My point is that when folks get angry, they get stupid, and stupidity knows no party or clique. Progressives should not meet this truism so defensively. I know we want to believe the best of our comrades. And I know that loudly congratulating one's team for its superior intellect and virtue is a critical part of keeping a bubble of enthusiasm aloft and rising. So we adults can speak in whispers, if we must. But it's a plain fact that the fuel-mixture of potent populism includes generous helpings of stupidity and self-regard. Democrats got flattened last fall by a fired-up, pie-eyed right. They should welcome an equivalent efflorescence of inchoate rage from the left. The naked, monkey-minded tribalism of an "engaged" political faction is not lovely to behold, but then smash-mouth politics is not brunch at the club.
While there's a lot of truth to be read there, I think that's too easy a write off, too easily a dismissal. It doesn't take into account what the Tea Party was when it started, what it became, and what it is now. It doesn't take into account what the Madison Sit-Ins currently represent. What it does fit is the oversimplification, the compartmentalization, and the furious pursuit of "balance" that currently pervades Western progress-resistant pathology that Americans have perfected in the past decade.
Thus the false equivalency of aloof analysis:
"Conservatives" + Inchoate Rage + Demonstrations = Tea Parties
"Liberals" + Inchoate Rage + Demonstrations = Union Demonstrations
.