As has been broadly publicized, the teabag crowd is planning for an encore performance:
Are you fed up with a Congress and a president who:
- …want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
- punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
- admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
- run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
- want government controlled health care?
- want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
- refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
- appoint a defender of child pornography to the Number 2 position in the Justice Department?
- want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
- want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home heating fuels?…
…If so, help organize and/or participate in a Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party in your community on July 4.
No doubt local organizers will again attempt to suggest that their local events are in no way tied to or influenced by the national movement, with its clearly articulated conservative agenda and its plain genesis in the GOP media infrastructure. All those other demonstrations in other states, as well as the Fox News reports are simply coincidences. The fact that these demonstrations are petrie dishes for nasty displays of bigotry is either ignored or not their problem. The blatant hypocrisy displayed by the fact that none of these people got off their duff during the excesses of the Bush era? Well… they just don’t talk about that.
This is not to say there aren’t plenty of people involved who think they are doing the right thing, but there’s a point at which willful blindness does entail a degree of moral culpability. In this case the blindness comes with being used as meat puppets for a mega-corporatist agenda to reduce regulations and tax burdens on the biggest, richest exploiters in the nation – the very ones who bear ultimate responsibility for the financial cliff working people are in the process of being driven off.
Listening to the self-promotional ads for the local “demonstrations,” though, one could be forgiven for concluding that organizers may be more interested in promoting themselves as celebrities than engaging with an economic reality that doesn’t fit into the neat little prepackaged box they’ve so happily allowed themselves to be handed.
If I sound upset about this I am, and for a particular reason. In scheduling these demonstrations around July 4th festivities, organizers are nakedly attempting to co-opt crowds that are not their own, in order to give the photographic and propogandistic appearence of a broader base of support. Since the turnout disappointed during their original displays, they are now seeking to indentify where the crowd is and moving their signs there, rather than try and draw crowds on their own merits.
What does this mean at a personal level? We on the left have, for our entire lives, put up with being called treasonous and unpatriotic for views that, from my perspective, are the essence of patriotism. 4th of July celebrations, however, provide a break from that. I can stand in a crowd, cheeringthe fireworks along with everyone else around me. The guy next to me might be the worst kind of bigoted, scary, fascist hate-monger – but in that shared moment, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
But along come the corporate organizers of the national teabaggery, who see our nation’s birthday as every bit as exploitable as the willing, reactionary stooges they find so ready to promote their self-serving agenda on the ground. This 4th of July, rather than being content with coming together for that one fleeting time a year, teabaggers everywhere will crash celebrations of unity in order to pointlessly divide us to the best of their ability.
And they will all pat themselves on the back relentlessly for doing so.
It continues to puzzle me how our local wingnuts – who are often our neighbors and otherwise very nice people – get sucked into this mega-corporatist agenda support role. I guess Lakoff’s daddy state analysis makes the most sense to me, but it does seem like it makes getting them to use their brains in a clear thinking kind of way will always be impossible.
1) that they will continue to insist that it’s “non-partisan” and play dumb when questioned about it (yeah, you, Jessica B.)
2)if any of these douchenozzles try to taint my enjoyment of the July 3rd festivities in Mont-p tomorrow, they’re gonna get an earful.
It is meant to be the one day of the year in which all Americans can celebrate their small part of this great experiment. I know in my case I finally managed to get my kids to the Montpelier 4th of July parade two years ago and we were all having a blast, right up to the moment Liza Earle led her clown posse of impeachment demonstrators down the parade route.
in this country. Oh wait no that’s communist China where the problem is women DONT HAVE A CHOICE– which is exactly what these zealots want to eliminate here as well. Rule one of the zealot is accuse your opponent of exactly what it is you want. Works like a charm. For a while.
is not about this:
That’s your whole freaking problem. You have no respect or understanding about the men and women who risked absolutely everything including their lives so you could live as a free man. Were they perfect? No, certainly not as perfect as you think you are.You have no respect because you don’t care. You’d rather use the force of government to force your own morality on other people while denying others theirs. You have no respect for anyone else because you have no respect for yourself. If you did you wouldn’t act like a man-baby and piss and moan when someone disagrees with you or takes issue with something you say.
You jumped all over me and banned me with such zeal because I was asking a genuine question so I could genuinely understand a situation from another perspective. You called it a personal attack. And yet you tolerate people directly calling me out and in effect calling me a “douchenozzle”. But hey, that’s ok because you really don’t like me.
You think I don’t know that your so-called Catholic upbringing isn’t what made you let me post here again? You think I missed the disappointment that there weren’t any pictures from your miserable little picnic because people haven’t been as active in commenting here lately? It’s all pretty pathetic really because GMD activity didn’t pick up when I left as you said that it would. You said “long-time posters” didn’t like me and wouldn’t come here because of me. Funny that my diaries STILL have more comments than your last 20 combined. Because I try to engage in a conversation, not belittle people I disagree with.
But I’ve had enough of you and your angry friends. As long as you promote stealing and murder as rights you will always be angry baby whiners who have nothing better to do than to figure out how to steal more from other people and sell it as compassionate.
As for the rest of you who’ve posted your know-it-all perspectives about the tea parties, grow up. Are you people 14 years old? I swear I have never seen such juvenile behavior from so-called adults in my life.
To think I actually believed the spin that “liberal progressives” were kind-hearted people who only want the best for everyone. Pffffttt. What a load of shit. You only want what’s best for you and people like you. Everyone else can pay for it.
the UNITED States of America.
Shouldn’t we be celebrating those actions we do for each other and as a society?
And isn’t that what politics is really about? Those things we do together … as a society?
from Mark Rubin’s article, Why the July 4th Tax Day Tea Parties are full of hot July air.
Try as they might these “proud teabaggers” have yet to come up with a coherent, credible defense of this, try as they might. But then again, “coherent” and “credible” usually doesn’t enter into the picture with these people. Suckers.
“I’ll be celebrating liberty and freedom and doing my small part to remind people that this is what the day is about.”
Liberty and freedom for who? One sure as hell ain’t free and liberal while in debt because of a health care system that rations by economic privilege. One cannot pursue happiness when their job is outsourced to Asia. Freedom for one can, just as often as not, mean suffering or slavery for another. Real freedom is, as the immortal Janice Joplin, said in that kristofferson song, “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose.” Tea-parties ain’t about freedom.