 "Photo:")
By Cass C. Carter Ombudsman Uwgpaper.ombudsman@gmail.com
Last week, malcontents of all stripes gathered across the nation to protest the Obama tax cuts, the stimulus bill, the bailout bills, the president, Hitler, and to do so in a peaceful manner as organized by the corporate lobbying groups who started the whole thing with the help of Fox News Channel as its public relations department.
Unfortunately, I think the impact of the modern day tea party was somewhat lessened by the fact that it in no way resembled the tea party of 1773 (well, a few guys showed up in period clothing and played the town idiot by carrying misspelled signs with poor grammar, so there was that).
The reason why they fail to have the full impact wasn't that they didn't throw enough tea, have a single purpose in mind or that they weren't dressed in funny enough clothing. Their problem is a lack of understanding of the type of protest tactic used in 1773.
The Boston Tea Party was not merely a case of a few drink-sodden men running off to the harbor to toss any old tea to the waters to "stick it to the man". It was a direct action protest; that is, the participants weren't merely protesting to be heard (they were heard, though), but rather to directly solve a problem by cutting out all the middlemen and bureaucracy.
Then, as today, asking really nicely for the same bureaucrats who caused your problems to solve them is about as useful as breast implants on a corpse-it might make for good PR and it might make someone look better, but it's fleeting and ultimately futile.
Standing around throwing little teabags you paid for is not just futile, it's part of the system; it's expected and it only continues to fuel the alienation individuals feel from their own political power. As well, it's the complete opposite of what the Boston Tea Party of 1773's participants did.
See, in 1773, the tea being thrown in the harbor was not something they bought with their own money and threw into the harbor in disgust. The destruction of the tea was the destruction of property belonging to the East India Company. The participants of this iconic rebellious action did not care, because the problem of taxation without representation was too great.
In 2009, people protesting a president who was fairly elected by a legitimate process purchased tea at a local store (most commonly Wal-Mart, if the pictures of the events are to be believed) to throw it around and mail it to elected officials. The irony being that Wal-Mart is part of the reason America is in such a crappy position economically by driving prices so low that manufacturers have to turn to slave labor in places like China.
So, while these teabagging types were running around with their Wal-Mart teabags, waving signs that accused President Obama of not being an American citizen (after all, where's his birth certificate; it's not like his mother was born in America, or anything) and reminding us that "Descent is the highest form of patriotic" (yes, someone actually went into public with a sign like that), Wal-Mart used the proceeds of their purchases to continue funding China's economic recovery.
A modest request from this writer: why not emulate a great old fashioned protest from about forty or fifty years ago, when a gang of individuals dressed up in nice suits, stuffed their pockets full of $1 bills and walked into the trading house of the New York Stock Exchange. When stopped on their way into the observation room overlooking the trading floor, the guards said they looked like a bunch of hippies in suits.
The leader of this merry band exclaimed, "We're not hippies, we're Jews!" (the leader was Jewish), and convinced of their loyalty to the sanctity of the market, the guards let them in. Once inside, they waited until the trading got started. Once it heated up, they began tossing $1 bills onto the floor of the stock exchange.
Spotting the deluge of cash flying in from above, the stock traders, who make insanely high amounts of money every day, dropped what they were doing and began chasing their filthy lucre. The stock market crashed to a halt and trading fell dramatically. That night, accompanying stories of the financial drop, people around the country were treated with images of exceedingly wealthy men willing to destroy the nation's economy over a few dollars.
Some of us don't need visuals to see that it's the case even today; the stock brokers, mortgage companies, banks and other institutions are run by individuals who would not so much as blink about bringing this country to the brink of collapse if it meant making a few more dollars in the process-after all, while us poor plebes have to stay here and rebuild after they ruin us, they have enough wealth to go anywhere in the world and live very well. They are in no way invested in the well-being of our nation.
And just about everyone at those tea parties would do well to remember that.
Be the first to comment on this article!