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

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

Close, but no. Moveon started as a "you CAN'T impeach the president just for getting his dick wet" movement. It ignored inconvenient facts like, say, provable perjury by a high government official and sworn member of the Supreme Court Bar. The censure idea was a fig leaf. But it was an effective fig leaf, because it made the whole thing look like a sex scandal when it wasn't.

Note that their next step was the "we will remember" campaign - a classic of rejectionist action. It was only after that that they morphed into a policy-advocacy group.

And yes, they play fast and loose with the facts. That's been their hallmark since day one.

The initial anti-war protests were, quite bluntly, mostly anti-Bush folks. They picked up momentum, esp. as things ramped up WRT Iraq. But the core? Domestically, it was anti-Bush. Overseas, much more anti-American-exceptionalism.

And yes, I found it amusing that everyone on both sides was running on a "not-Bush" campaign basis. But 2006, I didn't see Dem's campaigning _for_ an agenda, so much as _against_ the Bush/Republican agenda. And I'll note, further, that what agenda they _did_ run on, they didn't bother to stick to. Nancy Pelosi's pledge to clean up Congress always makes me laugh, esp. WRT the shenanigans of her annointed golden boy, John Murtha.