Teabaggin’

If you recall, the great antiwar protests of 2003 really didn’t accomplish that much. Part of it was because they didn’t get a lot of media coverage – MSNBC fired the host of their highest-rated evening show because Phil Donahue was just too liberal for the zeitgeist, for crying out loud – but largely because those protests were, to put it bluntly, the hottest of hot messes. For every concerned middle-American who was uneasy about so quickly launching a second military front in the War on Terror, there were a dozen assorted goofs – International ANSWER types, Palestinian liberationists, moronic Ralph Nader dead-enders, anarchists with paper-mache puppets, Free Mumia douchetards, a smattering of dirty hippies with signs about how George Washington grew hemp, greying 60s hairballs on a nostalgia trip – in short, enough incoherence and mixed messages that what came across was a muddled collection of hard-left cliches sure to weaken the resolve of any plain ol’ voter who just wanted to register that this was the wrong war at the wrong time.

Looking at today’s “teabag” protests (brought to you through the courtesy of Fox News Channel), it’s tough to say that the right doesn’t have the same problem. You have the whole 2009 right-wing grab bag of Birthers, who still think Obama’s not actually an American citizen, the “secret Muslim” crowd (which apparently represents roughly 10% of the population, which is why we have words like ‘decimation’), the black-helicopter militia types who just got done re-applying the “I Love My Country But I Fear My Government” bumper stickers they scraped off eight years ago, a bunch of free-range secessionists (this is a particular problem in Texas, apparently, but then Texas is a particular problem anyway), gold-standard buffoons, flat-tax enthusiasts, and not a small number of outright racists. And all of that obscures the message of…

…um…

…what exactly? Taxes are bad? (Look, I don’t like taxes either, but it’s not like I could buy a nuke with my own money – it’s the sort of thing you have to go in on, like a keg.) Raising the top marginal rate 3.5% two years from now – as will be done by statute law that was passed eight years ago – is beyond the pale? Some as-yet-undetermined tax increase in the future is untenable? Cutting payroll taxes is wrong? Socking it to rich assholes who spent bailout money on their own bonuses is a bad thing? (Cause there sure were a hell of a lot of votes for it four weeks ago.)

Actually, that’s unfair. There is a unified and coherent message to today’s protests, and it is this: “We’re still mad that we got the beatdown last November, and if we just whine loud enough and whine long enough, we can magically turn back time.” It’s just another variation of the Great Southern Sickness: the belief that somehow, some way, you can make things be back the way they were. And as somebody who’s not only a victim but a carrier for GSS, I damn well know it when I see it.

The Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation. Everybody out there today has their representation, and had it in November, and they got clowned. Last check, they still had tons of Congressmen and over forty Senators, so excuse me if I can’t get too worked up. If I want to deal with that kind of crying, I’ll babysit.