 Worse, I had already listened to my former professor tell the crowd that this movement was the most genuinely-grassroots thing since the original Boston Tea Party. Mind you, he's a professor in the Department of History and Political Science, which is a scary thought.
In 1773, the world's largest corporation -- the British East India Company -- had too much inventory. They couldn't sell it in America because laws supported a middle class, small-business economy.
Unable to meet its payments on dividends and loans, the East India Company appealed to the British government -- and warned of dire consequences to financial markets if they allowed the mega-corporation to fail.
But instead of just giving them a loan, the Ministry decided to let the East India Company import tea without paying an import tax. This was a direct threat to countless small distributors, who organized a midnight riot we call the Boston Tea Party.
That's right. The original tea party was a protest against a corporate tax cut -- a fact I had learned in college because of the G.I. Bill, one of countless examples of the socialist worker's paradise that is military service.
My former professor thought the anti-war and civil rights movements less genuinely-grassroots than T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already) -- a concept born in the libertarian cult of Ron Paul, made into a "movement" by right-wing prop-shops, and blasted into the mainstream by the noise machines of FOX News and talk radio.
His version of America made no room for progressive politics. His Constitution was dead and fixed. Denouncing the president for apologizing too much, he invoked American exceptionalism to a stir of passion in the crowd. America is different because we are free; Obama hates our freedom. Health care reform was the "proof."
A feeling came over me, one that took a moment to identify because of the distracting pain in my ear. With a start, I realized it was depression. Watching someone I have respected in class turn into an demagogue inspired despair; there was no mutual reality on which to engage him.
I have now spent an entire year learning the arcanum of right wing politics, tracing the history of paranoid memes and the funding connections of the Koch Family Foundation. As my former professor spoke, it all coalesced in my mind: the local tea parties are where the insanity has come to root, hoping to survive the inevitable demographics of change. It can happen: the only person with dark skin was a young man handing out College Republican cards.
Hargett was the second speaker because, although he is a delightful curmudgeonly man, he is also long-winded. I have long suspected the man is a John Bircher; over the years he has showed up at city council meetings to protest acts of governance. He has also made a run or two at the office of mayor. There are plenty of things to complain about in Florence city government, but socialism is not one; so when Hargett meandered into his defense of Constitutional rights for corporations, I could take no more.
It is bad enough that expanding health insurance coverage makes president Obama and the Democrats "more dangerous that Osama bin Laden" -- these people would have us believe the Sons of Liberty rose up to defend the freedom of the East India Company.
Rolling up my flag, I left the scene and drove to the Sheffield VA clinic to use my world-class single-payer health care plan. |
