Tea Bag Evangelists

Confused, hate-filled, dissociative thinking characterizes the country's tea-partiers poised to appear at a number of locations on April 15^th. Having finally come to realize that the "Boston Tea Party" had quite different historical connotations than their current anti-tax protests they have taken to carrying signs that say "taxation with representation isn't so good either."

There's just no pleasing these folks. They try one tactic after another apparently hoping something will strike a responsive chord with more than the rag-tag, sub-rational minions they have managed to attract so far. The hysteria attached to the charges these purveyors of confusion circulate brands the movement as simply another political device designed to undermine the Obama administration. And although one would think the foaming-at-the-mouth types would be an embarrassment for The GOP, they actually allow party leaders to avoid having to become overly or overtly involved even as Republican tax policies are promoted by tea-bag evangelists.

But the mix of signage and verbal offensives lacks a meaningful message and represents rather the angst of malcontents in the throes of a demonic impulse encouraged by the irresponsible machinations of right-wing media pundits and party extremists. Why else would there be such a mixed-bag of protesters, some of whom accuse the president of fostering socialism while others call him a fascist, question the validity of his birth certificate, say he's a secret terrorist or the spawn of Satan?  He was born in Kenya says one protester, not sure says another. The hope must be that such doubts might bring the president down and, then support for a fresh round of tax-cuts would restore the lifestyle of the rich and famous who would pepper the country with jobs and prosperity even though they did no such thing with the riches they amassed during the Bush years.

In the astonishing verbal rampage that took place on Glenn Beck's show over the weekend, the progressive movement was misrepresented in a narrow perversion of what the term means and what most progressives stand for. And in a particularly disjointed and "inciteful" diatribe a fictionalized Tom Paine appeared in 18^th-century garb to bemoan the country's "decline" and what was described as "national suicide". He joined together a "they" who overspent and flew planes into the World Trade Center just to make sure the two scariest scenarios Republicans can conjure up were conjoined in one horrifying message - - government spending and terrorism.

And all of this spectacularly outlandish garbage was accompanied by films of Hitler in the background just in case anyone missed the point of how threatened our society is by the government now in power. They'll take away our liberties one woman cried on a call-in program, as if our civil liberties were so secure during the past eight years. Although admittedly it is concerning that President Obama hasn't countermanded some of the more questionable Bush policies, it is to be hoped that he will work to guarantee the individual liberties that were undercut in recent years.

But what exactly does Beck mean when he promotes a "march on Washington" for the purpose of ‘taking back America'? It's that kind of talk that he and other fringe ‘patriots' engage in that is so unsettling and so unhelpful in moving the country to a more stable place. When did we become such an untutored, intellectually stunted population willing to be led by people who understand so little about the world? We have known for some time the power of cults in society, but why have so many given themselves over to the cult of disinformation, delusion and tea-bags?

For the less intellectually-endangered members of this rabid species their time would be better spent protesting companies that off-shore profits and outsource jobs. Taxes may be a hot topic, but tax policies have never been the prime mover of our economy and will not be the engine of our prosperity in the future. It may be a source of amusement for people animated by the ravings of self-described patriots of uncertain credibility to take to the streets and see themselves in news clips interviewed by actual reporters, but theirs is a transitory and unproductive endeavor.

In reality they are being used by political zealots whose fervent flag-waving masks the emptiness of their rhetoric and the shallow nature of their goals.