– by ‘tamerlane’
Every dedicated java drinker has experienced a morning when, desperately needing that kick-start, a soothing wave comes over you as the aroma of fresh coffee caresses your nostrils. The first impact of the elixir on your tongue instantly smoothes the edge of your irritability. After a few more sips, though, you realize your jones has not dissipated. You check the coffee can and discover … it’s decaf.
A similar arc of anticipation, initial satisfaction, and rapid disillusionment came when I learned of the Coffee Party (“CP”). Formed in direct response to the anarchist Tea Party movement (“TP”), the Coffee Party proclaims “We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will….” Amen to that! But poking around its extensive and elaborate web site, filled with blog posts, forums, online organizing tools and PDF policy briefings, it’s hard to determine what the CP really advocates. A pledge “to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree” seems an awkward lunge at TP negativity and selfishness, while the promise of “expanding the influence of the People in America’s political arena” is calculated to deliver the caffeine that left-leaners might otherwise seek in tea. The repeated calls to “value people from different cultures” and embrace “diversity” is played-out rainbow goo. A blog exhortation to “paint or dance what you think to feel what you think. Sing a thought!” is downright hippie.
It’s even harder, at first glance, to determine who’s producing all this material. The CP claims to be “100% grassroots” and “made up of people acting independently of political parties, of corporations, and of political lobbying networks…. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement.” Which all sounds dreamy until you discover the hyper-partisan politico behind the curtain — Annabel Park: leftist radical, open borders activist, member of the Netroots/Kos crime gang, evangelical apostle of teh Messiah in 2008, current obama hack.
Frightened by the growing momentum of the TP, the obamalonians decided to fight astroturf with astroturf. They turned to Park, an old hand at fabricating sham groundswells. A maker of youtube “documentaries” that nobody outside of tribeca or Cole Valley has seen, Park had most recently created a mock grassroots org to promote passage of (the albeit laudable) HR 121, which demanded that Japan apologize for enslaving Koreans as “comfort women”. In her home state of Virginia, Park cooked up a pro-immigration crusade, and a rainbow coalition for Jim Webb’s senate run.
Park also has serious bone fides as an obama operative. Her Asian Americans for obama (one of the many ethnic “grassroots organizations” created & financed by the obama campaign) released a video of her imagining Hillary Clinton and the Lightbringer as rival applicants for CEO of a failing company. Park’s comments are revealing:
“I think Hillary is a great manager, and she’s a technocrat, she understands the political machine in Washington …. But she doesn’t have the kind of leadership that can really turn around a company that’s about to go bankrupt.
“… obama has the kind of leadership skills that can really inspire people to focus on the goal and to … transform themselves and the company. We need someone to take over and really change morale, to change the culture of the company.
“And Hillary can’t do that. She doesn’t have the capacity to inspire people, she doesn’t know how to talk to us in a way we need people to talk to us right now. She’s a great manager but she’s not a collaborator. I think obama is … gonna say, ‘look, I wanna collaborate with you on how to make these decisions’, and Hillary is … saying, ‘I know all the answers, hire me, I’m an expert, and I’m gonna manage it for you.’ I don’t want that.
“I feel like we’re culturally ahead of the political process … but … we’re so submissive and passive; we haven’t been participating. People are hearing that from obama now: ‘get involved, this is your time.'”
This is the kind of magical unicorn mysticism behind the CP. It’s crazy talk and it simply won’t do.
So here we are again, stuck in the middle, with fools to the left of us, and jokers to the right. Fuck the Coffee Party. Fuck the Tea Party. We true liberals need to form a new party ourselves.
(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’ All rights reserved.
True Liberal Nexus 
Change the world by Twittering– their slogan. I hate coffee, the smell, the taste, the fact that drinkers get free refills and that every damn corner, every meeting place has tureens and vendors. And, I despise the caffeinated, Type-A, hard-charging mentality it engenders in half the planet’s crazed inhabitants. I like tea, if not the philosophy: civilized, calming, patient: the qualities lacking in a Starbucks, big-box, chain-store, faux-liberal facade of our USofA.
I like coffee. I like tea. I like the girls, and the girls like me.
Only a twit would think that twittering can make a difference. It’s funny that these progs so want to rally and agitate and participate in a people’s “movement”, yet they reflexively & passively turn to a charismatic leader to inspire them and show them the way.
I’d love to change the world/
But I don’t know what to do/
So I’ll leave it up to you.
How I hated that lame song from that one-hit wonder as a kid. Probably why I am stuck in the cusp of being too young for Boomer self-righteousness yet too old for Gen-X smugness! My mother up in SF shared a conflation today I had not heard– and she the slightly disappointed fan of Our Leader (I told her so)– “bahama”; does that sum up the attitude evoked in the generation(s) that elected him: privileged, laid-back, relying on the labor of others, kick-back, false empathy, earnest consumers all expecting somehow the platters full of goodies delivered on time, gratis, and to the chaise lounge?