After Two Years, Tea Party Prisoner Has Learned Things About the Tea Party
There is a lot of bad journalism these days, so it is such a relief that some brave souls are still out there, ready to investigate the important stories of our time. In the opinion of one such person, the important story of our time is, "What are those Tea Party people up to, anyway ?" Most of us had already jumped to the conclusion that the answer is "Illiteracy" and "Mayhem." We now have fully-researched proof of these conclusions, but why exactly did it take two whole years to get here?
When I started going to Tea Party meetings two years ago, I was sympathetic. Just after attending one in North Dakota in August of 2009, I wrote: "Most tea partiers are not bad people. They're just mad. In many meaningful ways, today's Tea Party attendees' lives have gotten consistently worse for the last 20 years, regardless of which party was in power." I concluded that trying to figure out what they wanted was a dead end because what they wanted was simply to complain—that the Tea Party "is not a group of listen and respond; this is a group of respond and respond."
Two years of Tea Party functions later, and I finally know what the Tea Party wants: A Christian nation.
In the last year or so, in addition to going to meetings and rallies, I've spent an unhealthy amount of time on the websites, Facebook pages and social networks of Tea Party organizations and those sympathetic to them. While many are still active, many others have not been updated for months and months. Many appear to have fallen off in activity in December, just after the elections. Event calendars are barren. "Latest updates" are months old and unanswered. Those that are active are often just ugly RSS feeds, just a string of links to news items on Breitbart sites or Newsmax.
Someone get this person a large amount of alcohol and some Michele Bachmann-strength pills, because two years reading Teabagger "social networks" probably does irreparable damage to the brain. [ The Awl ]
We've lost -- if we ever had it -- the idea of a "loyal opposition". For Sarah Palin, Rick Perry and the TP'ers, Barack Obama and the Democrats are the enemy -- in the military, combat, defeat-at-all-costs sense. "Take our country back" implies the country has been stolen; that it's theirs instead of everyone's; and it must be re-taken, as if capturing Constantinople. Why not say "win with our better ideas"?
America was founded by Christians and Deists, but it was not founded as a Christian Nation. The Founders had first-hand experience with the official Church of England. Experience that led directly to the separation of church and state embodied in the First Amendment. When the TP&#039;ers are reading the long-dead minds of those Founders, they should also pay attention to the choices and <i>compromises</i> they made in the Constitution.
The argument that God and Jesus and the Bible are intertwined in the founding of America ignores the imperfections in our national story. Do the TP&#039;ers really want to argue that the &quot;the only nation founded on Christian principles&quot; had to include slavery as part of Jesus&#039; plan? That God&#039;s plan for the 13 colonies (and territory acquired since) was to decimate the native inhabitants with disease and war. That confiscation of property from British loyalists during the Revolutionary War was sanctioned by Timothy, 5:8 or somesuch.
America is challenged by powerful forces, especially those related to efficient, global transportation and communication systems. I work with people in India. I buy things made in China and shipped half-way around the world to a store near me. Cheaply.
We have great wealth. And, like wealthy nations before us, we&#039;re spending it to make our lives easier. That doesn&#039;t make us stronger, but it&#039;s how markets and capitalism work. Those are our gods and they have charted our future.
That article just affirms my belief that there is a sizable population of people that live for the single purpose of being perpetually outraged.
Kid: &ldquo;What are you mad about Grandpa?&rdquo; Grandpa: &ldquo;What have you got?&rdquo;