The quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four was nice, but modern society doesn't resemble the one from that book (unless you live in North Korea). Most people just referece taht book due to it's commercial success and popularity, however it's very inaccurate. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World presents a much more accurate illistration of what Western society is becoming, especially when we're talking about "anti-intellectualism".

Economics is a different matter, and one where the answer is harder to latch onto because of too many vested interests that'll drag the whole market down if something happens that they don't like (but that in itself might not be that damaging), but that's not what i was addressing in this case.

I'm not making this up, either. Palin herself spelled out a resentment for east-coast intellectuals in no uncertain terms, and then you have these clearly ideology-driven points of conjecture on cuts, and people who think we can solve the budget problem by "cutting foreign aid" (when foreign aid is so miniscule as to be a non-starter)

Cut the EPA, because environmentalism is hooey, cut planned parenthood because all they do is abortions, cut health-care because the uninsured won't impose more of a burden on the system if they're completely uninsured, no-sir

Austerity is a fine economic idea, but no-one actually wants to do it right (which is higher taxes and less spending, each party unwilling to do both), and instead the Tea Party ideas have been hijacked by anti-intellectual and psuedo-intellectual rhetoric that's just a new coat of paint on the same Republican ideas. It's the old conservative docket, just with the cavalier attitude towards war dropped off (which i'll grant is a positive at first, but they tend to be more isolationist on that front than is wise). The numbers back this up in that the Ryan budget would get us to more or less the same place financially in 40 years as the Obama one (assuming that fiscally unreliable democracy as it always does wouldn't just chart their own paths in those 40 years), just with the burden in those 40 years being shouldered by those who can least afford to carry it, rather than those who most can

The quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four was nice, but modern society doesn't resemble the one from that book (unless you live in North Korea). Most people just referece taht book due to it's commercial success and popularity, however it's very inaccurate. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World presents a much more accurate illistration of what Western society is becoming, especially when we're talking about "anti-intellectualism".

I think you're right there.

However bad the reality of the world gets, we still have the ability to rebel and turn against our overlords without fear of punishment.

What we lack is the desire to do any such thing. We are happy in our consumerist society. Those of us who aren't grumble a bit, get looked at funnily by other people, and then group together. It's pretty much exactly Brave New World, but without the soma (interestingly, Huxley said we would need Soma to become like the society he predicted).

Political leadership is relative. I mean Gandhi wasn't the leader of the Indian National Congress, but his ideas influenced the composition of the group. The ones out there making the noise for the group are going to attract the people, who in turn shape discourse. If Trump and all his "birther," nonsense is the frontman for the group, then they're going to attract more birthers, or people like that Southern California Republican operative who got caught circulating that picture of Obama superimposed as the child of chimps (which shares the same root as the birther paranoia, it's racism at heart)

You could be right, but i think you're seeing the Tea Party as a Libertarian vehicle, whereas i'm seeing it as a Republican capitalization on voter angst

Political leadership is relative. I mean Gandhi wasn't the leader of the Indian National Congress, but his ideas influenced the composition of the group. The ones out there making the noise for the group are going to attract the people, who in turn shape discourse. If Trump and all his "birther," nonsense is the frontman for the group, then they're going to attract more birthers, or people like that Southern California Republican operative who got caught circulating that picture of Obama superimposed as the child of chimps (which shares the same root as the birther paranoia, it's racism at heart)

You could be right, but i think you're seeing the Tea Party as a Libertarian vehicle, whereas i'm seeing it as a Republican capitalization on voter angst

I really don't see what difference it makes if he is Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, Buddist, Christian, or anything else. It shouldn't matter, and to those that it does are obviously racist.