The Struggle To Define Tea Party Continues

Examine the photo shown below and then tell yourself or anyone near you what you see. Well, what do you see? Do you see a black box or do you see something else? My son told me once that in a writing class he took in college, the professor said a good writer could look at a tree and write endlessly. Is the same true for this black box?

The truth is many of us can and do see only what we want to see. This is partially what defines us. God forbid we should all be so much alike that life would be boring. The black box above can represent anything you would like it to be and probably even some shrink would tell you that what you wrote would be a reflection of your inner being, perhaps even your suppressed fears, or hopes and dreams.

So much has been made of the Tea Party movement. From both sides we have witnessed the influence of the Tea Party. The Republicans, who seem to think they own the movement, got handed a rude awakening as we saw what happened in Utah with Bob Bennett. The Democrats as well, are dropping like flies as Americans in general are fed up with politics as usual.

If you don’t fit the mold of what the local Tea Partiers want, you won’t get their support. Why is this considered bad by some? Isn’t this exactly what American politics was supposed to be? A country governed of and by the people?

That black box takes on odd illusions I think for some. We have always had political organizations that put their support behind the candidate of their choice. But this Tea Party thing is grass roots and scares the living hell out of some people. As a result a person’s black box becomes a living nightmare for them.

Witness an opinion piece posted at Politico by Charles Postel, an assistant professor of history at San Francisco State University, about the Tea Party that he labels the “dark side of conservatism”.

For whatever reasons, in Postel’s black box he focuses on the main stream media and their insistence on calling Tea Partiers, “populists”. In case Postel hadn’t figured it out yet, the MSM is clueless when it comes to the Tea Party and they too are petrified of it. He spends much of his time wanting to paint the Tea Party, as he says, the “dark side of conservatism” by disproving the media’s contention that it is “populist”.

Here is a grocery list of the things Postel sees in his black box as what makes Tea Parties, “dark”.

1. Tea Partiers are conservatives
2. They repeat catchwords of Goldwater and Reagan
3. “echoes of a well-known grass-roots movement of the 1950s and ’60s — the John Birch Society”
4. Sound like the John Birch Society
5. Author views Obama as a moderate
6. Believes all TPers think Obama a communist
7. Tea Partiers have “angrily taken to the streets”
8. Tea Partiers “are boiling mad”
9. They are “punishing politicians”
10. Tea Partiers are “more concerned about possible inflation of the future than with the current ordeal of the unemployed.”
11. Tea Partiers don’t care about unemployment among blacks
12. Tea Partiers are like Ku Klux Klan members who want to protect their Protestant religion and white race from communism and immigration.
13. Sees Tea Partiers as “birthers”, opposed to immigration and against Mulims.
14. Tea Partiers, being “radical rights” have a “soft spot for bigots”.
15. Tea Partiers are “a movement of the haves and well-protected who” that since FDR, “have feared that their freedom will be lost” if government expands its powers and steals from the rich to give to the poor.

That’s a lot of things to see in a black box. The Tea Party is many things but “dark” is not one of them. It is unfortunate that Mr. Postel sees those who cherish the American dream and a return to following the Constitution as being “dark” and all the other nasty things he sees.

Makes you wonder what kind of a childhood he must have had. (snicker)