Days before the Boston Tea Party Protest I received various Facebook messages from Emerson College students who were trying to gather a group to protest the republicans at the protest. Protesters protesting protestors? I figured maybe I would go and protest those protestors for protesting the protestors, but there would be too much protesting and nothing would be heard- Oh America. I also saw on the local news that a group of avid anti-Tea Party democrats were cooked up in their home for “a week” making pro-Tea Party signs with deliberate misspellings in an effort to attend the protest incognito as republicans and humiliate them for their typical “dumb American” stereotype- real progressive. Curious, I did some research of my own as to what this Neo Tea Party phenomenon was really about. A couple of “illegitimate” Wikipedia articles into my research, I realized the Tea Party movement is essentially what it was during the American Revolution, an anti-tax protest. However instead of fighting against Britain, it is classic America fighting against each other- similar to a boxing match- republicans versus democrats. Instead of “no taxation without representation,” republicans more accurately and actually represented a slogan more along the lines of “no taxation without full republican congressional legislation” or “no taxation with democratic initiation.”
What initiated the new Tea Party movement is classic republican ideals- small government, less “ear mark” spending, anti-stimulus, anti- being taxed, with a libertarian twist of recent democratic action seen as unconstitutional. The American people have had it! Fair enough. And many of the people who were there to protest were not white collar elites asking the government to step out of their business to pursue capitalistic abuses, but regular American people who genuinely felt they were being over taxed and not reaping the benefits. If the Tea Party protest is a make up of those Americans rightfully exercising their freedom of speech and government representation, then what is probing the radical reputation coming from it?
I attended the event and realized it was not a make up of those people. I found myself amongst a heterogeneous crowd of republicans. Some were honest Americans with insufficient funds to send their children to College, others were anti-spending, some were young students fighting for small government and anti-bail-outs. Others were anti-Obama republicans, anti-communist, anti-socialist, and some were Americans who were better off waving a Confederate flag. While others were democrats with anti-war posters, old guys with long white hair- not sure what they were there for- but I appreciated their Willie Nelson-esque presence, one guy was advocating the legalization of Marijuana- he received my thumbs up. And lastly some were those Emerson kids yelling nonsense at the top of their lungs, drawing attention to themselves as they felt the loud republican representatives owe much of their popularity to.
In regards to the latter crowd’s point, perhaps that is the problem. The people that stood out the most were not those sincerely affected by taxes, but those ill-informed ignoramuses whose opinions were one sided and obnoxious. And their presence was only perpetuated by the speaker who I had the dishonor of listening to- no not Sarah Palin ( I missed her speech sadly), but a lady whose name I cannot find on the internet, probably because she was an embarrassment even to Fox news and all other right winged media outlets. Basically, she compared America today to communist Cuba, proclaiming she knew about communism because she was raised in Miami. She claimed Obama has communist advisors who are planning to promote socialist ideas with the intentions of communist results. Compared Obama to Castro and told an anecdote about Castro stealing candy from the hands of children as Obama does to republicans. Being Cuban-American from Miami, this irked me the most. Aside from being the most personally unappealing and loudly obnoxious person I have ever witnesses, what truly bothered me was her confidence in misinforming and rallying up republicans on false pretenses. Her radical view point, is not a true reflection of the point of the new Tea Party movement; it is more a reflection of one of the many problems with the Republican party today- shitty people publicaly associated with it.
Also there were various tents selling “I love Fox News” t-shirts. Heh.
