What on Earth is it about the Tea Party that triggers their steadfast and willful ignorance to American history? You’d think that with the vast, nearly limitless source of information called the Internet that ignorance – and stupidity – would be a thing of the past in the First World; but, alas you cannot escape from the sheer brutality of their completely idiotic ideology. Never mind that far right states like Texas are doing everything in their power to eliminate the very concept of verifiable fact from their school textbooks; idiocy runs deep into the core of the Tea Party movement. From claiming that the United States is a Christian nation, to claiming that President Barack Obama is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, and – in my opinion worst yet – insulting an entire religion’s worth of people by comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler – a man who murdered millions of innocent people – all because they simply don’t like his politics.
And then there’s the blind patriotism. The flag-waving, “U-S-A!” chanting, red-white-and-blue, bald eagle bumper sticker nonsense that the Tea Party simply loves would seem to run contrary to Proverbs 16:18 which said “Pride goes before destruction.” Is it possible that these Bible thumpers don’t even know their own scripture? Or are they simply ignoring it in favor of their American pride? If so, how can they reconcile the blatant conflict of interest in the eyes of the god that they allegedly fear? Or is all this Christian talk just macho posturing to make themselves seem holier-than-thou so that they boss others around into living the way they think people should live?
I could cite example after example of the Founding Fathers discrediting the idea that the U.S. was founded on Christianity, but somehow I don’t think the idea would get through to them. Typically, facts are dismissed by the Tea Party if they do not coincide with their particular brand of fantasy – especially the opening of Article XI of the Treaty Of Tripoli where the Congress of 1796 and President John Adams both declared that our nation’s government was not founded on Christianity in plain English. Then again this shouldn’t be all that surprising since most Tea Party fanatics don’t understand basic English.
If you listen to these cretins talks for long enough you’ll find that their fantasy extends beyond the role religion should play in our government into even more destructive places like economics where they are firm supporters and advocates for “trickle down” theory: the idea that claims if the rich are doing well and left to their own devices (read: unregulated) it’ll “trickle down” to the middle class in the form of jobs. Well, as we can see the stock market has been doing well enough lately and big business is enjoying some impressive profits and yet it’s still a struggle for a large portion of the U.S. population to find adequate work. Apparently these folks aren’t familiar with a huge step in recovering from the Great Depression: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The New Deal was a series of many programs put together to restructure and reinvigorate the long suffering economy which included often strict regulations on business and banking. There was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which banned child labor and established the first ever minimum wage. Then there was the Federal Securities Act of 1933 which established the Securities and Exchange Commission, making stock exchanges on Wall Street more transparent and enabling businesses to grow and profit easier. How about the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 where the U.S. actually shut down banks across the nation for four days so that the government could inspect them and make sure they were profitable and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure deposits of up to $5000.00.
That level of regulation and government control would never pass by the Tea Party even in the face of the fact that those measures – and many like them in the New Deal – helped to guide the country in the right direction.
Now as I may very well have mentioned before, I’m a Republican. In my words, I’m a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican. I’m in favor a small government where government should be small (the bedroom, for example; the doctor’s office, for another), but there are times when the Federal government must intervene for the good of the people. And I can already hear my Tea Party buddies screaming about how it isn’t the government’s job to govern the well-being of its people which is silly seeing as a democratic republic – such as ours – is meant for exactly that purpose. It’s a government by the people, for the people.
But good luck explaining this to a Tea Bagger. The way they see it, the Federal government’s few functions are to enforce Christian Law, force feed children the Scripture throughout their entire lives – including in school, prosecute homosexuals and those who have abortions, kick anybody not white out of the country, and bomb anybody who even looks like they might be the wrong shade of brown. They are not the free-thinking, liberty-enforcing, America-loving super patriots that they think they are. They are a close-minded group of obstructionist crybabies who hold in their heart an irrational hatred of the American government so long as it’s run by someone who is visually different and sits ever so slightly askew from them ideologically.
Sadly, it seems to be that the only way these clowns will disappear is if they get what they want and it inevitably backfires in every possible way. I’m this close to saying we should let it happen just so they’ll go away and we can get back to issues that matter.
Edited/Published by: SB
