Op-Ed: Tea Party 101 for foreigners

It’s not easy being a pro American foreigner, because you have to explain to people why you are. Most America watchers know that American political spasms come and go, but the noisy, hyper reactive Tea Party hasn’t made that job any easier.

The Tea Party is a conservative side, white, lower middle class movement. If you look at the rally pictures, there are no blacks, no Latinos, and no Asians at their rallies. It’s basically against taxation, anti-Washington, and anti- Democrat. It’s broadly described, mainly by itself, as a libertarian movement, espousing core conservative values as it understands them. (It’s not surprising tax has been incorporated into the Tea Party concept. Tax is the one core issue where America’s creaking, antiquated ol’ revenue jalopy will hit all nerves. I was surprised to discover while researching this thing that America still has a Death Tax. Why? The rest of the world phased it out decades ago.) Washington can thank itself to a large extent for the existence of the Tea Party. The level of total dysfunction which has driven experienced politicians on both sides to despair hasn’t gone down well with the American public, and this is one of the results. Another was the election of Obama. The stolid, conceptually immobile conservative media, now the opposition voice, have naturally picked up the Tea Party as a cause, and if you get enough broadcast time, you can make anything look impressive. Behind the Tea Party is Freedom Works, a conservative group with a lot of high level connections in big business, the GOP and Washington. This organization is no small beer, and has been referred to as trying to take over the Republican Party. If true, that can be neither cheap nor easy, so you can imagine the level of backing involved. The Tea Party itself, however, isn’t in the same league, nor can it be. It’s a public face, a focus, and a dependent concept, in terms of actual political muscle. It’s also a mess. The Tea Party is actually hundreds of groups, usually local. Bringing people together has highlighted various areas of disagreement, as well as producing camera fodder. For a movement supposedly opposed to big spending, costs are now an issue. Even the prices for convention tickets are an issue, $550 being a lot of money for some people. Would be attendees of the Tea Party Nation convention complained they couldn’t afford them. There are endless stories in this vein, indicating that organization isn’t one of the Tea Party’s current best features. Palin is now considered a possible leader of the Tea Party movement, which for those who know who does what in Washington will say a lot. The Tea Party movement is a media feed as much as anything else, and sticking a few familiar faces in front of the cameras is a reasonable ploy. Ironically, one of the speeches at the convention stated that the Tea Party didn’t need mainstream media, which it sees as “biased”. Well, true enough, they have FOX and Limbaugh, why would they need anyone else? Everyone knows FOX is a sort of hippie commune dedicated to anti materialism and the return to the trees/tree, and Limbaugh is really Gandhi working undercover. Nothing mainstream about them. Equally ironically, the media image of the Tea Party contains a lot of Freudian slips. ( I almost wrote “Freudian slops”, but I wouldn’t do that, would I?) Palin defines the rank and status of the Tea Party movement in the wider political arena as far as the GOP is concerned. The attempt to look grass roots has spawned the expression “Astro Turf”, meaning fake grass roots. That’s a fairly cynical, but natural, interpretation of the Tea Party’s actual influence as an organization. It’s a sub set of the Republican zone. Yep, fellow foreigners, this is America, firing on both cylinders, with its least impressive, least credible side in everyone’s face, as usual. This is what you have to like about America. Even the improbable, insane, ridiculous, and purely naïve can be given some sort of respect, whether they deserve it or not. The hideous back rooms may still stink, and the corporate sleaze may still suck, but the products of the ingenuous dis-ingenuousness of America can still innocently trundle out onto the streets with their signs and battered looking faces and wardrobes and say their piece without getting arrested. You may, like me, find them absurd, but this is the First Amendment doing its job. The poor are still poor, the huddled masses are huddling closer for warmth as the blackouts hit, but America rolls on. Let’s face it, this is humanity, with all its faults, v. 2.whatever. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out, but it’ll make some sort of history, and American history is always worth reading.