The Tragedy that is the Tea Party

Tea Party people are angry! Tea Party People hate government!

They are mad because their economic hopes from the last 30 years have been shattered. They want to turn to a third party, but the way our system is structured, they can't. So they go with what they think is the lesser of two evils and hope to bring change from within. But they don't understand how government works. They just don't like certain parts of it. So therefore ALL government is bad. Why they turned to Republican's is an odd choice. This party is mostly responsible for the degredation of our society and environment, the greed, the hypocrisy. Bohener wants a deal, but he wants to keep the Speakership more. The Tea Party has been co opted by the very people who are responsible for their anger. It's an impressive coup: Feed the electorate lies about regulation, taxes, trickle-down theory, individualism. When the whole thing crashes down the players responsible are made whole by taxpayers. The players then sweep into the front of the angry mob and lead them against the party that has the best chance to turn things around and fix things. This keeps the irresponsible players in the game while squeezing the last few drops of blood and treasure from the masses until the whole system collapses beyond repair. But by then, the big fish have left the pond and are living it up on yachts in Tahiti while the rest of us are left with the mess and the check. Of course, Obama is complicit in this. Why else would he NOT demand a pound of flesh from the banks in early 2009? Frank Rich's article about how Obama blew it puts the nail on the head. Instead, the Tea Party populism was grabbed by the likes of Sarah Palin and put to use for the very forces that brought about the recession.

Free Markets work, but the pain they cause isn't worth it for some areas. Free Markets work great for cell phones, cereal, and diapers. Not so good in health care, police work, water supply. But diapers and cell phones don't KILL YOU (ok, sometimes they do but not as often as polluted water supplies or rampant crime. Yet, we have rules for cell phones and diapers and cereal. Oh no! BIG GOVERNMENT. I can't think of one item that isn't completely free from some kind of rule. But I don't think that is bad. Why do some people think that?). Free Markets DID exist for our water supply before the EPA and Clean Water Act came into existence. Do you want to see rivers catch fire again from all the chemicals that get poured into them? Free Markets do the cleanup AFTER the fact. After customers DEMAND change in the face of mistakes. Free Markets are a tornado. Sometimes the tornado cleans our all the junk. Sometimes the tornado destroys your whole town. Regulation tries to prevent the tornado from every happening. In a lot of cases this is good. The Tea Party doesn't understand this. It's a balance. You can over regulate. The Tea Party has Bush II thinking: You are either with us, or the Terrorists. It's all black and white. Life isn't like that. Life isn't like TV. But that's a tough pill to swallow. Our culture doesn't like nuance. We've told ourselves for decades that nuance is for sissies. Big government is bad, but the Tea Party seems to be just fine with Big Corporations. It's about balance.

I think that there will be another Tea Party, but this one will be made up of 'liberal' voters who are disgusted with how corporations have take this country over. Call them the white collar 'Coffee Party'. This will come about once the next crash/recession/depression hits and the men behind the curtain are exposed for who they really are. But with how our infrastructure is crumbling, our education system breaking down, our planet becoming more hostile to human habitation, it may be too late to swing the pendulum back towards the center.