I've been watching the Tea Party movement with interest and that interest has turned into disappointment. You see, I was not completely happy with the outcome of the 2008 elections. Delighted as I was with the win by the Obama-Clinton ticket (okay, I am pretending she is Vice President instead of all too forgettable what's-his-name and instead of whatever all too forgettable position she really holds) I was not totally thrilled with the majority win in the legislature. There is danger in one group having too much power and there is benefit in a forum where multiple positions are forwarded and discussed and there is good when compromises that make everyone a little better off are made. But with the more or less implosion of the Republican party with their bland presidential candidate and their laughable vice presidential candidate, I was really hoping for a take-back of the party by the people. I was hoping for a resurgence of the traditional Republicans that were for less government and simpler government and accessible government and visible government and for the environment to they could hunt and fish and play in it and were for independence from other countries in the name of self-sufficiency instead of adversorialness and all those old fashioned traditional Republican values. I was hoping the traditional Republicans were going to kick the weird extreme "Religious Right" right out of their party and return to solid constitutional values of keeping government out of our religious life and our religious life out of our government. I was hoping and wishing that the Tea Party movement would be about that and about rallying support for those ideas and for recruiting new candidates aligned with those values and moving our country back to having a two party system that engaged in debate and cooperative or even competitive problem solving and real solutions.
Instead what we seem to have gotten is a motley crew of disgruntled rabblerousers hell bent on bashing Obama and blaming him for everything, including often contradictory things, that they see wrong with our nation.
But let's just go with one of their basic premises from whence they get their name: The concept of taxation, which they seem to be claiming is without representation or without adequate representation or just plain too much or something like that. And their solution seems to be that government is wrong and the process of government is wrong and they refuse to participate. So they get together now and then and insist they are not a political party for the purposes of putting forth candidates and they wave signs and yell and then they go home and brag on blogs about how many of them there were in attendance and write inflammatory pieces on the various concepts that were summarized in their misspelled signs.
But okay, I am sorry, you are NOT taxed without representation. Just because you LOST the elections does not mean you are not represented. No one guarantees everyone gets THEIR candidate in. If you are too lame and discombobulated and fractured to find GOOD candidates, well, it isn't OUR fault you lost. And WE didn't bitch about taxation w/o representation in the 8 years your guy was in the Oval office and your guys had majority rule of congress and senate. We got to work and found some good people to run.
So, we have a SYSTEM and the system works and the system represents all of us all the time even though the balance of whose side is in power may shift, so you ARE represented within this system and unless you are proposing some fixes, well, please shut the hell up.
I mean, unless you are really hoping to over throw the current government and displace the elected officials and replace the current system with your own, the only way to CHANGE anything about the system is to USE the system to change it from within. So no amount of rallying and bitching is going to fix anything. The way to end your alleged taxation without representation is to get down to work and define some platform issues that are real and honest and have broad appeal to traditional Republicans and to edit OUT the junk trash that has corrupted and tarnished and ruined your party, and by that I mean the constant references to religion and the constant attempts to intrude religion into government and the silly Obama bashing starting with the birth certificate nonsense and ending with harsh critiques of every single thing he does. And then find candidates that are willing to run on those core less-government less-expensive-therefore-less-need-for-taxes more-visible-government values and get to work getting them in office, and once they are there, don't let them waste time protecting your oil interests and your war interests, but get them to work on paring out silly laws and simplifying and restructuring and making the government truly representative of the people.
To review, the only way in this country to implement change is to work within the system to change the system. And your silly Tea Parties do nothing to that end. While I support your freedom of expression and to gather, until you get it together and start to work the system instead of rejecting it with silly anti-everything signs, I also support the right of the entire rest of the world to laugh at you.
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4 comments:
You have an interesting point of view.
S: You claim that your tea party is for the purpose of keeping ME in government. Yet, if you read my post, you would know that WE are already IN government. WE still have the option of running for office at any level and WE still vote for who gets into office. We have two parties to represent a variety of usually opposing views and make the laws. We have two sets of elected official, one where the representation is based on population so each person gets a fair share of influence, and recognizing that large numbers of people massed into one place have different needs and wants that people settled more sparsely, we have another set where each state gets the same number to balance regardless of population. We have independent policing and regulating forces to interpret and act on those laws. We have a separate multi-level court system to react to and adjust the implementation of the laws, and we have feedback loops to ask the elected officials to revise the laws. It is about as 'of and for the people' as it can get. To represent each person MORE would mean more officials, and simultaneious with you complaining about not being represented, you complain also about governemnt being too BIG. Well, in light of the size and complexity of the nation and the people and the issues, the SYSTEM is about as damn perfect as it can get. A system with runoff elections might be more accurate or a system with points that you can distribute accross multiple candidates or rank order the candidates might be a tweak that makes the system more accurate. But it is the best system that man has invented so far, anywhere, anytime. YOU and your tea party have NOT proposed a better system or even tweaks to make this one better. You did not sit down and write a health care bill that would bring health to all yet still meet your criteria, did you? You have not made an alternate plan for Iraq have you? No concrete useful initiative on anything. No, you just get together and spread discontent and a fair measure of hate without making alternate suggestions to DO anything real or productive.
The system WORKS for us. ALL of us. It worked JEST DANGEDY FINE for you for the last 8 years when the system gave your guys power. Then you lost it due to the system and its processes. Fair and square by the same methods and processes that you gained it for 8 years. Okay, back farther, gained it for 4, lost it for 4, gained it for 8, and now probably lost it for 8. But instead of griping about how government is too big and you are not represented and disowning the whole SYSTEM in a loud but ineffective way, how about looking at why you lost and working on that for 2016? Here's why you lost: Your party let religion gets its hooks in you. Not every conservative wants what the 'Religious Right' wants. Many things the RR pushes for such as religious influence in government are counter to the traditional constitutional values of your party. Just like we let the 'green' movement bleed off some of our power because we got distracted by it, so you have let the fundamentalist religious movement bleed off your power. We convinced enough people that the green parties were not going to be big enough to matter and that there were other issues that government needed to stick to and that environment could be addressed within the system and we got enough people back to actually win this time. That is what you need to do, instead of going to rallies on large lawns. Take the party back for its traditional values and get back onto the playing field. And quit wasting time fighting against the system that served you perfectly well as long as you were winning. It all looks like spoiled grapes from here. Move on to tending the next crop and forget the one you lost. The tea party only keeps you from getting anything done. If you want things to shift back your way, YOU should agree with me that the tea party is not playing within the 'perfect system' and is delaying any true correction of the course.
I am talking about the Tea Party and the goals that they have presented. I do not nor did I presume to have any idea as to YOUR beliefs but since you took offense at my 'attack' on them and since you defend them, I use the term YOU as though your are one of them. That is how people having adult discussions use pronouns. They stick to the topic, which in this case is the tea party and what their supposed goals are and what they propose as solutions and answers. Personal attack is seldom productive when attempting to discuss and issue.
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