Tea Baggers Unite!

by Dennis Green

They’re frustrated. They’re pissed. They have lost faith in democracy, in their government, in both political parties. But most of all, they despise President Obama, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin and Mao.

Some say they constitute a “Movement” although it’s not quite certain in which direction they’re headed or toward what destinations or goals. They take their symbolism from the Boston Tea Party, a protest of King George and his policies toward colonial America, especially his taxation of tea.

“Tea Party America” is the official name of the body hosting an upcoming convention that will feature guest speaker former Alaskan Governor and best-selling author Sarah “Twinkie” Palin. And they seem to have forgotten, or never learned, that “Tea” (for the Beatniks of the Fifties and the Hippies of the Sixties) was code language for marijuana, that evil roadside weed.

If this is a movement, it’s still quite unfocused, not nearly as deliberate or goal-oriented, say, as the Civil Rights Movement of the early Fifties, one that remained civil and lasted until the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, when the more militant Black Power Movement — driven initially by Malcolm X, then by the Black Panthers and ultimately by the Symbionese Liberation Army — took over.

And the Tea Baggers aren’t civil, not by any measure.

“Now is the winter of our discontent…” Of course, Shakespeare meant that in several ways. Winter comes at the end of our lives, at the end of the year, and if we’re in the winter of our discontent that means it’s about to turn into a new Spring. Whether the Tea Baggers will be part of that renewal or just shoveled under with last winter’s mulch remains to be seen.

So far they don’t have anything to offer. Except discontent. Distrust of a political system where everybody seems to be on the take. Where billions are spent on war and bailouts, and very little of it trickles down. Where the banks charge usurious interest rates on credit cards and make bad loans they can foreclose. Where science, with its dire warnings about climate change, is the enemy. Technology, with all those fancy gadgets, like smart-aleck phones, is the enemy. Book learning, with all those elitist eggheads, is the enemy.

And Obama — with a Hippie mother and an African father, a man who has actually lived in other countries, a Muslim nation like Indonesia, a man who went to Harvard, a lawyer, a community activist in Chicago, (Al Capone? Mayor Dailey? Black Power?), a man who is actually an intellectual, and articulate — My God! — all those things they aren’t! He is the biggest enemy of all.

And what does he want to do? Take away our health care. Tax our use of coal and oil. Kill my Granny. Raise my taxes. Socialism. Communism. Fascism. What’s the difference? I dunno.

And that’s the clue, the giveaway. We’ve seen this sort of blind discontent in America before. The “Know Nothing” movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. It attracted mostly workers and small farmers.

But it was also inspired by a fear of the oncoming Industrial Revolution, and the huge social changes it was bringing about. As many Americans left the farms to work in factories in the cities, as the railroads brought those immigrants, and their cultures, into every corner of the country, and in reaction to Jacksonian Democracy, the movement originated in New York in 1843 as the “American Republican Party,” and spread to other states as the “Native American Party.” It became a national party in 1845, and in 1855 renamed itself the “American Party.”

The Know Nothings were portrayed by director Martin Scorsese in the 2002 film, The Gangs of New York.

It was founded on Protestant republicanism, replaced the Whig Party, and was succeeded by the Republican Party as we know it today. A San Francisco chapter of “Know Nothings” was founded in 1854 by Sam Roberts to oppose Chinese, Chilean and Irish immigrants who had come to work in the gold fields. In 1856, the No Nothings split over the issue of slavery and the support of Millard Fillmore for president.

The Republican Party that replaced it was the Anti-Slavery Northern branch that supported Abraham Lincoln, and, ironically, made possible the candidacy of Barrack Hussein Obama, who represents so much of what the Know Nothings of today hate with such a passion: Immigration, Modernity, Progress. Will Tea Party America replace the Republican Party in the next decade? Only time will tell.

©2010 Dennis Green