A tea party history

You can also read this piece at Windy Cutler's new blog:

http://grammawindysblog.blogspot.com/




Has the avowedly grassroots group calling themselves The Teaparty allowed themselves to be duped, to be co-opted, by corporate interests using them for their own purposes? How is that the teapartiers seem to be supporting stances that would be antithetical to their own perceived best interests, that is, presumably the interests of the common people of the United States?

How is it that they have been persuaded that government, not the corporations, is the problem? Please remember that the real Boston Tea Party was not about taxes, per se, not against government, per se, but against corporations, in the form of the East India Tea Company which had persuaded Parliament to repeal taxes on tea exported to the colonies by themselves, but not on tea imported by small business entrepreneurs operating their own tea shops and whom they wanted deemed smugglers and pirates. Of course this gave East India the advantage in the market and put the small shop owners out of business. Hence, the dumping of East India’s tea in the harbor.

How is it that teapartiers are persuaded to show up at rallies with hate-filled signs spewing all manner of vitriol, all in the name of free speech? How is it that they are persuaded that the way to show true patriotism is to storm townhall meetings and shout down the speakers and even other attendees who want to speak up? So much for free speech for “the others.” And who persuaded them that the reason the Founding Fathers passed the second amendment was to encourage people to show up at public rallies, even with the president attending, with pistols strapped to their thighs and Uzis flung over their shoulders?

By the way, Ochlocracy is government by the masses; mob rule. That is in my dictionary.
A suitable and succinct poster for a tea party rally would read: Guns for Everyone/Abortions for No one/Closets for Gays/Deportations for Immigrants.

How can the teaparty really think that we should extend tax cuts for the rich and cut funding for infrastructure and institutions that serve the common good. Think about it: we have been redistributing wealth, created by the working class, to the rich for decades, but it would be evil to redistribute that wealth back down to the people who generated it in the first place.

That would be “social justice” at its most evil.

-Windy Cutler