April 15 tax day and if you’re a member of the Tea Party you wait all year for this. There are rallies all over the country; it’s like D-day for the Tea Baggers. In Atlanta, the action is down at the capital. On the way over I heard on the radio that they were expecting over 5,000 people, it looks closer to 2,000 to me. The demographics are pretty much the same as they were at the meeting I attended a few weeks ago but there are more minorities and young people than I expected. Looking around at the teaming masses the first thing that catches my eye is a sign, which reads:
I’M TIRED OF PAYING FOR MY NEIGHBORS
WHO DON’T WORK!!
SPREAD MY WORK ETHIC-NOT MY WEALTH!!
(which isn’t much now)
On the bottom there’s the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ emblem and of course the ever-popular Hammer & Sickle image from the Soviet flag. The guy proudly wielding it is in his late 20’s and I gotta say it’s a beautiful sign, sure his talents are misguided but it was one of the better-made signs I saw that day. I asked him why he had the Hammer & Sickle on it and he said, “Because that’s what we’re going towards,” and that he was “just tired of paying for other people.” When I ask him to elaborate, he tells me about his neighbors whom are on section 8 but can somehow afford a new $50,000 Tahoe. This is not the first time I’ve heard this argument. Many in the Tea Party see what the Democrats are doing, with Healthcare in particular, as a form of welfare. But before I could press this young man any further something happened. Suddenly my blood runs cold and "I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced." I turn to the stage and I immediately realize where this ominous sense of cold-hearted dread is coming from. Under the lights, in front of this unholy gathering is none other than Sadie Fields giving the invocation. Sadie is the chairman of the Georgia Christian Alliance, which in 2004 spearheaded the effort to have the Georgia Marriage Amendment placed on the ballot. Now why would the Tea Baggers align themselves with a Christian Lobby? Aren’t they supposed to be ‘constitutionalists?’ The founding fathers (which the Tea Party are totally gay for) saw the wisdom in separating church and state; the Georgia Christian Alliance does not. It seems illogical for the Tea Baggers to be hooking up with these guys. But that’s not nearly as illogical as what I see next… A black guy, that’s right I said a black guy, holding a sign that says:
REPEAL
NEW
SLAVERY
First of all, the work on this sign was nowhere near as good as the first guy I spoke to. This was real shotty work. Plain red letters glued on black cardboard and I could totally see gobs of glue oozing from under the letters. This guy did not bring his A-Game. Secondly, is he really comparing the Democrat’s agenda with the Transatlantic Slave Trade? Well no, he explains to me “its enslavement of the mind.” Oh, the old enslavement of the mind trick. Those bastards! Why didn’t I see that coming? Because it’s fucking crazy, that’s why! Want to criticize Obama and the Dems? Go ahead. But criticize them with facts. Using words like ‘socialist’ and ‘slavery’ are nothing more than simplistic scare tactics. Don’t like the fact that your taxes may be raised. Fine I get that, I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I get it. We have to get rid of the deficit and you can’t realistically talk about doing that without considering raising taxes to help pay for it. Just spending cuts are not going to cut it. We are all going to have to pay for it one way or another. At least with the Dems, the most fortunate among us will pay the lion’s share. Don’t like that? Okay, but we tried it your way for 8 years and look where it got us. Let someone else run with the ball for a while.
All right enough preaching. Back to the rally; sure ‘Repeal New Slavery’ guy’s sign was messy but he was a bit of a novelty. I mean a black Tea Bagger! That’s unique in and of it self and besides at least he could spell. The next sign I see reads:
OBAMA-STOP!
YOU PROMISED US
DR. HOUSE
YOU FORCE FED US
DR. KEVORIAN
Yes, you read that right, Kevorian, not Kevorkian. Jeez, these people are killing me.
Things didn’t get much better when Denny Schaffer took the stage. Schaffer is a local talk radio host and to listen to him talk about him self on his web page, you’d think he was a really mellow spiritual guy, kinda preachy, in the literal since but mellow. To hear him speak in front of a frothing mass like the one here today you would think you were listening to a ranting, raving lunatic. Calling the ACLU “Satan’s law firm” and saying that this once great country is no more because the national philosophy has gone from ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ to “what can I do for myself without lifting a finger?” Again we get into the welfare argument. Denny talks a lot about Jesus on his webpage, a lot of the Tea Baggers do, and Jesus talked a lot about giving and compassion. That’s not something I’ve heard a lot about today.
The next speaker, Ginni Thomas, wasn’t nearly as hateful as Schaffer but did a good job of getting the crowd whipped up. Ginni is the wife of Clarence Thomas; yes that Clarence Thomas, and she is also the founder of libertycentral.org, which chief among its many noble duties is securing “the blessings of liberty.” To Thomas this is a fight about whether we as a country want to be “self-governed or ruled” by the “elitist” in DC, whom, by the way, are “scared to death” of the Tea Party. According to Ginni, and she’s been working in DC for over 30 years, the Tea Party movement is “the biggest thing that has ever happened.” Wow really? Bigger than women’s suffrage or the civil rights movement? I must really have my head up my ass because I had no idea! Thomas goes on to tell the crowd that this is our generations’ time to stand up to tyranny! By the end of her tirade she has the whole crowd chanting, “Remember in November! Remember in November! Remember in November!”
Now that the crowd is worked up nice and proper, we slow things down with a performance from country music star John Berry. Berry is a bit of a folk hero to the Tea Baggers. You see a year ago on this day John was sitting at home watching all the Tea Party events taking place across the country and he thought to himself “what can I do?” Well, “I write songs and sing,” he continues. “So I went in my office and I penned this one.” The song is called ‘Give me back my America’ and it is a Grade-A piece of Ameri-Porn. Just check out these choice lyrics:
I want to work with my hands down at the mill
Plowin' a field or forgin' the steel
With out interference from Capital Hill
Give Me Back My America
If that doesn’t give you a patriotic boner then you may want to check your pulse! After Berry was done jerking off the crowd with the American flag I notice the guy beside me is crying like a 14-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. As I’m watching this guy weep I realize two things. 1) Most of these people have a genuine love for their country and 2) They really and truly believe they are losing their country and that scares the hell out of them.
On the way out I some how managed to lose my car even though I only parked about a block away. After walking around for an hour I had a lot of time to think about all the craziness of the past few hours. And the more I thought about it, I just felt sorry for the Tea Party because some of their points are valid. The Government is going to have to reign in spending for instance and that’s one of their core beliefs. But even that most basic of concepts gets drowned out by all the “Obama is a Socialist,” fervor which scares off the sane people. Then there are the groups like Americans for Prosperity who exploit these poor bastards for their own gain. The Tea Baggers would be a lot more respectable if they would drop their association with lobbies and lay off the socialism scare tactics. The former contradicts their claim of being a grass roots organization and the latter is just flat out sensationalism.
Think they don’t matter though? You may want to re-think that. Just look at Arizona, that’s a product of Tea Party Governance. A state that cut taxes so much that they’ve been forced to sell their capital building to raise revenue only to rent it back from the buyer! Yeah, that’s prudent spending. And there’s a Tea Party caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives now. Clearly the right people are paying attention. Unfortunately the right people aren’t always the best people.
