The Tea Party people don't make sense. A lot of them have lost their jobs so they have plenty of time to protest. But to protest what? They want smaller government even as they are sitting there collecting unemployment? A lot of them have lost their houses or their houses are underwater. So they want government, the only entity that is trying to help them, out of their lives? It just doesn't make any sense. I've often wondered - where do these people get time off from work to do all this protesting? Well now the answer is clear. According to a New York Times article, With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party, a lot of them have lost their jobs:
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Many Tea Party supporters argue for smaller government even as they argue it should do more.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.In the last year, he has organized a local group and a statewide coalition, and even started a “bus czar” Web site to marshal protesters to Washington on short notice. This month, he mobilized 200 other Tea Party activists to go to the local office of the same congressman to protest what he sees as the government’s takeover of health care.
Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.
I guess disgruntled people will seek out and join a movement, any movement. Since this one got started with corporate help and hence is known not as a grass roots movement but an astroturf movement, the activists hold to the illogical position that they want smaller government but more help with the problems they're facing. Logically then, they should ask the corporations not government for help. See where that gets them! It's clear that these people are being used by the right and corporate interests for their own political purposes.
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Many Tea Party supporters argue for smaller government even as they argue it should do more.
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Maybe what they really stand for is that government should help them - mostly white middle class people- and not minorities or illegal immigrants in which case their protestations are mainly code for racism and discrimination. Sarah Palin said that what we want is "freedom," and Janis Joplin said, "Freedom's just another name for nothing left to lose." Well, the Tea Partyers, it sounds like, have nothing else to lose. They've lost their jobs, lost equity in their houses, are on unemployment or social security and now they want government to do for them even as they demand smaller government. In other words they want government to do for them - nice white folks - even as it shuts down programs for the poor.
The Great Depression, too, mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times. Though, as Michael Kazin, the author of “The Populist Persuasion,” notes, they tended to push for more government involvement. The Tea Party vehemently wants less — though a number of its members acknowledge that they are relying on government programs for help.
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”
“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.
The fact that many of them joined the Tea Party after losing their jobs raises questions of whether the movement can survive an improvement in the economy, with people trading protest signs for paychecks.
But for now, some are even putting their savings into work that they argue is more important than a job — planning candidate forums and get-out-the-vote operations, researching arguments about the constitutional limits on Congress and using Facebook to attract recruits.
“Even if I wanted to stop, I just can’t,” said Diana Reimer, 67, who has become a star of the effort by FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group, to fight the health care overhaul. “I’m on a mission, and time is not on my side.”
A year ago, Ms. Reimer’s husband had been given a choice — retire or be fired. The couple had been trying to sell their split-level home in suburban Philadelphia to pay off some debt and move to a small place in the city.
But real estate agents told them the home would sell for about $40,000 less than they paid 19 years ago — not enough to pay off their mortgage.
Then Ms. Reimer saw a story about the Tea Party on television. “I said, ‘That’s it,’ ” she recalled. “How can you get this frustration out, have your voices heard?”
She liked that the Tea Party was patriotic, too. “They said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the national anthem,” she said.
She had taken a job selling sportswear at Macy’s. But when her husband found her up early and late taking care of Tea Party business, he urged her to take a leave. When the store did not allow one, she quit.
“I guess I just found my calling,” she said.
While some might find it odd that a group of people living on government support should be protesting against the government, these people are doing what comes naturally to them: not thinking for themselves and falling into a convenient role set up for them by corporate America complete with flag salutations and singing of the National Anthem. The trappings of an America that they once knew and are afraid they are losing is what attracts them to this cause. The Tea Party movement was organized by FreedomWorks, a conservative group organized by Dick Armey, a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical and life insurance corporations. ThinkProgress reports:
FreedomWorks represents a top-down, corporate-friendly approach that has been the norm for conservative organizations for years. As Obama prepares to push to close corporate tax loopholes, reform health care, and transition to a clean energy economy, we can expect more corporate lobbyists to create astroturf protests to oppose change.
So all these old people are protesting for an America they thought they knew in bygone days. It's nostalgia for the past fully capitalized upon by corporate lobbyists. In other words the Tea Partyers, unbeknownst even to themselves, are carrying the water for corporate America, and what does corporate America want? It wants smaller government (read "deregulation"); it wants government out of corporate America's life. The Tea Partyers, who are collecting social security and unemployment insurance checks, don't really want government out of their lives if it means they won't get their government checks any more. They just don't want groups other than themselves to get any government help. Their Weltanschaaung has been given to them by corporate America. Their mantras and slogans have been given to them by corporate America. Just as corporate America has given them their pills and their nursing homes, they like the look and feel of the ads and literature with that friendly and concerned hue that has been given to them by corporate America even as corporate America has continued to fleece them. Only don't blame corporate America for the fact that your lives aren't what they used to be. Blame government. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks have cleverly shifted the blame from corporate America to government. Corporate America has given them a cocoon within which to operate - a nice warm Snuggy.
The Tea Party movement is all about nostalgia for the trappings of mid-twentieth century America, and those trappings have been conveniently provided to them by corporate America so they don't have to think critically for themselves. They can just salute the flag, sing "God Bless America" and say "Thank you for your service" to all the veterans present.
Jeff McQueen, 50, began organizing Tea Party groups in Michigan and Ohio after losing his job in auto parts sales. “Being unemployed and having some time, I realized I just couldn’t sit on the couch anymore,” he said. “I had the time to get involved.”
He began producing what he calls the flag of the Second American Revolution, and drove 700 miles to campaign for Mr. Brown under its banner. Flag sales, so far, are not making him much. But he sees a bigger cause.“The founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,” he said. “They believed in it so much that they would sacrifice. That’s the kind of loyalty to this country that we stand for.”
He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.
“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.
Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks recognize that they are benefiting from the labor of many people who have been hit hard economically. But its chairman, the former House majority leader Dick Armey, argued that their ranks will remain strong — and connected — even as members find work.
“I see these folks as pretty much the National Guard,” Mr. Armey said. “They will go back to their day jobs, they will go back to their Little League and their bridge club. But they will have their activism at the ready, and they will stay in touch.”
Mr. Grimes, for his part, is thinking of getting a part-time job with the Census Bureau. But he is also planning, he said, to teach high school students about the Constitution and limits on government powers.
“I don’t think that the unemployment thing is going to change,” he said.
Jeff McQueen rightly blames free trade for the loss of jobs in America. And it's true that the government has promoted free trade, but at whose behest? Government has been lobbied extensively by corporate America for free trade because it benefits US transnational corporations, and it is a conservative article of faith that that's the way it should be. The conservative administrations of the last 30 years starting with Ronald Reagan have implemented free trade. To be honest, the Republican-lite Clinton administration did also, but Clinton recently has seen the error of his ways and recanted. ("I have to live every day with the consequences of what I did."). The Obama administration and Democrats in general are fighting back on free trade. Mr. McQueen needs to make a distinction between those who aid and abet and use government to promote corporate interests and those who are fighting back against the corporate takeover of government. It's not about a government takeover; it's about a corporate takeover of government which uses bought and paid for politicians, lobbyists and TV ads to convince the likes of Mr. McQueen that corporations are good, government is bad, even as they use government to promote corporate interests at the expense of Middle America.
