Why the tea parties don't matter

[bovil]

The "Tea Party" movement is a symbolic failure.

The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.

The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.

So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.

If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.

But they're not.

Pussies.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Actual armed violence and criminal acts against authority would shatter the conservative movement, worse and for longer than the violent movements that came out of Viet Nam war protests damaged liberalism.

The tea-party protesters still fail at symbolism. They're symbolically reenacting an activity that they themselves would characterize as terrorism if it wasn't done by our founding fathers 200-odd years ago. They're doing it in a way that bears none of the risk that the original Tea Act protesters had to bear (who were law-abiding citizens with day jobs).

[spearweasel.livejournal.com]

Agreed on point 1.