions. To support their claims, they posted links to or copied/pasted old and discredited opinion pieces by partisan hacks who've already been shredded to pieces for their inaccuracies and tortured extrapolations.
Several times when I posted links showing these articles being ripped apart, it was discredited by being from a "biased source". I was amazed to discover that the tea baggers considered Snopes.com (who publishes their sources for their findings so anyone can verify) and FactCheck.org as being completely unreliable due to some convoluted relationship a contributor once had to someone who later went on to become an Obama adviser. Yet the obvious bias of a writer doing an opinion piece completely escapes their irony detectors.
But I did find one interesting aspect. When the legislation is logically explained to them by someone they think is "one of their own", after the initial nonsensical blustering and furious link posting, they finally come to agree with the new laws.
What an oddly entertaining group. Although, they may think so about me, too. Maybe they should reconsider how they attract new members to their website. Spamming could bite them in the butt in more than one way.