Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 31, 2010

What’s a fascist? Isn’t that somebody in government who takes over private industry and banks? Hmmmm….

William Penn – No, a socialist is someone in government who takes over private industry and the banks. Aa fascist is someone in private industry or the banks who takes over the government.

luckylouie beat me to it.

As a Jeffersonian, I tired of people getting elected because of their labels rather than their capabilities. The silliest campaign is for the Republican nomination for California governor. We’ve got 2 people spending exorbitant quantities of money telling us how they would save money if elected.

Zonker’s in heaven!

I’m still waiting to hear a teabagger articulate what they are FOR, instead of what they’re against.

Sounds like just another bunch of people who want government to give them everything they want, only they don’t want to have to pay for any of it.

Close, Ravenswing! They want to impose everything they want on everyone, and they don’t want to have to pay for any of it themselves.

A fascist is what we get when we scratch a liberal.

..that’s not a tent,it’s a giant tea bag…

@glslightning Yes…I think it’s the impose part that is the problem. Isn’t “mandate” just another way to say “impose”?

Since we’re pointing out the mote in someone else’s eye, Christ advocated giving, rather than having something taken - and the Tea Party people have articulated exactly what they want - smaller government. Given the federal governments track record, it’s hard to think they have anyones best interest at heart other than the individual ‘lawmaker’. I can’t see how either side of the isle is doing more than lining their own pocket or furthering their own career.

Reghartt, so stop scratching liberals already. Besides, it’s rude.

SO.. how much are higher taxes? 1-2%? 5-10%? 15-20%? All of the t-baggers and cons keep scaring people about new taxes (read my lips, no new taxes!) , yet sometimes it is necessary. I think that most can afford 1-2%!

@av8tor:

Beats me. Teddy was for health care reform.

If you believe in “No taxation without Representation” then you would have to believe that people under 18 could not be taxed and all budgets would have to be balanced so people turning 18 afterwards would not have to pay for anything voted on before they turned 18.

I don’t think the teabag movement’s actually gotten far enough to consider specifics (i.e., which taxes they’d cut, which services they’d reduce, etc.); at this point they strike me more as the mob in the movie “Network,” leaning out the windows and screaming “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” And, as in the film, there’s no shortage of people out there offering to tell them just what they’re mad about and what should be done about it (and, oddly enough, such people always seem to impress their own best interests onto the mob; that’s why the Party of Big Business and the Wealthy is trying to claim ownership of a movement that’s mostly middle- and working-class people who didn’t benefit from the last several rounds of tax cuts). In time, perhaps, the teabag movement will separate from the R party and Faux News (both of which try to assert ownership), develop a clear platform and become a real political force.

av8tor: it’s not so much what I pay to the government that annoys me; it’s what I don’t get in return for that money. Consider Denmark, where taxes are something like 50% of one’s income, yet people are happy with the services they get (pensions, unemployment benefits, roads, schools, public transportation, health care, etc.). In the USA, we pay only 30% of our income in taxes, yet we’re angry… because our roads are crumbling, our Social Security and Medicare aren’t keeping up with inflation, our schools are failing, we have no public transport worth talking about, and we spend another 10% on average for really crummy health insurance (and consider ourselves lucky to get it).

BASLIM Jesus? 1st amendment? Am I missing something the founding fathers thought more important than anything in the Constitution? Oh yeah, in that 1st amendment they casually mentioned free speech and the right to assemble.

This hookup between Zonker and the clown Glenn Beck is a perfect union of confused minds. To think politically, you’ve got to be able to define yourself as well as the state and these simpletons can do neither.

As for Jesus, was he a socialist or a capitalist when he said (Matt. 25:29), “Everyone who has will be given more, till he has enough and to spare; and everyone who has nothing will forfeit even what he has.” If the teapartiers include anyone “who has nothing,” then Jesus’s prediction for them is very grim: they will “forfeit whatever they have.”

A fascist controls banks and industry with laws and regulations. They don’t actually own the industries, but when you control what they do and how they do it, you might as well own them. Albert Speer was in charge of the German industries.

BTW, when you take too much from those with the most, everybody starves. The highest tax rate is INVERSELY correlated with economic growth of the country. I don’t think Jesus would want everyone to starve. With low tax rates, there are many more private charities. Private charities are MUCH more efficient and effective than government agencies.

fbjsr - just curious - did you express such devotion to the constitution back when Gonzales said that it did not guarantee U.S. citizens the right to habeas corpus? If not, will you forgive my suspicion that your new-found outrage has less to do with your hearing the tramp of jack-boots and more to do with your seeing a Democrat in the White House?

I really think they will weed out Zonk in a couple minutes.

And shilling is still the money standard here I see.

saw4fire - if the fallout from the packaging and sale of derivatives hasn’t convinced you that the financial industry needs regulation, will anything convince you? As far as taxes are concerned, do you really think it’s that simple? If so, how do you explain the fact that our last big boom occurred during the ’90s, when taxes were higher, while the current crash took place against the background of the Bush tax cuts?

The choice is the freedom to chose between choice and Freedom? Nice turn of phrase there, Trudeau.

@SuperGriz:

Trudeau probably jumbled the phrase to make it sound witless. Teapartiers lack the skill to form an orderly chiasmus, which would run: “choice … freedom … choose between … freedom . . choice”

@freeholder,,,,,,,,, Zonker is the type they are looking for.

That last frame is a keeper, especially with the subtle postscript…

JOIN us! JOINus! (or die)

gave me quite a chuckle…

A Facist is someone who believes everyone has the right to be, act, think & do, JUST AS THEY DO, or they should DIE. Diversity is not their big thing.

Fascism is an authoritarian political philosophy that views individual lives as meaningful only within the context of the state. Personal fulfillment derives from advancement of the state and its goals and culture. Instead of the state existing to serve the people, the people exist to serve the state, which is usually militaristic. This can lead to a sort of cultish devotion to the state and often by extension to the ruler, who may be viewed as an incarnation of the will of the state. Although it makes me a little queasy every time I hear the U.S. referred to as the “homeland” (“Department of Homeland Security” sounds like something straight of the Third Reich), fascism is not a prominent strain in American politics. Lately, however, people have been throwing around “fascist” (and “Nazi,” “socialist,” “communist,” etc.) the way a second-grader might curse – they may not know exactly what they’re saying, but they have the notion that they’re saying something bad.

“The man reared under and bound by authority has no knowledge of the natural law of self-regulation; he has no confidence in himself.”

There is a “dictator’s soil of mass psychology” which constitutes fascism’s strength.

Mysticism diverts attention from daily misery, to prevent a revolt against the real causes of misery. To fight the mystical thinking on which fascism is built is a way to fight fascism. Education tends to eradicate mystical thinking.

“The reactionary man (fascist) assumes an intimate relation between family, nation, and religion.”

“It is in the nature of a political party that it does not orient itself in terms of truth, but in terms of illusions, which usually correspond to the irrational structure of the masses.”

“The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system, hence totalitarianism, a system in which power takes priority over objective interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes.”

The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1946), by Wilhelm Reich

mdriggs, cfimeiatpap - excellent posts. Along the same lines, I’ve become increasingly wary of self-identified “patriots”. I love my country. But the line between patriotism and nationalism is gets blurrier every day.

“I’m still waiting to hear a teabagger articulate what they are FOR, instead of what they’re against.”

You haven’t been paying attention.

For years people watched national spending and the national debt grow. People didn’t get panicky because the rate was fairly steady. Some noticed that the deficits were steadily decreasing for the few years just prior to the mortgage crash.

Then comes the crash. Bush and the Democrats push through a highly unpopular bailout. People are mad but not panicky, because this looks to be a singular event that will blow over.

But no. Obama/Reid/Pelosi promise to borrow and spend at an astronomical rate never imagined before. TEN TRILLION IN NEW DEBT for his hoped-for two terms.

(If the economy lost $5 trillion in 2008, why borrow twice that?)

A lot of people don’t see how the nation can financially survive that kind of sudden acceleration of government borrowing. They’re scared to death.

The Tea Parties are for financial freedom. They are for the ingredients that make a sound economy, including affordable tax levels and a sound currency, both of which are grievously threatened by Ali ‘Bama and his thieves.

(“Teabagger” is a slur that ranks with the worst racial epithets, and has no place in civil or even half-civil discourse.)

You bring up a good point. Tea Partiers claim to be Patriots. But aren’t we still at war? Are these the same people who said it was unpatriotic to criticize the government in a time of war?

@AKHenderson:

Thanks to unregulated “financial freedom,” the economy actually lost about $50 trillion of its wealth in 2008.

Assuming that teapartiers, like most of us, would like to see some controls upon the irresponsibly greedy banks who play the free market while bankrolled by the Fed (i.e. taxpayers), whom do the teapartiers propose should do the controlling?

Since the healthcare issue is behind most of the rhetoric here, I would like to interject one random thought, in the form of a question:

When did the issue of out-of-control healthcare costs turn into how to pay for it, as opposed to how to bring it down?

Seems to me that there is a lot of incentive for Big Medicine to keep us thinking this way.

Congratulations, puddleglum1066 and DoctorDan are the co-Gold Star posters of the day.

This forum needs more coherence. Keep em comin’

@thebird:

Seeing that today’s postings have drifted pretty far from Zonker’s discovery of the teapartiers, I’ll try to give a historical answer to the policy question that you pose. Anyone who came to this strip looking for light diversion, not strenuous political debate, can stop reading right here.

The policy turn you ask about came last fall when the AMA finally joined the other former critics of health care reform (HCR)–namely, the insurance companies and the big pharmaceuticals–to give HCR their qualified approval. This shift from opposition to support by these powerful interests was of course a sign that they calculated the proposed HCR would do minimal damage to their profits: under the HCR that Obama has just signed into law, pharmaceuticals are still protected from foreign competition, insurance companies still collect subsidies for “Cadillac” Medicare plans, and doctors–for the time being, anyhow–can still fatten their incomes by sending their patients for unnecessary tests.

Obama and the commissions that the new HCR empowers will have some control over the costs of pharmaceuticals, and the insurers will probably be regulated out of existence (which is O.K. because most of them can be hired by the government to help out with the regulating). The doctors are another story.

The Republicans’ weightiest criticism of the HCR law is that it does nothing to keep doctors from raising their fees, even though the “savings” it promises are supposed to include lower payments to doctors. This promise, known as the “doctor fix,” assumes that Congress will whittle down the increases they pay each year–some $200 billion this year, with Congress’s latest decision conveniently postponed until this fall.

Nobody really believes we’re going to cut the doctors’ pay, so there goes the $138 billion “saved” by Obama’s HCR budget. But all the Republicans can offer by way of controlling this “doctor fix” is the suggestion that we make the doctors compete for their fees in a “free market.” Guess which patients doctors would compete for?

I suspect that our president, who is more farsighted than nearly all of his critics, knows very well that “Big Medicine keeps us thinking this way.” Obama sees he’s going to have to use a stick on the doctors next, probably offering them a carrot in the shape of tort reform.

Thanks for the information, palin drome. Back when the whole idea of HMO’s was being developed I started saying that whole idea was crazy, and doomed. It was just a away to (temporarily) avoid the issue of escalating healthcare costs.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that just coming up with creative ways to pay for it is not it.

@stebon:

GT is saying that the teapartiers, whatever their social status or gender, share Zonker’s outlook on the world, such as it is.

Don’t be unfair to GT. There are kooks in every political, and social, category. Sometimes you just have to go for the easy targets. They’re irresistible.

Oh, I get it. Trudeau is mocking the comparison some have made between the Peace movement of the sixties and the Tea Party Movement (It’s not just the usual mocking of conservatives in general). His subtle points are designed to suggest that the Tea Party Movement does not have any substance.

That’s sad. Because , fundamentally, the Tea Party is about getting back control of our government. It is also about the Constitution and it’s Amendment process; which I notice even the “Sean Hannity”s do not seem to fully comprehend…It’s about protecting our Liberties in the face of easy compromise and apathy.

And the Great GT spends most of his time expanding the envelope of hate rhetoric and the ad hominen attack…like most liberals…

Not to give rodeo clowns a bad name, but I’m guessing the clown nosed TEA Bagger is Glenn Beck - The Self-Proclaimed Rodeo Clown.

Anyone who would heed Palin-Drome’s Biblical reference would be better served to read the entire parable, Matthew 25:14-30 for it’s message of stewardship and responsibility for that with which you’ve been blessed, rather than simply lifting the one verse out of context to make it seem as if God wanted the rich given everything and the poor stripped of their little.

@Robert Peters:

Glad to have your response, RP. It serves to top off or round out all of today’s scattered opinions about childish teapartiers vs. patriots, fascists vs. socialists, liberal elitists vs. the moral (but no longer “silent”!) majority, and even Jesus vs. the capitalists.

I quoted from The Parable of the Talents in reply to baslim’s definition of the conservative who says “What’s mine is mine, get your own.” Jesus can talk like baslim’s “conservative” when he wants to shake up his complacent followers.

When Jesus mocks the Pharisees, he sounds a lot like GT, who aims to needle anybody–smug liberals no less than conservative ideologues–unwilling to look beyond their tiny corner of the world.

Most of my neighbors are teabaggers or t-b’er sympathizers. Not one can defend their positions when challenged. Not ONE.

It’s a little depressing to get the same anti-gov’t mantras chanted at me by people who never batted an eye at the Bush administration’s massive government spending and attempts to impose Federal standards on states, communities and individuals (No Child Left Behind and the Terry Schiavo bill, anyone?)

So the tea party groups are the hippies of the 2010s. Libertarian/conservative/whatever.

av8tor is off his rocker. The clown looks/acts more like John Bolton.

At least Clowny doesn’t sport that ugly, truncated and artless nose that GT seems to prefer…but he still has those wispy, squinty eyes…

palin drome,

“Trudeau probably jumbled the phrase to make it sound witless.”

Ya think?

The problem is that the word “teabaggers” is just too scandalously funny.

Tea Party is insipid and trivial.

However a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party would be just the ticket. Serving appropriate refreshments liberally dosed with mercury compounds.

Politics and permanent brain damage. It worked for the Romans…

I dunno, SuperGriz. If GT (who’s as old as McCain and me) were really aware of the raunchy meaning of “teabagger,” he might have played upon it. But so far, he’s kept scatological scenes out of his strip. In that respect, at least, GT is naively old-fashioned and romantic; witness the Toggle-Alexis affair.

On the other hand, the red-nosed bozo in these panels (whose hat does look like something the Mad Hatter would wear on top of a Thomas Jefferson wig) is very up-to-date. See this story on Glenn Beck calling himself a rodeo clown, a year ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30beck.html?_r=1

Then why, baslimthebegger, do conservatives consistently give more to charitable concerns every year than liberals ever dream of giving?

Nabuquduriuzhur,

Fascism derives the the Latin word “fasces” which refers to ” a bundle of rods and among them an ax with projecting blade borne before ancient Roman magistrates as a badge of authority”.

Meaning the people, the state, and the state religion are bound together as one.

Now, if you’re going to stay on the internet, USE IT!

It’s for the bottom line Ron, tax cuts.

Liberalism,

Conservatism,

Socialism,

Communism,

Democracy,

they all work in theory. Non of them work in practice. It’s a question of which is the least flawed.

And yes, I know that we are not a democracy, but a democratic republic.