I think it needs to be said that the Tea Party is not only badly out of touch with the reality of America and its own preferred candidates, but they are also desperately deluded about the reality of their own positions. If Tea partiers spent a fraction of the time considering the policies they advocate as they do on their costumes, some might see that they are not only supporting jaw-droppingly unqualified candidates, but also some very un-American policies.
The Tea Party is not advocating a return to “traditional American values” in the Disney-fied sense of the oil paintings and great orations related to us in 6th grade history class (if, indeed, they still teach history). They are advocating a return to feudal England where the Haves have everything and the Have Nots die in the street crying “God Save the Queen.” The real difference? Miniscule and diminishing. American feudalism is rooted in an increasingly unbalanced “free market” where the brochure says anyone with gumption can succeed and hoard resources unto themselves and their heirs. The English system, on the other hand, relied solely on family inheritance and ownership of money-making capacity. But the outcome is the same.
The semi-secret catch in the free market myth is something felt more acutely by minorities, but increasingly by the middle class: generational wealth tips the scales. Sure, there are the occasional fairy tales of The Guy Who Made It with little more than a dream and some ambition, but these are rare enough to be made into movies (The Pursuit of Happyness, for example). Outside these exceptions – which provide a pointing-place for the Haves as proof that the system works (and therefore that they are better than you) – most Americans are slipping further and further behind. Meanwhile, the Haves continue to gain, hoarding power at levels that make it possible to build their own advantages into the systems that are then sold to us as a “free market,” disguising the fact that it is rigged to accelerate the funneling of resources right back to the people who made the rules because they had the money.
Meanwhile the rest of America is losing resources to those upper echelons, creating a situation where people in the middle class are losing their homes, losing their savings, and being forced to sell anything of value just to stay afloat. This leaves less (if anything) remaining for heirs to inherit, reducing their position and resource pool – and thus reducing the resource pool of their own heirs. This increasing disparity in generational wealth has been studied as a factor in racial equalization, but it now affects Americans across the board in record numbers. And there’s no end in sight, as Republicans continue to amplify the American myth and accelerate the redistribution of wealth upwards via protective policies. Not the Land of Opportunity we like to write songs about and give seminars about in other countries.
Enter the Tea Party. Interestingly enough, made up almost exclusively of Have Nots who are convinced they have made it, and funded by Haves who feed off the ignorance of these self-satisfied minions and continue to tell them that they have made it! They’re American success stories! Why? Not really sure – most of them are unemployed or retired, so the measure of “making it” is a little fuzzy, but hey ... it sounds nice.
Dressing up in costumes and crying for a return to the age of slavery, oppression of women, wanton pollution, industrialist robber barons, and 16 hour/52 week work lives, Tea Partiers merrily avoid any element of history they didn’t see in the theme park of Colonial Williamsburg, where the actors playing colonists are protected by labor laws, minimum wage, lead-free paint, and health insurance. Y’know, for a society that likes to say “those who don’t learn their history are bound to repeat it,” we’re sure doing a lot more repeating than learning.
When it comes to the American Dream, we have flirted with it at times (maybe best during the post-war era), but we clearly haven’t gotten it right yet. It may turn out that “live and let live” is anathema to human nature if the let-ees are too different from the let-ors. Democracy and the great Melting Pot may fade away into an interesting blip on the EKG of political history. But I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet.
We may be a young country, but we are a deliberate country. We didn’t slip into ourselves over centuries of war and takeovers and turnovers and coups; we invaded, we settled, we rebelled, and we designed ourselves a government. Maybe not from whole cloth, but certainly from the better scraps. Like children are shaped by their parents but destined to shuffle loose, America was informed by her mother (England – for those who slept through history) but set out to forge her own path and drive her own destiny, taking the best and rejecting what didn’t fit our burgeoning self-image.
This is why it pains me to hear so many refusing to respect those principles that we developed or imported. Like hippies who grew up to be conservatives like their parents, leaving the rebellious, free loving, revolutionary spirit behind like faded tie-dyes, we seem to be facing a tide of fear-driven regression from those idealized goals of our collective national youth: liberty and justice for all. Not for just the white, the male, the moneyed and landed, the Christian, or the heterosexual. ALL. Everyone. All of us. “One nation, indivisible.”
Too many voices on the extreme right (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Gingrich) are preaching open, and sometimes violent, divisiveness. With patronizing flattery and manufactured fear, they urge their followers to listen instead of think. To take up arms instead of joining hands. To point fingers instead of finding solutions. And affirming that whatever unfounded, ignorant, hateful, fear-based opinion you’ve half-formed is the OBVIOUSLY correct/ patriotic/ reasonable/ intelligent/ whatever viewpoint (so don’t bother listening to those Lefty NoGoodNiks who want you to consider consequences or facts).
I wonder – what would America be like if the founding fathers had embraced this ugly side of human nature, rather than designing a temperate, cooperative system? I know, I know, they weren’t saints, the system wasn’t perfect, and we’ve made some terrible missteps along the way (Jim Crow comes to mind) and occasionally had some terrible outcomes, but isn’t that what growth is about? It’s not about popping from the womb with a PhD and a perfect soufflé in hand, it’s about falling down and getting back up. It’s about burning your hand on the stove and never touching it again. It’s about learning from your mistakes and not repeating them. Where did we lose sight of this? When did we, as a society, decide to throw history to the wind and head breakneck down the perilous and damaged road behind us instead of looking forward and thinking about what we could do better?
So how about we try the real old-fashioned way of doing things. Let’s stop sniping and digging in our heels to get our way, and actually engage in the debate. Bring the ideas, recognize that there will be intractable disagreements, and DO THE WORK! Wrestle with the conflict, discuss the differences, and take a legitimate vote. By all means – get worked up! Get mad, get irritated, but USE that to develop your views and ENGAGE in the process. Because that’s where we learn where the weaknesses and failings of our best-laid plans lie. I will refer readers (reader?) back to my first post regarding social disconnectivity here. Since that’s really why I write these things; so I don’t have to repeat myself.
Let’s consider what that flag that some people have gleefully wrapped themselves in really means. How this country actually came to be. Et Mesdames et messieurs, it did not come on a silver platter of handholding and unicorns. It came in the sweltering humidity of a pre-air-conditioning Philadelphia summer. It came with hours and hours of arguing, debating, discussing, handwringing, and disappointment. It came with a large dose of egos and apocalyptic predictions as well. And yet, the world did not end when someone’s idea got voted (or shouted) down. It has not ended in the 200 years since, despite innumerable other ideas being voted and shouted down. And whoever you are, if your idea doesn’t make it, don’t be afraid – the world will not end then, either. Even though I admit, I see the harbingers of doom in the increasing valuation of thoughtlessness, selfishness, and intransigence. And the disturbing number of candidates willing to run on “I’m not that smart and I have no experience, but I’m really, REALLY mad and really REALLY sure I’m right about everything!” platforms. We used to respect educated, experienced professionals. Now we call them “elitists” and “establishment” and villainize them for our own lack of understanding and unwillingness to learn. I wouldn’t hire someone with no experience to build my house or run my business. Why would I hire them to steer my country? I’m just sayin’.
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