Yesterday, I spent the evening watching talking heads speak about Tea Bagging. I watched Rachel Maddow giggle with glee as she marveled at the protestors ignorance of the colloquial meaning of Tea Bagging. I listened as Keith Olberman derided the Tea Baggers as puppets of the grand corporate marketing scheme. I even witnessed Anderson Cooper admit to not being able to effectively talk while being Tea Bagged. And it was all good stuff.But with all the Liberal pundits spouting off about the hilarious double entendre of Tea Bagging, I had to stop and wonder exactly what they were protesting. Just like every protest, some random, non-related people showed up to join in the protesting fun. Racists freaks, anti-Government bums, Christian "Rights" groups, and even pro-war protesters (whatever the fuck that means) showed up to join in the fun. I swear, it's like a gay rights march in reverse. The problem I had though is that the talking heads tended to focus on those fringe characters to deride the protestors as Crazy or Insane when the fringe participants were hardly representatives of the majority there. They weren't shunned in most cases, mind you, but I hardly think one man carrying a racist, anti-Obama poster counts as the totality of the message the larger group was trying to convey.
I'm willing to set aside a few of the fallacies of this "grass-roots" movement to examine the concept. Sure, it wasn't a grass roots movement, it was backed by and supported by corporate lobbyist firms. And sure, many of the protestors were protesting Obama's bailout package… even though they supported Bush's less-stringent version just a few months ago. Putting that all aside, do these people have a point? Will the raising of taxes on the wealthiest Americans (which, by the by, would not affect the overwhelmingly vast majority of the protestors in the least) really do anything to save our country? And will these bailout packages make a difference?
In my opinion… well, I have no idea if the bailouts will save us. Finance is not my area, and it's obviously not the area of most of the talking heads on TV. Most of the experts seem to think they will help, but I've grown weary of partisan experts anyway, so it's hard to say. What I can say is that if you get a chance to watch last night's Daily Show, you should probably do so, as their guest did a great job at explaining why the past 10 years of deregulation have led us to this point, and how re-regulating industries rife with greed can only benefit us all. If we need to bail out all the financial institutions in this country in order to reign in their practices, than so be it.
What else I know is that I'm still amazed at how easily poor and middle class Americans can be manipulated to fighting for rich people. I did not hear of many wealthy people showing up at these Tea Parties, the people that are actually affected by Obama's tax increases. Instead I saw tons of middle-class white people crying. Why? I still have no idea. Just like yesterday's post about the fight for Marriage, I am baffled at why middle-class people that will NEVER be in that top 1% of the wealth curve insist on fighting for rich people's right to have, keep and make more money than them. It's as if they are still disillusioned into believing they'll be there some day, if only they buy enough lottery tickets…
I just don't understand is all. We've got A LOT to fight for in our lives, and these people choose to fight over some one else's money. Let the rich people complain about their money themselves! Stop fighting about what isn't yours in the first place and get back to working on things that will actually affect your quality of life.
2 comments:
Great post! I totally agree with you! I love the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and his team of writers are brillant. It amazes me the amount of ignorance our country has on these issues. The crazies all come out of the woodwork when you talk of raising taxes..even if it is not on them. I somewhat understand Kentucky tea parties because they raised the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol by a pretty good amount, and you know how us Kentuckians love our tobaccy and booze :). It should have just been a protest on that though, not anything else in my opinion as that are the only taxes that affect the lower to middle class in this state.
Miss you still!
Christine Gilb
Awww! Miss you too Christine!
I completely agree with you on tobacco taxes. To me, it's a flawed tax scheme. First of all, we know that tobacco companies focus most of their energy to poor or disenfranchised comunities, so it's equivalent to taxing the poor. Second, it's a receding income. The idea, at least what they say whn they raise the tobacco tax, is that the higher taxes will reduce the amount of smokers. Great! And those taxes will go to schools or some such. Awesome! Problem is if you plan on cutting the amount of smokers, you're also planning on cutting your tax intake. What's more, those that are left smoking, for whatever reason, will eventually foot even higher taxes. It's just a bad slide... And I don't even smoke anymore!
Post a Comment