Daily I wake up and watch the news and daily I am by the depths to which "politicians" will stoop. On my facebook page I posted this video.
It was simply incredible to me that anyone could express this level of hubris, confusion, and anger simultaneously. The ideas that 1. Rick Barber would lead the founding fathers, 2. the American Revolution was simply over a tax on tea, and 3. that the IRS should be violently overthrown are simply incredible. With recent results showing the Tea Party in a sticky spot, however, I don't expect we'll have to worry about Barber's "armies" staging a military coup any time soon.
But the implications of the Tea Party's message and impending failure are far deeper. Let's examine the Tea Party message.
The idea behind the Tea Party is that the Constitution, and Bill of Rights especially, should be held as sacred. No law should violate the boundaries that these documents set on government and special care should be taken to keep government out of the economy, allowing free market principles to have their say. In this way, they attempt to protect the little guy, the grass-roots citizen, from tyranny.
Rick Barber's message exposes Tea Party confusion on two levels. The first is that he speaks with the founding fathers, painting them as the protectors of individual liberty. This completely ignores the classic American hypocrisy: the Founders installed Democracy while completely ignoring blacks, Native Americans, women, renters, farmers, and craftspeople. The qualification of property for voting and the economic gains the Founders stood to make from the installation of the new government should immediately call into question the intentions of their actions.
The second is the interpretation sanctification of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added to quell citizens fears of tyranny in order to achieve ratification. This is clear since, after passage, the government continued to violate these "laws" over and over again; the Espionage Act of WWI and the detention of Japanese Americans during WWII are just a couple of examples. Furthermore, the people holding the strings during the drafting and amending of the Constitution were all wealthy land-owners, not Joe the Plumbers. It is clear through history that the Constitution was not entirely created to protect people, but instead (at least partially) to set formal boundaries that would satiate the public while the powerful largely did as they pleased.
So it's clear now that the grass-roots organization most prominent in politics is favoring the powerful. Not by design, but by rhetorical steering from the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News, and all business interests that fill their coffers. This lies in stark contrast to the labor revolutions of the late 19th century, where true grass-roots organizations rose up against labor tyranny in order to shackle industry from harming the real "little guy. Frankly, the implication here is that grass-roots, or at least grass-roots prominent and well funded enough to make it in the news are completely betraying the historical definition.
Despite this, however, the largest consequence arise from the Tea Party's failure. Not only are grass-roots now, effectively, "corporate grass-roots", but their failure is observed as if the Tea Party really is a people's movement. The danger is that when they fail, the community of politicians, corporate firms, and active-but-uninformed voters could write off the power of a people's movement altogether. I don't imagine this set back would be permanent, but it would certainly be damning in the short-term.
I have faith that, as is historically true, the true power of people will fight back even if they don't win. Simply consider, however, that when the bell tolls on the Tea Party, it tolls for us as well.
3 comments:
Nice post as usual, with lots of nuance. It's hard to say anything deep and thoughtful about an environment in which a candidate who advocates doing away with health insurance and bartering for health care (chickens for checkups) loses because she isn't crazy enough!
That said, I think once we have the ability to look at this in retrospect the impact on a true grass roots movement won't be as great as you fear. The Left realizes this is astroturf and will continue looking to our "community organizers" for their advocacy of the real little man. The GOP and those who back them know what they're doing, and that they're doing it just to gain the mantle of being on the side of the ordinary citizen. The MSM realizes they're dealing with all the same people, men who were within the Republican party last year and the Tea Party this year. They're just being too clever by half with their false balance.
A lot of this could be resolved if the press would get off their lazy rears and quit pretending that "balance" is halfway between reasonable people on the Left and crazy liars on the Right. As an example, balance between "killing Grandma" and responsible end of life counsel isn't "many people think that health care would be withdrawn by government edict." Responsible journalism would be "Death panels are a lie, here's the proof." Most of this BS goes away if we could just get writers to do what they were taught in Journalism 101.
I firmly agree with your last paragraph. My favorite aspect of NPR is that historical context that moderates their commentary.
Truth be told, if people knew a little bit about history, they would understand why things are the way they are today. Kelby mentioned a few weeks back that in the early part of the 20th century, the income tax was as high as 90% for the truly rich. I don't have exact figures on today's percentage but I'm sure if people were aware of that figure, they would feel at least a little differently about the current tax system.
As for my pessimism, perhaps the reason I fear the death of true Populist enthusiasm is that I'm currently at an age where my peers and I have little resources to really make the change we want to see. Then again, it is wholly unrealistic too think that Populism could die; new children and new ideas are born every day.
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