4 Observations from a Tea Party

A few thoughts on Glen Beck’s Tea Party in DC today…

1. Glen Beck is the Mad Hatter

Today, Glen Beck was able to mobilize tens of thousands of sloganeers around the simple principle that government sucks and Americans deserve whatever they get. The signs and placards on display were incoherent, hysterical, ill-informed and universally self interested. From the Post:

Participants in the demonstrations span the spectrum of conservative anger at Obama, including opponents of his tax, spending and health-care plans and protesters who question Obama’s U.S. citizenship and liken his administration to the Nazi regime. By 11 a.m., the route between Freedom Plaza and the Capitol was a sea of demonstrators chanting “USA!” and carrying signs such as, “Taxed enough already,” “The audacity of dope” and, “Czars belong in Russia.”

Most signs were hand made: “Socialism is UnAmerican,” “King George Didn’t Listen Either!” “Terrorists Won’t Destroy America, Congress Will!” “The American Dream R.I.P.”

Q: Isn’t it a little ironic that Beck chose to exploit 9/11 to decry federal spending — particularly the stimulus plan that has saved a gob of first responder jobs (you remember those folks who rushed in in DC, NYC and PA to save American lives)?

Fact: Thanks to President Barry’s Big Government, there are a bunch of firefighters and police on the streets to deal with terrorist attacks and natural disasters that would otherwise be unemployed.

2. A Tea Party does not a solution make.

Today’s tea party — and most other conservative protests to Obama’s health care plan — have had very little to do with expanding health care access for millions of Americans who lack heath insurance, containing runaway health care costs or doing anything to improve health outcomes in America.

Pundits like Beck and Limbaugh are merely parroting misinformation back to the masses, while party leaders like Michael Steele and Sarah Palin wallow in fear, incivility and distrust. They may move the political needle; but Americans are still dying.

3. Racism is alive and well.

A few months back the image above was forwarded around by one of the GOP’s chief “experts” on health reform.

Flash forward to today: Every single one of the hundreds of people I personally observed were white. Many carried borderline racist signs, and those shouting at us inevitably fell back on fears that government hand-outs would somehow threaten their individual position in the universe — which has too often served as code in public policy debates for maintaining white racial privilege. Winant says it better than I can:

With alternative perspectives unavailable or
unconvincing, a distinct tendency developed in the 1980s, and continues into the present, to blame declining living standards on the welfare state and the supposed parasitism of the poor.  To hear Reagan and Bush (and in a milder way, Clinton) tell it, the problems faced by white workers do not derive from corporate hunger for ever-greater profits, or from deindustrialization and
the “downsizing” of workforces; rather these troubles emanate from the tax burden imposed on the employed by the unemployed.

The taxes of the productive citizens who “play by the rules” and “go to work each day” are going to subsidize unproductive and parasitic “welfare queens” and “career criminals” who “don’t want to work.”  The racial subtext of this discourse hardly needs elaboration.

Kai Wright from The Root makes an even more immediate observation on the racial dimensions of the current debate around health care in his recent article “Pimping White Anxiety”:

These loud-mouthed robber barons bedevil national Republicans. But the party knows the fear and anger they stoke is nonetheless as useful as ever in the heat of battle, because convincing poor whites to hurt themselves remains a powerful tool for blocking reform. The ugly mobs of GOP operatives-turned-grass-roots activists at this summer’s town hall meetings are only incidentally fighting health care reform. Their real purpose is to show how frustrated whites can direct their anger at Democrats. Feeling poor, white and out of sight? It’s because that black guy’s trying to reshape America without you. Get him!

4. Health care reformers need to get off their asses.

I honestly believe that this fight would be over already if progressives exhibited a fraction of the energy they showed during the election. Here are two quick ways to help:

• Call or email your U.S. Representative and Senators and demand comprehensive health reform now.
• Make a donation to support Health Care for America Now — a key group leading the charge to solve the health care crisis.