TEA BAGGERS

The National Tea Party Convention for 2010 took place in Nashville this past weekend. I’d give you direct reporting of the event, but tickets were WAY out of my price range. Ah, but that’s what happens when a grass roots movement is sponsored by for-profit groups like Tea Party Nation. I keep hoping tea baggers will notice this, but so far only a couple people protested the sharp fees and requests for political donations.

My most important gripe with this group is one of historical fact. Attempts to identify the tea bagger movement as some modern-day Boston Tea Party are not only factually cross-eyed, but also disrespectful to the colonists in early Boston, Massachusetts.

British Parliament had just imposed the Tea Act on the American Colonies which would increase taxes once more. Colonists revolted, and succeeded in turning away shipments of the taxable goods in two different cities. And when problems surfaced in Boston, the colonists decided to send a message to the oppressive foreign power. They dumped the shipment of tea into the harbor.

Now, if modern day tea baggers were ANYTHING like the colonists in Boston, they would cast off the shackles of their oppression in symbolic gestures... like tossing taxable goods into a harbor. Lord knows there are plenty of opportunities to do this in today's world! Government run options for health care like Medicare and Medicaid. Retirement and disability insurance such as Social Security. Those two ALONE are a tremendous burden on taxable earnings.

And before they start in on me, I've heard the counter argument to what I’m saying here. "But dur, we can't get out of paying taxes for this stuff." Whiners. First of all, yes they can, or at least Joe the Plumber figured a way out of paying his. They should ask him. Second, if they VOLUNTARILY gave up using a few government resources, especially in a large voting block, they’d have the perfect argument to bring to their elected officials. They wouldn’t be using certain tax funded goods and services. They would acquire their own resources in the future.

If their movement proved one thing last year, it was that people CAN change a debate by mobilizing at public forums. Regardless of who mobilized them or how distorted the message became, they changed the debate. Period. Why not use this same momentum and actually toss some tea in the harbor? Go to the root of this argument. Work toward legislation that would allow for voluntary exclusion on certain programs. Give up the benefits as a gesture of the revolution taking place across the nation. In other words, show us you mean it.

But they won’t. They’ll argue out of one side of their mouth while feeding the other. This is why the term "tea bagger" is so appropriate for this populist movement. Not because of the balls-on-the-chin connotation, hardy har. It's because the members throw their tea into the harbor only long enough to froth and rally and protest... and then they pull that tea right back out again and save it for later. They argue against government while benefitting from government.

I've seen miserly old women do this with real tea bags. They keep a soggy one tucked away in a baggie in their purse, and use it over and over. By the end of the day, I’d imagine their drinking some pretty weak tea. That’s how the tea bagger message looks in the light of scrutiny: a lot of hot water and little substance, and very little sacrifice.