My Tea Party Thoughts

Several days ago there was a protest billed as a nationwide "tea party". I didn't go though I wish I had. My ignorance assumed it was going to be an End the Fed Rally since I'm sure Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty was involved in some capacity. Clearly not everyone was on the same page since as I heard it turned into an anti-Obama stimulus package protest -- and then it became stupid.

And the mainstream media? They lapped it up. So I wouldn't mind getting down to the bottom of what became what could be called a "clusterfuck". I don't think conservatives know who they are anymore if the protest rallies are any evidence of how splintered the movement has become.

At least Lew Rockwell and the Gang are calling out the hypocrisy to preserve the credibility of classical liberalism.

Writes Jeff Deist:

It seems to me the Tea Parties failed to deliver any coherent or consistent message; therefore, it was easy for the Left and the pro-state media to marginalize and denounce the protestors. Unless and until people renounce and repudiate Bush and the Republican party utterly and entirely, it's easy to dismiss them as kooks, racists, religious zealots, etc.

After all, what is the protestors' message? We want to go back to Bush? We want less spending but agitate to expand insanely expensive wars? We want a "fair" tax? We're against bailouts of Wall Street, even though the public (correctly) perceives the political right as bought and paid for by Wall Street? We're for states rights and the Constitution? Laughable. We're pro-life? Laughable--even ignoring the pro-war killing mentality, the GOP has done zero to stop abortion.

Conservatives by conscious choice have tied their fortunes to politics in general and the GOP in particular. Politics is nothing more than gang violence over turf. The turf is us. The winner gets to control and loot the American people. So now the other gang controls the turf, and conservatives don't like it.

Cetainly most media outlets prefer the Obama gang to the Bush gang, and shade their "reporting" accordingly. But there is truth in the criticism that the Tea Parties represent nothing more than sour grapes. The public senses, quite correctly, that conservatives only "rebel" when their preferred gang is not in power.

Anthony Gregory writes:

The grassroots spirit at the tea parties was great, but it seems many were hijacked by organized conservatives, Republican partisans, and Fox News-style corporate interests. I hear that at many the speakers were exclusively of the red-state fascist persuasion, thanks to the sectarian organizers.

This reminds me of an analog in the antiwar movement. At peace protests, often the organizers, especially such Marxist groups like A.N.S.W.E.R., do their best to keep non-socialist speakers out of the fray. They thus water down the appeal of the peace message, while packaging it with calls for domestic state power. Similarly, the Tea Party Bushies want to control the message and keep it in line with their own statist agenda. Rush Limbaugh warns, for example, not to let the Tea Parties encourage any effort in third parties -- the GOP plantation is where all resentful of Obama belong.

There is a difference, however, between the antiwar sectarian commies and the anti-tax sectarian neocons – the latter has had more than a chance with power in this country, and we already know what their program brings: endless wars, lies, torture, inflation, and the world's biggest bubble.

Don Cooper was more snarky and stinging in his assessment of the tea party. He writes in his article titled Are You Kidding Me?:

Who are they chanting to? The buildings in front of them? The birds in the trees? Themselves? What was this supposed to do, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that it did NOTHING! All the politicians were inside, smugly and comfortably seated in their expensive leather chairs that we paid for. They were discussing their next round of special interest pandering and deficit spending at our expense while we mingled as if at a, well, tea party. But not the sort of 1773 but rather more like the sort at 4p.m. in England that is served with crumpets.

The politicians could have cared less about the goings on outside and NO ONE took it to them. Shame on us. No one made sure they took notice. No one was put out one bit. No economic loss to the government whatsoever, as was the purpose of the original tea party, so why should they notice?

Is this like giving to a charity? You write a check to feed a starving child for 10 cents a day in some far off, nameless, faceless country and you feel better about yourself?

I attended a "tea party" in the Midwest on Wednesday and there were only about 200 people there. And it was literally a tea party: people came with their coffee mugs and sandwiches, holding signs and standing around and chatting and socializing and then everyone went home. No passion. No signs of real frustration or discontent. No real commitment to changing anything. You know why? Because nobody wants to fire the first shot! Everybody wants change, but only if they don’t have to pay for it. Only if their comfortable lives don’t have to be disrupted for their freedom. What a bunch of crap.

I think we have met the enemy and it is us. We’re a bunch of fast food nourished, MTV anesthetized, shopping mall, plug-in-drug (aka television) addicts who will do anything to preserve that way of life at least until we die. After that who cares?

We’re a clinically obese, socially disconnected, politically inept and intellectually bankrupt nation of douche bags who deserve everything they get.

Where have all the heroes gone? Where are all the pioneers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the true statesmen? Where are the defenders of freedom? What has happened to the American Spirit of life and liberty? I guess they’re all at the mall or Starbucks and are too fat to get up out of their chair and fight. Or they’re looking forward to retirement and the "good life" after spending their life being a good soldier and playing by the rules and saving for the "golden years" while their real golden years of youth were passing them by. Certainly they can’t be asked to risk all that for something as silly as their children’s futures. How selfish of me.

James Ostrowski has very poor hindsight as evidenced in a statement made on the 21st of March. He writes:

Sure, the tea party movement has various GOP front operations trying to steer it off course and there are rumors that the Kochtopus is involved--lethal to any serious movement. (How to tell a front operation? If a website you never heard of starts popping up all over and looks like it cost $100,000.)

But I can assure you that at the heart of the movement is a largely spontaneous and genuine populist and even libertarian spirit.

And of course the following video shows how ignorant some of the protestors must have been. President Lincoln was a two-faced tyrant. Although I think the female journalist was a real bitch being so blatantly biased in her reporting.