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" hadn’t been able to avoid hearing about the Tea Party, a recrudescence of the far right sooner than I would’ve hoped. Depending on whom you ask, the Tea Party formed either as a spontaneous grassroots protest against the government’s massive interventions in the economy after the financial collapse of 2008, an hysterical backlash against our first black president, or just a hasty rebranding of the Republican Party now that the name Republican had taken on the same stigma as the Pinto, DC-10, and other products that reliably self-destruct. Their platform was the usual Republican wish list—cut taxes, gut the government, repeal the last century and revoke the social contract—and happened to coincide with the financial interests of their billionaire backers. They were widely regarded, on the left,* as dingbats. But today I was going to resist the impulse to sneer and feel superior and instead try, for once, to listen. "
― Tim Kreider , We Learn Nothing