Nobody loves a protest as much as I do, but could someone please tell me what this tea bag brew-ha-ha was all about?
I've read as many accounts as I can of protests around the state and country—most of which were peaceful, commendably—and I'm still confused. As far as I can tell, the protests were mostly about giving Fox News a chance to fulminate and to allow those Americans who've been brainwashed into doing the bidding of "overtaxed" millionaires a chance to blow off steam without the use of their "legal" cache of weaponry.
The take-away that I got from reading the tea leaves was twofold:
1) Protests, any protests, are good for Americans, even when they're weird or wrongheaded, like this one; it's good for young people to be reminded that they have the right to assemble. Just remember that the next time people are assembling for a cause with which you disagree.
2) Right-wingers love simple imagery. Think about it: tea bags. Everyone has them. You can rip them off at some fast food joints, if you're quick about it. They are easy to carry and they have that visceral exoticism that offers a contact high (just sniff those leaves and you are transported).
The irony about using tea bags as a symbol, however, seems to have been missed by the protesters. Almost all the tea we drink is grown in countries that have been recipients of America's outsourced jobs: China, India, Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka. Tea is also grown, increasingly, in Central and South America, with which we've not been on the best terms the past few years. It's true that American tea companies blend and package their products here, but the actual tea comes from other countries. So a sudden purchase of a billion tea bags to use as a right wing protest tool only pumps up the bottom lines of countries that are stealing American jobs.
But I digress. In Boston, where the original tea party took place, 500 tea baggers took their cause to the State House on Tax Day, but their message was muted by the other protests going on. In particular, the only group to re-enact the original "party" at the Boston Harbor was a gay rights group. They were protesting the fact that married same-sex couples are not allowed to file federal tax returns jointly.
In Connecticut, a few thousand people showed up in New Haven, New London and at the state Capitol. Some guy named "Ziggy," dressed head to toe in American flags and, in case anyone missed the motif, waving an American flag, demonstrated his patriotism by comparing the duly elected president of the United States to Marshal Tito and Slobodan Milosevic. Another guy was going on about the "fiat currency" of the dollar, the "usurped" U.S. Constitution, and surveillance cameras, which are turning the U.S. into what Michel Foucault calls a "panopticon." That's a mixed message if there ever was one—citing a snobby French philosopher to underscore your American super-patriotism.
In short, the tea baggers' message of dissent was all over the map, but it had a common theme: Barack Obama. This protest was not about taxes—nobody seems willing to admit that Obama has lowered taxes for the vast majority of Americans. This protest was about Obama. Period. Most of the quoted protesters singled him out. For what, it's not clear. For winning the election? "This administration is unconstitutional" was a recurrent motif (as opposed to the last administration?), as was the interchangeable use of terms like "socialist" and "fascist" to describe him.
In Texas, the Republican governor (Rick Perry), after taking part in the Pledge of Allegiance, vowed that his "republic" would secede if things got worse. (Oh, please make this happen, Perry! It's downright cruel to tease us like this!).
One comment in the New London Day's coverage summed it up: "Where were these tea party folks when Bush started us on this adventure without a way to pay for it?"
