A thousand, which, according to the Tea Partiers in attendance, is a typo and should have read 10,000 -- at least -- angry white people who ARE NOT RACISTS but love them some funny Kenyan-style images of Obama in a grass skirt with a bone through his nose, although never admitting such things in public -- gathered on a street corner in Naples, Florida, across from a shopping center that has an ACTUAL bookstore (where, one presumes, the less informed among the horde might find information that would help them avoid the kind of painful public display of ignorance they seem to believe is guaranteed by the Constitution, or at least the Federalist papers) and proceeded to wave signs that prove they love America and wish the Mexicans and Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi would just give it back to them. They then shared their comments with the intrepid reporters of the Naples Daily News, who displayed most of the acumen we have been conditioned to expect and transcribed their remarks without, apparently, any effort to question the speakers about such things as their standing to formulate policy or, even, understand why the Founding Fathers even bothered to create a freakin' government in the first place when they could have just dealt out the money and turned everyone loose to play Monopoly -- except it wasn't, invented yet, but it could have been if the liberals and politically correct types like Jefferson and Madison hadn't kept Alexander Hamilton (a real bastard who went all Reaction Formation about his tawdry family history and set about proving his Better Than Thou status by favoring the Haves over Jefferson's simple-minded farmers) from inventing Wall Street right off the bat.
Well, you can read all about it here.
Goofy 20-somethings waving their conservatism around, but mercifully allowed to avoid the part of the test where they actually, you know, explain what that means and how they incorporate their "conservatism" into their daily lives in an age when Saint Ronny of the Borax Commercial would find himself drawn and quartered, defeated in the primaries, and subject to Ann Coulter's (remember her?) most caustic putdowns were he to show up in what passes for a gathering of Real Americans as defined by an Australian media mogul whose fortune was made by printing pictures of tits in his tabloids but who managed to get himself named a Real American by none other than that Republican in Act Only Bill Clinton, for whom your faithful scribe shares with many of the folks holding signs a similar distaste although for different reasons and none involving cigars or mantraps wearing blue dresses.
Listening to Tea Partiers discuss the mechanics of government, the origins of the nation and the intent of the Founding Fathers is like listening to kindergarten students discuss the musical merits of Miles Davis or John Coltrane.
Before one criticizes, one must understand. A little more time studying civics and political science might have helped. A little more time with something besides Glenn and Sean would help today.
But the Tea Party isn't about solutions. It's a temper tantrum thrown by the willingly uninformed, aimed at the things that make them uncomfortable, dedicated to restoring an America that never was, and financed by ultraconservative individuals and corporations who stand to benefit from the breakdown of participatory democracy guaranteed by the dissolution of an informed electorate.
The Tea Party represents the last gasps of those seeking to restore America's "frontier," when a man was able to stalk across the mountains and kill enough savages to secure a new homestead because he could smell the smoke from a new neighbor's cookfire. It represents the frustration and immobility and impotence of wage-earners and hard workers whose dreams for the future and plans for their children have been co-opted by the mechanics of global finance they cannot begin to comprehend. Their reaction in the face of all this gobsmacking is to make fun of the smart kids, find scapegoats, and fill their carts at China-dependent Wal-Mart while decrying the collapse of their own nation's economy.
They watched their retirement funds vanish as Wall Street played fast and loose with no intervention from government, but think scrapping Social Security and giving the money to the same con men represents "financial freedom."
There really are too many issues to name, but nearly every one can be explained by citing a total and abject ignorance of the mechanics of governing, corporate policies, global trade, and the messy and impractical nature of a true democracy. There is, also, a willful disregard of the true nature of humans, and the consequent necessity of some form of government to prevent such nightmares as Somalia or Haiti. Add the misguided notion to inject Jesus Christ in a curiously unrecognizable, and positively Old Testament version, into public affairs with no apparent recognition of what religion has done for the "nations" of Iran and Afghanistan and you have a thoroughly discordant mess.
Sure they're unhappy. The world is slipping out from under them, and they blame the easy targets. A gay congressman caused the housing bubble, all evidence to the contrary. A black president created the federal deficit, again in opposition to the facts. A pushy woman -- Pelosi's real sin -- makes Congress unworkable.
Poor unhappy tea-partiers. If I were that Russian lady, I think I'd take my teabag necklace and go home where things are just peachy now that the mobsters from Moscow are showing the world how capitalism ought to run.
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