TEA DRINKING TO ALLITERATION

Take heed, leftists, the Tea Party cometh. Take heed because this is what you should be doing. Just because you got the President you wanted doesn’t mean you can rest, that you can stay quiet. Now is the time to be loud because now you have an ear. Meanwhile, the Tea Party rises, steeped in secrecy (is it a legitimate movement or orchestrated by a powerful-elite-cabal for a greedy agenda?) and an ambiguous if not ignorant message. There’s no better illustration of this than the upcoming first National Tea Party convention which is barring journalists from full coverage and has Sarah Palin as a spectator. In case you need that explained: a supposedly populist movement is shrouding their biggest even yet and is featuring a woman who couldn’t even recall the name of any newspaper let alone prove she knows how to read (I don’t think Going Rogue is any credit, that’s what ghostwriters are for) and who is a documented liar (I site her lumping Obama in with terrorists during the infamous campaign and her claim that Democrats wanted to set up “death panels” to judge the elderly). I suppose some discount the Tea Party as isolated irritants with no influence. But even so, these gatherings that keep popping up show a trend, a very real trend that took shape during the race to replace Ted Kennedy. Democrats lazed about thinking it was in the bag; Republicans took up the example of the Tea Party and caught the Blue state unawares.

The Tea Party’s professed points of contention are valid at a glance. Anyone who’s ever gotten a pay check wishes they could get some of that dough back, and certainly health care has come off the rails. Of course, they don’t want to fix health care; they just don’t want to pay for it. But they can’t discuss these issues intelligently, or without using disinformation. For example, at a rally in Wisconsin recently, they had one Dr. Pureth deriding the socialized health care system of Ireland, painting it as a third-world-chop-shop in a cautionary tale of uncared-for pregnant women. Yet the infant mortality rate in Ireland is lower than it is here by both the reckoning of the UN and the CIA World Factbook. The lowest rates are attributed to Iceland by the former and to Singapore by the latter. The infant-mortality rate is generally used to assess the overall health of a country and both of those nations have universal socialized medicine.

Additionally, the event in Wisconsin featured a large bonfire and Joe the Plumber. Sounds more like a keg party then a political rally, and definitely not something that any good could come from. Progressives need to pay close attention to this rabid mob trying to sway Washington. JournalTimes.come gave a list of some signs held up in the crowd and I list them here, each followed by some of my own commentary:

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”

(The day this isn’t true is the day we wake up in Utopia.)

“The ACLU is the enemy within.”
(This seems digressive. I thought we were talking about healthcare and taxes? Furthermore, if you want to claim a position of liberty – with such other signs as “Wake up America, your liberty is gone,” and “Liberty, not tyranny,” – then the ACLU is your friend.)

“Marxism. Communism. Obamaism. Sameism.”

(Isn’t Joe McCarthy dead?)

“Don’t blame me, I voted for the American.”

(This reeks of racism – what makes Obama un-American? Skin color? Foreign father? Politics?)

“Free markets, not freeloaders.”

(Unregulated free markets got us in this recession mess. End of discussion.)

According to Wikipedia, Tea Partiers have been seen co-opting leftist iconography such as the raised fist of solidarity and the usually pro-choice slogan “Keep your Laws off my Body.” This makes for a perplexing political movement. It also confuses the greater discussion because the left is not yet thrilled by Obama’s performance, but it would be counter-productive to side with tea-partiers. Society can be stifling, but once you agree to adhere to a civil society, maintaining it is not achieved by being more passionate about making sure everyone can own a gun over making sure everyone has access to a doctor, food and shelter. And if the Tea Party really is a manufactured phenomenon marionetted by Big Business, then we all lose because we already have two puppet political parties.

This is a tricky time. After eight years of having a Mayflower-Ivy-League party boy posing as a good-ole-Texas-rancher in a ploy to appeal to the common man and conceal ineptitude, our country came around and elected a candidate who didn’t hide his illustrious education or his flaws. Obama stumbled, perhaps by relying on too many Clinton cronies, and somehow we’ve disproportionately lost ground and gone dumb again. Polls show no one wants Palin for President, but she’s a persistent polyp on political podiums. Scott Brown, just elected in Massachusetts, is another case of populist pandering: the most important thing on his mind after winning? Announcing again that he drives a pick-up truck. Scott Brown, Bruce Springsteen you ain’t, so shut the hell up.