Today is tax day – time to cough up into Uncle Sam’s hat. And this year conservatives are out protesting Obama’s tax plans in what is being billed as a series of Anti-Tax Tea Parties. The parties are modeled after the Boston Tea Party and hooked into the founding fathers in a drive to link up with a call for No taxation without representation.
WWtFFD?
The story around these parties has been big on FoxNews all week and some leftist commentators are leveling arguments that Fox has actually created these parties as a ratings-opportunity in support of a wider Astroturfing campaign. Regardless of whether Fox created the parties to generate eyeballs or whether the GOP created the parties to get time on Fox, the bottom line is that the protests are being carried heavily on Fox and are non-existent on MSNBC (i.e. only one small link at the bottom of MSNBCs landing page at the time of writing). So nothing new here, then – just the status quo.
Mad as Hell
Whether the conservatives have a point isn’t really of interest to me[1]. What I am finding interesting is how there seems to be a lack of a capacity for violent protest among the American right. With the exception of anti-abortion protests conservatives seem incapable of trashing anything during a protest. The same is true for anything other than the most radical American liberals. While Thailand is burning its cities and Londoners regularly kick the crap out of the G20[2] the US protesters invariably end up remaining mad as hell but law abiding. But this is a good thing isn’t it? Non-violent protests are better than violent protests in which people get hurt and killed, right?
Well, yes and no. Yes, non-violent protests are better if they achieve their goal. And that’s the problem here, US conservatives are mad as all HELL, but only on TV and Facebook and Twitter. Man! That Glenn Beck sure can shout and cry! He’s so frickin’ upset it’s just not real, he’s really, really mad. But it doesn’t translate to anything in the real world. A bunch of people shouting “we’re really angry”… uhm, ok. Now, I certainly don’t condone the violence in anti-abortion protests[3], but their protests are a lot more effective than anything these tea partygoers could dream of. The joke here is that while the tea party protesters are tearing Obama a new one on the toob, on the street they can’t even get their teabags delivered.
One million tea bags delivered to Lafayette Park were reloaded and sent away because tea party organizers did not have the proper permit, protest organizer Rebecca Wales told FOX News.
In a world on fire Spot-on’s Mike Spinney says it best:
[The Thai] uprising is more in keeping with the spirit of the original Boston Tea Party, which, though not terribly violent, was a genuine risk to those who participated, and served as a precursor to armed revolution against an oppressive government. The government in Thailand knows the folks who clashed with the army and who burned buses are serious about their beliefs. King George and Parliament knew the colonists were serious about theirs as well.
Today, Congress knows that we are only serious about things like American Idol and whether our new iPhone has an “app for that.” And until our elected officials get a sense that we’re serious about our frustration – by taking action, not just gathering to gab about our “issues” – we can only expect more of the same.
