The World According to Me

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
          - William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

Ok.  I’m going to dispense with the jokes and the innuendo associated with today’s “tea party” protests (or as coined by FOX News, “teabagging”).  As I’ve been reading about the goings on in various cities, which depending on who you ask number from a few to a few hundred, I’m left with just one question.  What the hell was the point of all of this?

First of all, it was impossible to find any real information regarding locations or numbers because the protests were so disorganized, which when you look at it is quite convenient since it allows organizers (and FOX News) to make up whatever number they want with impunity.  I did manage to find what seemed like the “Official Teabagging Site” http://taxdayteaparty.com/ (don’t worry, your kids can look at it with you) which seemed to rely mostly on bloggers for its various teabagging headcounts.  Looking over the numbers and the locations I’m inclined to dismiss any estimate over 5,000 for logistical reasons (and that’s being generous).  But if I was to average all of the locations on the site, of which I would estimate at about 500, and put the number of people at each location at maybe 500 each (again, being very generous), that number would still be mercilessly dwarfed by the number of people who watched (in person and on TV) then candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 DNC acceptance speech (250,000 vs 38 million according to Neilson).  But putting aside real or fake numbers for now, I’m still left with the question of why.  If this was only about taxes, then I could muster a modicum of respect for the protesters.  After all, who wants to pay more taxes?  But from reading the various blogs on this, I get the feeling that this goes way beyond that issue.  These people are protesting everything from socialism to gun control to abortion rights to Obama’s birth certificate (which as I’ve pointed out is irrelevant), to Obama himself.  In other words, this was far less a protest than it was a gathering of disgruntled McCain (and Hillary) supporter in an Obama hate-fest.  There was no real theme to the protests, no logical message, and worst of all, no plan.  It was simply a chaotic mish-mosh of right-wing axes to grind, spoon fed by rightie talk radio and FOX News.  If all they wanted to do was to get together for some 1984-esque “two minutes of hate”, then why all of the trouble to make it seem like more? 

The disturbing answer to all of this is that this wasn’t for the protesters at all.  Oh, the protesters may think it’s all about them, which is exactly what Limbaugh, Gingrich, Dick Armey, FOX News, and the corporate bigwigs with their off-shore tax havens want them to think.  But the truth is, the people providing the bananas for these trained monkeys who still claim membership in what is left of the GOP are merely trying to cover their own asses, and using their constituents to do it.  These are the people, Limbaugh, FOX News, et al, who really stand to lose from Obama’s tax proposals.  They and anyone else making more than $250k/yr.  These people, not the protesters, are the real “victims”.  They are the shepherds with the dog in this pasture.  The protesters are merely the sheep being herded to the slaughter by politicians, corporate interests, and well paid right-wing talking heads looking to protect their interest, and further pad their own bank accounts.  The sad fact of the matter is that these “teabagging” protests are yet another example of how the GOP plays upon their base’s fear, insecurity, lack of sophistication, and misguided sense of “patriotism” to achieve its own ends.  To the Republican party, their constituents are merely tools, a means to a goal.  “Country First” to them means manipulating basically good, innocent, well meaning people into working against their own best interests for the good of the party, and for individual politicians.  Call it the desperation of a losing party, or the psychological makeup of a group of individuals, but one thing is clear.  Despite what the so-called “organizers” will tell you, this is not a “grass-roots” movement at all, but a pathetic attempt by a political party at regaining relevance at the expense of it’s most vulnerable.  Essentially, the tea parties were merely a tale told by idiots.  Full of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.
 

HAPPY TEABAGGING!

Obama’s Speech Draws 38 Million

http://blogs.suntimes.com/conventions/2008/08/ap_reports_obama_dnc_speech_ou.html