TEA PARTY OBSERVATIONS

Here are a couple observations about the gears driving the Tea Party stirrings.

1)It has two parts. One part is the objections to the current administration's way of doing business in Washington. Some are there in part from selfishness. Selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing. The Tea Party folk are some of the most well blessed white folk who inhabit the planet. They are well fed, well educated, well paid, healthy and happy. And they don't want to give it up to health insurance payments to their employees or higher taxes to the government that will go to help folk more scantily blessed than themselves. They don't even think they should have to pay minimum wage so those other folk can buy a few vitamins or aspirins to boost their own health. I believe most of them send their children to private schools, so generations of children grow up having little exposure to what life is like for the lower classes. There are very few people who totally oppose helping those who have less than themselves. But we are going to have to find out where the line is to be drawn. Exactly how far down do these people have to drop their bank accounts in order to share wealth with poorer people? Some ugly questions have to be settled. They are not doing wrong by demanding the answers.

2)A few years ago I attended an anti-immigrant protest by Chester Doles. I didn't necessarily agree with his ideologies, but I was one of the first people displaced by the flood of immigrants from south of the border. I attended that rally because no other political or civic organizations offered any venue for ordinary folks to voice their opinions on that. By the same token, anti-government protests have long been the domain of klans, posse's and other radical groups simply because no one else offered a venue for complaint. Indeed, anyone who dared complain too loudly about the government would be immediately accused of being a klansman. I think it very likely that given a choice between the reviled and bedeviled radical groups, a lot of people would rather turn out in the cushy venues and elite company of the Tea Party. I suspect this will cut down on the number of people attracted to “extremist” organizations.

3)There is going to be some serious mis-communications between the Tea Party faction and their fellow citizens because of differences of experience, going back many generations. Tea Party folk have come out from their cable tv and barbecue patios and soccer tournaments to protest, but they are clearly new at it. As I was walking through downtown, still holding my picket sign, a black man walked by and muttered loudly “racist!”. The Tea Party organizer told me this happens to just about everyone in their group. But one of the slogans the Tea Partiers like to shout into the micophone is “we're going to take it to the streets!” I can promise you, that has a whole different meaning to black folk, and even to most white folk, than it does to the Tea Party folk.
If I remember my history correctly, the gentry of the southern plantations had a great optimism before the start of the civil war, and could hardly wait to get started. The just knew they would win it quickly and easily. It didn't turn out that way at all, but just the same once it got going they stuck with it to the end.

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