The Tea Party Mentality

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Today marks the deadline for paying 2008 income taxes, and the public citizenry from coast-to-coast marked the occasion by holding symbolic "tea parties" created to form some link with the American patriots who dumped the British tea in Boston Harbor over two centuries ago. The original protesters were defiant because they were being taxed without representation in the British Parliament. While today's rabble are represented in Congress, many feel powerless to stop government from engaging in practices and programs that they personally oppose. The way to defeat the beast, they figure, is to starve it by not paying taxes - or at least by calling attention to their concerns through dramatic action - like tea parties. The mobs were intense and vocal.

And they also had a lot of fun mugging for the cameras - and Fox News was absolutely giddy putting up wall-to-wall coverage of their political antics.

And then there was poor Texas! First Chuck Norris threatened to run for President of the Republic of Texas, and today the Lone Star's crackpot governor, Rick Perry (the one with the great hair!), played the enabler to Norris's egomaniacal ambitions by talking about leading the state into secession! Even Texas deserves better than those two bozos!

I am old enough to remember well when Ronald Reagan was President. Most of today's protesters revere Reagan as somewhere to the right of God. Reagan "lowered" taxes several times, and each time that he did, my taxes went up. He was lowering taxes, just not mine. The business classes and the very rich did very well under Reagan, but their tax windfalls never did trickle down to those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

My take home pay has actually increased with Barack Obama's tax cuts. His new tax cuts really do cut taxes - for everyone making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Tax cuts that cut taxes - what a concept!

In fairness to democracy's foot soldiers and their tea bags, they are also fired up about the zillions of dollars going out of the treasury to try and help pump up the economy. I don't like it either, especially when monster banks like Bank of America take the free money while raising interest rates on credit cards (even to their good customers) - and while plotting the overthrow of America's unions.

Yup, that sucks. But know two things: 1. We are in this mess because America put George Bush in the White House (kinda sorta), and he spent eight years deregulating everything. The result was an unfettered economic system that overdosed on its own greed and avarice. 2. We have a much better opportunity of surviving the Bush mess with the powerful intellect of Barack Obama at the helm of the ship-of-state. I may not like the plan, but I am willing to give it a chance.

A good portion of today's protesters probably are genuinely concerned about the massive debt that we are piling on our grandchildren. I certainly am. But I have been concerned for a long time. I was concerned when we went charging off to Iraq without provocation. I was concerned when stories started making the news about pallets of currency being moved around in Iraqi warehouses by forklifts, and those forklifts were operated by private companies with names like Blackwater, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root. I was concerned when Dick Cheney clearly showed us the arrogance of the executive branch by running the war and the economy in secret, revealing the identity of a CIA covert agent for political payback, and telling an inquisitive and respected member of the United States Senate to "go fuck yourself." That wasn't my America.

I voted for Barack Obama to get my America back. It was once a decent place that stood out as a bright and shining example of democracy and civility. The Bush administration of crooks and liars threw our greatness into the crapper. The rich got richer, the poor got much poorer, and hate became the order of the day. That must change, and suddenly there is hope that it can change.

But I came of age in the sixties, and I appreciate a good national protest as much as anyone!

Make tea, not war!