Tea Parties Are Dangerous

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"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
--Mahatma Gandhi

The tea party movement has definitely been through the ignoring phase, and is into the laughing phase, but if this article at the Cleveland Examiner is any indication, it will soon be at the fighting phase.

Apocalypse Examiner:

The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party-people consider themselves a coherent and diverse network of Americans from every conceivable walk of life. They are cultural warriors fighting against the tax-happy, spend-happy ways of the evil Obama cabal, real American patriots, and staunch defenders against the creeping evils of Socialism.

In reality, their 'movement' is incredibly divisive, a mindset that stands in sharp contrast to Obama's calls for bipartisanship in this time of great national need. Their arguments have the potential to divide the country along titanic lines not seen since the bloody days of the Civil War.

Think I'm exaggerating here? The Tea Party movement is an incredibly dangerous concept, fuelled by the usual gushes of sycophantic support from the conservative news media (here's looking at you, Fox). Consider a recent poll posted on Sean Hannity's website, asking his loyal followers if they thought America was ripe for 'revolution'. Or perhaps you've heard some of the vitriolic treasonous crap spewing forth from the mouth of Fox's resident white-haired lunatic, He Who Shall Go Unnamed. You can tune in to his show practically any day of the week for an (increasingly) thinly veiled call to arms against the President and his evil liberal cronies.

Now, normally I would dismiss this guy as a loon, but fortunately or unfortunately I was reading up on some American History last night and learned something new about the original Boston tea party, specifically about how it came about, and I think he's on to something.

From Wikipedia:

...At the same time, there was commercial stagnation and trade depression throughout Europe following the lull in the post-Industrial Revolution period. The desperate directors of the company attempted to avert bankruptcy by appealing to Parliament for financial help. This led to the passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which gave the Company greater autonomy in running its trade in America, and allowed it an exemption from the tea tax-which its colonial competitors were required to pay. When the American colonists, who included tea merchants, were told of the act, they tried to boycott it, claiming that, although the price had gone down on the tea when enforcing the act, it was a tax all the same, and the king should not have the right to just have a tax for no apparent reason. The arrival of tax-exempt Company tea, undercutting the local merchants, triggered the Boston Tea Party in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution.

So the British East India company, in which the British upper class was heavily invested, was deemed Too Big To Fail, and must become the recipient of a bailout. Which led to a populist uprising (and a tea party) and eventually a violent revolution.

We now have Bernanke, Geithner, Obama and the rest of the political class saving AIG and the banks while the rest of us lose our jobs and our houses. What's the worst that could happen?

Filed Under: Economy, Budget

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