If you don't do politics, politics gets done to you. So let's do some together right now.
Two years ago many here in the Lefty Tribe had decided we'd had enough. The result was a historical election. This year, it's the Tea Party people who've had enough, and they seem poised to shift things back their way.
These folks can best be described as The Scared And The Scary. Comprised mostly of white boomer males, they have recently seen a left-of-center black man come out of nowhere to win the presidency. Further, he also began to actually change things like he said he would. Republicans and the Right, faced for the first time in 35 years with a Democrat with balls, find themselves freaked, frightened and furious.
...and scared witless. To wit:
** A few months after assuming office, a wave of alarm spreads when Obama plans to visit an elementary school and address the students. Fox News and the Right declare the president is going to brainwash our children! It was as if his office had announced his intention to hand out condoms and needles.
** During the health care debate, the Right actually believes the government is planning to take over health care, setting up "death panels" to kill yo mama if she gets too sick.
** Fox's Glenn Beck addresses the N.R.A. and informes them that "Marxist revolutionaries" have taken over the White House. What's a patriot with a rifle to do?
** Many from the same end of the political spectrum are currently frightening themselves into believing Muslims (who many on the Right believe Obama to be) are in the process of taking over the country and intending to impose Islamic Sharia Law like the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
** Many on the Right are now global warming deniers and believe liberals are part of a push for a New World Order of internationalists who will steal our sovereignty and force everyone to ride bicycles.
On the surface, these angry people may appear motivated by self-interest, ignorance and fear.
But I personally believe that if you look deeper, there's more going on. One driving force behind this mostly male rebellion is their sneaking suspicion that they're being phased out. When you consider who it was that overwhelmingly got laid off these past few years (men); and who, for the first time, comprise the majority of workers in this country (women); along with the majority of law school students (women) and medical school students and PhD earners (women), you can begin to see why these guys are so susceptible to fear mongering. The future is female...and also multi-racial. And though this is good for the human race as a whole, there are millions of white men in America who have been around long enough to find that the tables have been turned and now it is they who are being marginalized.
But the fact remains that, understandably frightened or not, The Scared And The Scary need to be confronted, exposed, and opposed. However, we need to do it without catching the Afraids Virus they're spreading. And we should also get off our high horse. Because the Left has its own illnesses.
If you're a progressive as I am, you may want to consider a recent Columbia and Stanford study that found that 25% of Americans surveyed blame "the Jews" for the financial crisis we've been in. And within that 25%, there were twice as many Democrats as Republicans. (Yes you read that right).
And when it comes to paranoia, if you talk to those in The-Government-Orchestrated-9/11 crowd, you'd be talking to Lefties, not Righties.
My point is, things ain't simple. Tea Partiers may be largely motivated by ignorance, fear and bigotry, but that doesn't mean they've been hoarding all of it.
So, you might ask, where's the tranformational potential in all this?
To begin with, I suspect we're all taking this Right/Left seesaw that we're on far too seriously. Seesaws get nowhere, and a bird needs both a left and a right wing, otherwise it flies in circles. Or something like that. Let me put it another way. When I really stop to think about the Tea Party movement, I begin to wonder...
Can a libertarian, idealistic, anti-authoritarian movement -- that's pro Constitution and Bill of Rights and is against big government and bailouts of banks -- be all bad?
Can an aroused electorate, full of outraged people who are standing up to fight against what they can't stand anymore, have no potential for doing good?
Perhaps there's something as yet undefined and unnamed that is trying to emerge. Perhaps there are coalitions waiting to happen. (Diversity, if you truly believe in it, means including people who don't). Both sides contain millions of alienated and justifiably angry voters who feel helpless over huge forces that seem to be controlling our lives.
So I see opportunity in this partisan crisis...if we only open our minds. The Right is anti-big-government; the Left anti-big-business. Seems to me we both share an anti-big sentiment that has great possibility once we get off the see saw.
Perhaps something within us all is trying to shake us awake from our Us vs. Them trance-dance.
"I think people are smart enough now to know the world we are living in is going wrong." This was spoken at a recent Tea Party gathering. Can you honestly say you disagree with her?
We're here to wake each other up, even if it's a rude awakening. Maybe we all share more in common than we realize.
