Items of apparel

The nerve of Those People!

(I remind the occasional reader that “Those People” was a polite term used by Robert E. Lee to describe Damn Yankees. They were regarded as the enemy during the War of Northern Aggression, and called far worse by the troops that fought for Lee and the Confederacy. A devout Christian, Lee set an example for his men by refusing to fall into the vernacular, calling his opponents nothing worse than “Those People.”)

I should be as genteel as General Lee. What I saw the other morning set me off like a bomb, questioning the parentage of Those People, uttering profane references as to their sexual conduct with their mothers.

Background: Miz Possum told me the other day that the food pantry—an auxiliary of her workplace—received a donation of tea bags. They were individually wrapped, but removed from their original box, thus rendering them unacceptable for distribution. Yesterday, I asked her to bring them home.

Over the past few months, I have become accustomed to liberal apologists tossing slurs around referring to “tea-baggers.” That term—“tea-baggers”—is a derogatory sexual innuendo. Being a jaded Internet porn surfer, I know what it means, but we won’t go there.

I didn’t think about the misuse of the term to denigrate righteously angry Americans until a double whammy hit me Monday morning. It’s a standard tactic of The Left to demonize or attempt to marginalize dissenters by whatever means necessary, so I dismissed their childish rhetoric as the equivalent of six-year-olds saying things about boogers, cooties, and “Yeah, but what are you?”

So much for background. Miz Possum—who does not like to be mentioned here or referred to by that moniker—got some loose tea bags at work the other day. The significance of this will become evident momentarily.

If I am pressed to define my political leanings, I will say by form of abbreviation that I am a conservative Libertarian. My secular, political moral compass is tuned to the original thoughts of Ayn Rand, not to the ideology of the currently established Libertarian Party. I consider them to have strayed from the original philosophical teachings in a variety of ways. I can’t be a Republican, because I don’t believe in legislating morality. I can’t be a Democrat, because I abhor collective thought and hypocrisy. I believe in the individual’s right and capacity to formulate their own spiritual, moral and ethical values. This is sometimes giving more credit than is due to a person’s ability, but I have this crazy idea that even dumbasses know the difference between right and wrong, and hazily know what’s best for themselves.

In short, I belong to what has been the Third Party in American politics for the last forty years. Given my ‘druthers in any given election, I’ll trust and vote for a Libertarian rather than any candidate fielded by the Big Two. Pollsters call me an “independent” for their purposes.

I’m not sure what this much-ballyhooed, new-fangled “Tea Party” is all about. I’m trying to figure out what their core philosophy is, but I know one thing for certain:

They are a bunch of pissed-off Americans.

Even liberal idiots who want to teach our kids in state schools that American history started in 1866, and discard Paul Revere for Oprah Winfrey, have to acknowledge that angry Americans are not something to be trifled with. There are still a few German and Japanese folks around who can give firsthand testimony to that notion. My British friends reliably inform me that they are still rubbed slightly raw by our leaving the empire’s fold 234 years ago. Government by fiat got us pissed off in 1776; it rolled back around with arrogant challenges in 1812, and we dealt with the rest of history’s abuses and malfunctions from then on. We weren’t always right, but we made it up as went along, and God help anyone who was morally wrong or stood in our way when we were right.

I knew Osama Bamalama was a bad pony right out of the gate, even before the late Ted Kennedy gave me the inspiration for Obama’s nickname. The last nail was hammered into The Manchurian Candidate’s political coffin the other day when he bowed, scraped, and said “like it or not” America is a super-power.

Indeed? And we have to apologize for this because…?

Then, after a year of denial and verbal abuse by Those People, I have to wake up to a desperate Democrat urging her followers to “grasp the passion” of the angry Americans she referred to last year as “tea-baggers”. Her admonition was on behalf of her re-election campaign, which is sagging because Barbara Boxer was one of the people who sold us down the river on the recent health-care fiasco. Before I could catch my breath from a cussing fit at her audacity, I’m treated to “Turbo-Tax” Tim Geithner spouting lunacy to the effect that “the Tea Party is a lot like us”—Those People—“because they want to balance the budget.”

Huh? Care to explain that?

And all of this was at the end of the lit fuse leading back to The Red Herring, who proclaimed the other day that Tea Party people “amused him” and should be “thanking him.”

Huh? Care to explain that?

Thank you for what, Mein Fuehrer? The government takeovers, the coming hidden taxes, the daily doses of propaganda, the lies, the coercion, or the further disregard of what us ignorant little shits believe to be right for us?

I thank God for every day of living. I don’t thank you for making it any easier, Mr. one-term-president. I thank my Maker every day that I was fortunate enough to be born a citizen of the last super-power on earth, but that gratitude doesn’t make me a slave of the state. I bow to no king, and bend my knee to no authority but the Higher Power. Like it or not.

The arrogance! The nerve of Those People!

I’m a high-school dropout, and the first to admit I’m not the sharpest pencil in the jar. Whatever animal cunning got me this far in life is totally inapplicable to the real, nuanced world of politics. I’d like to be dispassionate and dismiss people’s “feelings”, but it ain’t happening.

People today feel that something is wrong in America. They are waking up to the realization that they’ve been hoodwinked. Like Howard Beale in “Network”, they’re mad as hell, and not going to take it any more. Skilled con men rely on the guilt of the victim—the shame of being duped, and the duplicity of their greed—to carry off whatever scam they’re perpetrating. Shame rapidly turns to anger, and people are taking to the streets to display their displeasure. The “Tea Party” is a culmination of that anger; an outpouring of rage that government of, by, and for the people has become an arrogant, unresponsive bureaucracy that borders on despotism. People who have never experienced the rush of political activism, who never gave a passing thought to protesting the status quo, are suddenly motivated to publicly express their outrage at the direction their country is being forced into. The so-called “Tea Party” took their name from an historical act of protest, and launched as a spontaneous expression of disgust with what thirty years of “political correctness” has brought us to. The Tea Party opponents grasp at the guilt of the victim: anyone who disagrees with the current administration is labeled as a racist or a potential terrorist of the Timothy McVeigh ilk.

Ayn Rand died in 1982, and her successors have not done well with promulgating her philosophy. It has long been a standing joke amongst our detractors that Libertarians, by the nature of our independence-mindedness, can’t get organized enough to win against the Dems and Republicans. Nevertheless, we have made significant inroads in the political spectrum in the last thirty years, and today more people than ever are becoming aware that we stand for traditional, timeless values despite our diverse pragmatism.

So, Miz Possum got a-hold of some tea bags. So what?

So this, Buckwheat. I ain’t joining the Tea Party—and they need to change that handle if they want to be taken more seriously—but I intend to get my hot little hands on some of those tea bags. They may not be deemed suitable for consumption as a beverage, but I intend to wear one in public as a symbol of solidarity with the movement. Not because it’s a cool item of apparel this week, or because I used to be a hippie with my fist in the air chanting “Power to the People!”, but because I feel this semi-organized bunch of righteous citizens are seeking positive change in America; the same kind of change I have been seeking for most of my adult life.

I have a small silver chain that fits my pencil-neck. I intend to clip the label from a tea bag, tie it onto that chain, and wear it proudly in public. If anyone asks what it means, I’ll try to tell them what you just read here, in 25 words or less.