Facts don't get in the way of this "crowd".[1] The "crowd" in question is of course the "tea partiers" who yesterday "celebrated" their first anniversary nationwide (at some 700 different locations across the country on "tax day") of their amorphous movement against well--government, health care, taxes, the tax code, national debt, "Socialism, all incumbents", pretty much the full array of generalized soup to nuts mà ©lange of rants we've had to listen to and endure from these mostly white angry protesters over this past year.
Astonishingly, there didn't appear to be any "birther" signs questioning Obama's birth in the U.S., none of his being a "Muslim", and no senior citizen was heard shouting, "Don't let the government take away my Medicare" as was heard during one of the Town Hall meeting "shout downs" last summer.
The crowds yesterday seemed more orchestrated although Rep. Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.) roused the crowd on the National Mall with, "We're on to this gangster government." I say it's time for these little piggies to go home." [2] One wonders if she considers herself one of the "gangsters" she derides or just Democrats the only "gangsters" roaming Capitol Hill?
This being "tax day" the tax code was one of the day's villains as Jim Tomasik of "Fairtax Nation" exclaimed, "We have got to take the country back by taking back the money they take from us."[3]
Hmm? No tax money for government!? Therefore no public schools, no police, no fire departments, no roads and bridges, no water treatment, no--well you get the picture. All the services we Americans take for granted (one guesses) would miraculously be taken over by, who knows? They certainly aren't advocating anarchy or maybe they are and they don't know it!
When anger is so generalized and then propagandized and stoked by the likes of Glenn Beck, the ranting of Rush Limbaugh and roused still further by the inanity of Sarah Palin it becomes "We" against "them" i.e., "everyone" not like "us".
There are serious problems facing this country (the economy, unemployment, financial regulation of the "banksters", home foreclosures, our endless undeclared wars, our resort to torture in combating terrorism (and our complicity in creating it with targeted assassinations, wars and occupations in Muslim countries, the killing of innocents [in those countries] with drone attacks, support of dictators of those countries that are corrupt and oppress their own people), global warming and despoiling the environment (and on and on). And all exacerbated by a dysfunctional Congress of Democrats and Republicans who are beholden to big moneyed corporate and special interests which underwrite their campaigns and who essentially control the political process and the agenda to the continued benefit and power of those interests. Can we expect "tea partiers" to see the reality out there, reflect and understand and work to rectify the true situation we Americans face?
The fact is the "tea partiers" have no clue. They are pawns, manipulated and used by charlatans whose only interest is their own self aggrandizement and notoriety. They are fools, apparently too dumb and ignorant and so anti intellectual they lash out verbally and blindly and fired up for--who knows what.
One suspects if you asked 100 of them what it is they're so angry about you'd get 100 different and incongruent responses. They are lost and don't seem to exhibit the wherewithal and the sense to try to be open minded, listen and take the time to discern the facts and the reality we all face.
They apparently don't and that's why they are potentially dangerous.
[1] "Tea party protesters join national rally", by Mary Gail Hare, "The Baltimore Sun", April 16, 2010.
[2] See footnote #1
[3] See footnote #1