North Star Writers Group - Syndicated Commentary: Opinion, Humor and Features

April 16, 2009

The Jibbering Teasickness of American Conservatives

It is an idea unworthy of even Ronald Reagan at his most senile: Protest against what you perceive to be an oppressive government by gathering in a public place and waving tea bags.

Evidently down to its last handful of collective brain cells, American conservatives have nonetheless plotted to do precisely this as a means of visibly demonstrating their puerile, incoherent rage against the first successful presidential administration in two generations. At the time of this writing, America is in the throes of Teabag Day – I’ll spare you the gratuitous sexual innuendo typically highlighted at this point – and one can only imagine that at this very moment, Barack Obama is anxiously pacing the halls of the White House, aghast at the prospect of such a potent display of popular rage.

Not.

Apart from a possible invasion by a half-dozen lightly armed Pillsbury Doughboys, there would seem to few forces less menacing, or less worthy of being taken seriously, than odd meandering herds of brain-damaged, tub-gutted, SUV-driving suburban garbage flailing tea bags around and ranting about a new American revolution at the behest of their distinctly Doughboyish Fox News Pied Piper Glenn Beck. We’re talking here, after all, about the lowest of the low – people who not only tune in their televisions to watch a whining, weeping, paranoiac globule of jibbering cowardice night after night, but actually swallow his political prognostications to a sufficient degree that they buy boxes of Lipton Flo-Thru tea bags and dart straight on down to city hall.

In a more sane and civilized time, showing up at a government building and flinging tea bags around while babbling incoherently about incipient socialism oozing from the Oval Office would have been sufficient grounds for involuntary commitment and, hopefully, frontal lobotomy. Sadly, as in so many other areas, America’s standards of reasonable public discourse have slipped. Pardon me, but on exactly what planet is the flailing of tiny sacks of desiccated leaves considered a coherent means of expressing political dissent? In what demented alternate universe does a motley amalgamation of reactionary cranks like this warrant even a nod of acknowledgement, let alone the incessant attention of the major television networks?

Sure, it’s sad and pathetic, but it’s also disgusting. The tea bag brigade consists of those so-called Americans who most loudly and visibly proclaim their patriotism, even as they work against the best interests of their country with their every word and deed. Squealing like the miserable, spoiled suburban babies they are about their oh-so-onerous level of taxation, they propose to economically throttle the very country they pretend to love, wailing about socialism while standing on (socialized) public property adjacent to (socialized) public streets with (socialized) traffic lights, protected by (socialized) policemen.

The bag babies are the principal beneficiaries of the very socialized services that the taxes they wail about pay for, yet their sense of innate entitlement leads them to believe that through some strange magic they should gain all the benefits of life in a civilized society while incurring none of the costs. It’s a revolting, grotesque mindset, and its public display – as pitiable as it may be in terms of actual attendee numbers – is a visible symptom of a malignant cancer metastasizing within the American body politic.

Left emotionally bereft at their loss of power through the democratic process, the teabaggers respond with obstructionism at best and, in the case of Glenn Beck and Texas Governor Rick Perry at worst, urging secession from the republic and the splintering of the country itself (particularly ironic in Perry’s case – he just got done begging the Obama Administration for federal assistance in patrolling the Mexican border). The bag-and-flag wavers are the ultimate America-haters, standing in direct opposition to every effort to secure the safety, economic viability, and – yes – freedom this country ostensibly stands for and aspires to.

Well, since Beck and Perry have put secession on the table, it seems only fair to extend the invitation to cut and run to each and every individual brain-dead bagger: This is America, Democratic America, Obama-led America, an America that provides its citizens with public schools, public parks, public libraries, public utilities, public police and fire protection and a mountain of other taxpayer-funded public services.

Love it or leave it, scum.

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