{"id":2126,"date":"2009-12-14T04:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T04:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/"},"modified":"2013-11-28T23:41:05","modified_gmt":"2013-11-29T04:41:05","slug":"yes-we-can-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/","title":{"rendered":""Yes we can""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

NPR\u2019s All Things Considered<\/em> had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas \u2014 the one time home of the National Indignation Convention<\/a>, an identical movement during the Kennedy administration.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the piece on npr.org or read the entire transcript: \u201cTea Party Activists Harness Anger to Push Message<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s astonishing. NPR is judiciously reserved in its reporting. The story consists primarily of members of the Tea Party movement describing that effort and their reasons for joining it in their own words.<\/p>\n

These are not smart people. These are not well-informed people.<\/p>\n

And these are very much not<\/em> good people.<\/p>\n

Listen to and read the whole thing and you\u2019ll find countless strange, delusional and self-contradictory claims. I want here to focus on just one of those, from Lorie Medina, described as \u201can emerging leader of the Dallas Tea Party\u201d and \u201ca 43-year-old, stay-at-home mother from Frisco, Texas\u201d with two young daughters enrolled in the local Christian school.<\/p>\n

Lorie is the daughter of a Baptist preacher from Missouri. She went to Baylor, then worked in telecommunications. That was when she met her husband, a retired West Point Army officer. He now runs a small telecom company of his own. Lorie Medina is a lifelong conservative, a Reagan voter and early subscriber to The Weekly Standard. She is thoroughly pro-life, but she says that her work as a Tea Party organizer is focused on a narrower, fiscal conservatism, which she says appeals to many people who disagree on other matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After Medina confesses that she finds President Barack Obama particularly infuriating, the reporter asks her why that is, \u201cWhat is it about him that annoys people so much?\u201d She replies:<\/p>\n

You know, it\u2019s like I wake up every morning, and there\u2019s something new on the news that\u2019s upsetting that I read about that he does. I mean, if you said, Lorie, list for me everything that he has done that has upset you since he\u2019s become president, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any way I could list it all. There\u2019s so much. You know, the fact that he apologizes for our country every time he goes overseas. I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve ever heard him say anything good about America. If you look at the way he speaks, the way you \u2014 he talks about our country, if you look at the programs and the things he tries to put into place, it really appears that he does not love our country like most Americans do \u2014 and like past presidents do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only thing she is actually able to articulate about what sets Obama apart from every other \u201cpast president\u201d is the claim that he talks about America in a way that suggests to Medina that \u201che does not love out country like most Americans do.\u201d This is based on a factual claim that can be easily confirmed or refuted:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve ever heard him say anything good about America.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we were naive enough to believe that folks like Medina base their views on their perception of the evidence, or that they care at all about whether their views can withstand such evidence, then it might be worthwhile to start compiling the massive public record of Barack Obama almost relentlessly saying good things about America.<\/p>\n

We could start with that 2004 convention speech<\/a> \u2014<\/p>\n

It is that fundamental belief \u2014 it is that fundamental belief \u2014 I am my brother\u2019s keeper, I am my sisters\u2019 keeper \u2014 that makes this country work. It\u2019s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: \u201cE pluribus unum,\u201d out of many, one. Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there\u2019s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there\u2019s the United States of America. There\u2019s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there\u2019s the United States of America.<\/p>\n

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I\u2019ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don\u2019t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we\u2019ve got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 and move on through mountains of the same soaring patriotic rhetoric in his two best-selling memoirs and in his stump speeches delivered daily for almost two years. We could point to that astonishing, historic speech in Philadelphia \u2014 \u201cA More Perfect Union<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which Medina\u2019s great-grandchildren may one day have to study in class as a shining example of aspirational rhetoric inspired by and inspiring love of country. And we could continue on, to Grant Park, to the pre-inaugural and inaugural addresses and to every public speech or public appearance or TV interview Obama has given since then. And we could build a gigantic tsunami of counter-examples to Medina\u2019s claim, a huge rushing wall of evidence that it would seem impossible to deny.<\/p>\n

But all that evidence wouldn\u2019t matter. Evidence is of no consequence to Medina and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and the rest of the terrified angry mob calling itself a Tea Party because they\u2019re not acting based on evidence, or reason, or reality, or honesty. They\u2019re acting based on fear \u2014 blind, howling, maddening, confusing fear.<\/p>\n

And anyway we don\u2019t need to replay all the thousands of hours of Obama\u2019s speeches or reread the millions of words he has written or said. We can figure out why Medina is so scared and angry by considering just three of those words, three words that Barack Obama said several times a day, every day, on national television, for nearly all of 2007 and 2008: \u201cYes we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twisting that statement into some kind of negative comment to support the claim that Obama \u201cdoes not love our country like most Americans do \u2014 and like [the 43 white] presidents do\u201d is not easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d is, by definition, as positive a statement as one can make. And \u201ccan\u201d is almost as irrepressibly optimistic.<\/p>\n

That just leaves \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Medina, Palin, Beck, et. al., \u201cYes we can\u201d is a negative statement because of the word \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lorie Medina has never heard Barack Obama say anything good about America because she cannot comprehend that the word \u201cwe\u201d could ever be spoken by someone who looks like him in a way that was meant to include someone who looks like her. She cannot conceive that \u201cwe\u201d could be used in such an inclusive way because that is not how she uses the term herself \u2014 not the way she understands it or is capable of understanding it. When she says \u201cwe\u201d she is, emphatically, not<\/em> including people who look like Barack Obama and so, when she hears him say it, she assumes he must likewise be excluding people who look like her.<\/p>\n

And thus that three-word expression of unambiguous love for America sounds instead, in the ears of a Tea Partier, like a threat.<\/em> To them it sounds like the war cry of outsiders, usurpers determined to shoulder aside people who look like her so they can take over the place to make it a home for people who look like him.<\/p>\n

And just to be clear, by \u201cpeople who look like him\u201d and \u201cpeople who look like her\u201d above\u00a0 I do, in fact, mean black and white. And by that, yes, I mean that Lorie Medina and the Dallas Tea Party are a sad little bunch of racists.<\/p>\n

Oh, but you\u2019re not allowed to accuse \u2026 and that\u2019s rude and uncharitable \u2026 and I\u2019m sure some of her best friends \u2026 and there\u2019s a handful of black Tea Party memb \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t matter. This isn\u2019t an accusation, merely an identification. This thing they\u2019re doing and the attitude that motivates it? There\u2019s a word for that. If they\u2019re not happy to have that word applied to them, then they\u2019ll have to change what they\u2019re about.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NPR\u2019s All Things Considered had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas \u2014 the one time home of the National Indignation Convention, an identical movement during the Kennedy administration. You can listen to the piece on npr.org or read the entire transcript: \u201cTea Party Activists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Yes we can"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"NPR's All Things Considered had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas -- the one time home of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Yes we can"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NPR's All Things Considered had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas -- the one time home of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-14T04:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-11-29T04:41:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/\",\"name\":\""Yes we can"\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-12-14T04:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-11-29T04:41:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\"},\"description\":\"NPR's All Things Considered had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas -- the one time home of\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2009\/12\/14\/yes-we-can-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\""Yes we can"\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/0173c85e46e7e0951fef5752bed78b6e\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e23731809f5a2c785d0416fc4211a51e?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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