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

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Well, they are also upset because their taxes are being cut and the government stopped torturing people and is doing more to uphold the rule of law. Also, they are afraid that the states are going to stop interfering in relations between consenting adults. It's grim out there.

[shutaro.livejournal.com]

I had the same thought as I was driving home from work... They were talking about the "Tea Party" here in Sacramento on the radio, and at the end of the story they mentioned that it didn't last long because everyone there had to rush home to get their taxes in the mail... It made me chuckle.

Utah tea parties

[theresamather.livejournal.com]

There's some talk of secession here in red state land. They should just let some of these dirt poor red states secede- they take far more in federal money than they pay in. Let a couple of them degenerate into the third world pits they will instantly become without the tax money of the wealthy blue states to gorge on, and that ought to teach the sponge states like Utah that are a net drain on the nation to at least be grateful for the pork they gorge on.

[djmermaid.livejournal.com]

republican teabaggers! now I HAVE seen it all!

[aramintamd.livejournal.com]

It's a Fox TV movement, and it should go right where it belongs, in the restroom.

What a waste of bandwidth...

[esprix.livejournal.com]

I think the MSNBC report was both lyrically hysterical and politically spot-on. They're fully represented (which the original Bostonians were not), they're just pissed that they LOST; it was more about Obama-bashing than actual substance about taxes; tax rates were actually higher under Reagan and Bush I; etc.

I think the headlines should have just read, "Waaah, Waaah, We Lost And We're Whiners." As Jon Stewart said, "It's supposed to taste like a shit taco." WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE AMERICA?

[madoc62.livejournal.com]

Andy & all,

It's a wee bit to early to declare the whole "Tea Party" thing a dud. The day is hardly over as you wrote your entry and the MSM has done its usual bang-up job of under-reporting anything that doesn't fit their oh-so-blinkered and locked-in ideological views. From what I understand, the San Jose Tea Party Protest drew between 2,500 and 3,000 folk of "a wide mix of every demographic - student/blue collar/white collar, age, ethnicity, single/married, with/without kids, LOTS of self-identified small business owners."

This, whilst "the counter-protest, in contrast, was ~30 people, almost all hispanic-looking, quite vocal, almost all "student" age (18-30)."

And that comes from one of the guys who was actually there.

The protest and dissatisfaction is real and it's deep. Considering that Obama and the Democrats have racked up a $3.5 TRILLION in national debt in less than a hundred days in office it'd be surprising if there wasn't protest and dissatisfaction. Sure, some of the Republican's doing their protesting are pretty incompetent at it. Guess that's because they haven't had much to protest about and thus haven't the experience, eh?

Oh, and folks, enough with the whole "Red State secession" stuff. Really, just take a step back and listen to how arrogant and bigoted your comments are. This, not to mention how factually incorrect they are as well.

The whole "Red State / Blue State" thing has long since made the rounds and long since been debunked. The divorce rates, illegitimate birth rates, abortion rates, poverty rates, high school drop out rates, incarceration rates, etc., turn out to either be worse in "Blue" states or at least no better than in "Red States." Couple that with the fact that the "Red States" are the ones which produce just about all of our food _AND_ they're the states which favor private gun ownership and, well, do you really wanna push those folk? :)

Seriously though, the whole "Red State vs. Blue State" thing is way overblown by the media. When you give it a closer look the nation is not divideed into but red or blue states. Instead, when broken down to the county level things turn out to be more purple than anything else.

And it's not urban versus rural either. The nation is pretty evenly split between "liberal" and "conservative" views. At least according to survey after survey. Sure, California is well known as a "blue" state - and that's why Bush got such a huge number of votes here both times around. And Texas is well known as being a "red" state and that's why Gore, Kerry and Obama got all the huge number of votes there as well.

So let's give it a couple of days or so to see more details emerge about the various Tea Parties that got held today before pronouncing final judgement.

Madoc

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

They tried to organize one here in town at the last minute, but then the snow came and it was called off - though I prefer to think of it as pseudo-conservatives making God cry.

[spearweasel.livejournal.com]

Are you really encouraging "right-wing extremists" (I use the term ironically) to start engaging in property destruction or violence?

I don't see that ending well for anyone.

On the other side, nobody that I know of changed their minds about environmental issues because ELF torched some SUV's. Likewise, most of the tea-party goers that I am distantly acquainted with understand full well that this is supposed to be symbolic.

In general, these protestors are law-abiding citizens with day-jobs, not the 22-year old, Che t-shirt/bandanna wearing, underemployed philosophy majors that you see throwing urine bottles at cops during demonstrations.

If the fringe right ever shows up with their own Black Bloc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc) protesters, you won't like it.

That's just not how tea-party folks roll.

As for me, I don't do rallies in general.

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Total sidebar note: I hear what you're saying about the lack of real rebellion in the thing. But speaking as a treehugger, I'm very glad that they dumped neither tea nor cars into the drink as the specific form of their protest. That would be damaging an ecosystem that had nothing to do with the original protest, and ironically, (you'd hope) the government would just have to spend MORE money cleaning up the mess afterward.

That said, it's hard to find a symbol of extreme scorn that doesn't involve destroying something, which gives me new respect for King and other nonviolent protests that succeeded in getting so much press.