The 2009 Tea Parties

Do you know about the Tea Parties? You probably heard about them. I didn't go. There was one in Grand Rapids, and I thought about it... I'm frustrated with my government, and if this is a way to show it, you could probably count me in. But I like to be sure. I don't want to half-heartedly protest anything. In case, you know, some counter-protesting occurs and someone hunts me down, gets me into an argument and finds me ill-prepared to defend my presence and inherent support, and converts me to a communist. And I do not want to become a communist. So I didn't go to the Tea Parties.

Plus, I was working.

So I started to look into them. I followed a little bit of the media coverage, and sure enough: There's some counter-protesting going on. And plenty of mockery. On the surface, the tea parties are a bunch of people who are angry about tax increases, many of whom haven't seen a tax increase, probably won't for a while, and maybe never will. People at the bottom end of the tax bracket pay only a small part of the federal income tax - I've mentioned this before. So I'll admit the protesting seems a little ironic.

But I think there's more to it than tax increases. You see, there's a small chunk of people left who actually want the government to take less money and do less stuff. I count myself among them. We're fiscal conservatives who want to take care of ourselves, and we want the government to do less. But we see the government getting bigger. Yeah, I know, it started under George W. Bush. We're mad at him too.

We're mad about - I shudder at the word - bailouts. Remember when GM got too big to fail? Remember how Bank of America got too big to fail? What happens if our government gets too big to fail? The more the government does, the bigger it gets, the closer it gets to that line. People see their freedoms shrinking, and the government growing, and that's why they're getting upset.

I'm not going to sound the Socialism alarm. Maybe we're there, maybe we're not, maybe it's the worst thing ever, maybe no one's really going to care or notice in fifty years. That evaluation is far beyond me and the B I got in three credit-hours of undergraduate macroeconomics. I can't begin to tell you the basic merits and demerits of socialism, but I'm pretty sure they don't entirely jive with this wacky but unshakable idea I have that the government should do less and take less money.

My financial life is okay in this system. But it's the trajectory that bugs me. If the government is getting a little bigger today, where will it be tomorrow? In a year? In ten years? If I'm a little annoyed and curious about it, imagine how many more people are scared and angry and marginalized enough to get organized and to raise a ruckus and dump tea in the Grand River. And all over the rest of the country.

There's a significant number of people who don't feel well-represented by their government, and they have every right to protest. You can protest whatever you want. You protest when your rights erode, hopefully you start doing it before they're gone. It makes sense for people to protest a tax increase.

Naturally, they got mocked. And of course, the easiest way to make fun of tea-parties is to make a tea-bagging joke. If you don't know what that is, and you really want to know, go ask the Urban Dictionary. Suffice it to say it's an innuendo that would draw snickers from frat boys. And some of the rest of us, but only in our weaker moments. I swear. And apparently, Anderson Cooper, too. Dubbing a tea-involving protest as tea-bagging is an easy joke, a comparison expected from anonymous, edgy political bloggers and humorists like Jon Stewart. Likening a movement to a sex-act is a convenient way to devalue it. It bugs me to see otherwise professional journalists slough off a widespread, reasonable protest.

I'm amazed at the ease with which some people are laughing it off. A bunch of white, rich tea-baggers want to keep their money and they're finally raising a stink about it, right? Is someone out of touch here, though? Is it the people protesting out of concern for a government growing too big to fail? The same legion of people who choose Fox News over CNN, the ones who built the conservative talk radio audience? The wealthy ones who bear the load of the tax burden, who feel underrepresented and have reached a tipping point and are taking their frustration to the streets? Or is it the people making teabagging jokes?




From the movie Network

Obama

I'm looking for a job. Thing is, I don't always want to bank on the thin slice of experience I've got. So I created this résumé:



(I blacked my address here out so no one can contact me and stalk me. Neat, huh?)

Get it? Hope and Change in place of experience?

No?

Oh, I see. You do get it, you just don't think it's that funny. That's okay.

Anyway. Job searching and snarky commentary aside, today was a big day. I'll spare you from having to read another person's thoughts on how important it is to see a black guy become the president. Not that I want to deny the hugeness or awesomeness of it... it's fascinating to see all this happen in my lifetime.

I generally try to stay away from writing politically, or having political conversations because inevitably, I end up being wrong. I wrote a bunch of stuff on my old blog about WMDs and stuff when we were going to war in Iraq. That turned out swimmingly. I've learned that however much I try to cement my political views, they still find a way of evolving. I don't just think I'm wrong. I think everyone's wrong. So I find it's best to stay mum on stuff until it's historical enough to have some consensus. Which doesn't mean I don't have opinions on things, it just means I don't care to share all of them.

So back to Obama. I am doing my best to have my opinions on him shaped not by talk radio, but by what he does as president. It's going to be a bitter, awful four years if I'm shuddering already at the sound of his voice before his first full day in office. And as much fun it is to have things bitter and awful, it's better to give him a fair chance.

And so it is, I've given him my trust. He's the president. He says he's got a plan to fix the economy, I'll hope it works. He says he's cutting my taxes, I'm going to enjoy it. The world says they like him, and I'll hope he keeps us on their good side. He says he's a Christian, I'm going to let his character support it.

I'm going to discard the Chicago politician résumé, the Senatorial voting record résumé, the Reverand Wright résumé, and and focus on the President résumé.

It's hard not to give credence to all of the hope that people have in him. Obama means a lot. He is, if nothing else, a symbol of the change people want and a chance to get things right. There was so much bitterness sent Bush's way. I guess I took offense to it because I voted for the guy. I still see him as a scapegoat for things that aren't his fault. For lots of people, he could do no right. And despite all he did wrong, he did some things right. Obama delivers a chance to get things right for all of those people who stood against Bush. So, now's their chance.

I'll let you know if my résumé gets me work. After all, it worked for Barack.

My politics (as though you cared.) Part Two

This is part two of three (or more?) pieces I’m writing about what I believe and how I came to believe it.

At the time of the 2000 election, I was still pretty decidedly Republican for life. Though I can’t remember being aware of the intricacies of the nomination process, I knew I was on the side of George W. Bush before he was the official Republican choice, what with him being a straight-shootin’ baseball-lovin’ Texas Governor and all. And I, being a straight-shootin' baseball-lovin' Texas gov- er, straight-shootin' baseball lover, it was a natural choice. I had then, and still have, a pretty politically incorrect disposition, and George W. Bush was my hope at having a President with a spine that wouldn’t take any Democratic guff.

On the other side of the ticket was Al Gore, in his pre-hipster-hero-hysteria days, his pre-Nobel Peace Prize days, his pre-Oscar days. My knowledge of him at that point was that he loved planet earth, snuggled up to the tree-huggers, and threatened industry (also that he was just one more Clinton-impeachment away from becoming President). This was partly influenced by the overabundance of Rush Limbaugh in my childhood soundtrack courtesy of my parents’ radio. Lest I layer the cynicism too thickly, I have to tell you that I still don’t much trust the man, and I’m still not convinced New York City will be underwater in 30 years, that the ice caps will melt, that if they do melt it will be in part due to my Ford Escort, and that having New York City underwater would be an altogether bad thing. Then again, I haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, either, which I know would inevitably sway me to become the Greenpeace-donatin’ Prius-drivin’ tree-hugger I’m destined to be.

Where was I? Oh yes, the 2000 election. Of course, you know, George W. Bush won. The electoral vote. Not the popular vote. This is nothing new in American elections (it happened three times before this). There are annual bills to change the electoral college. (I think it would be a grave mistake – the electoral college is a convenient way for people to cover regrettable political choices. Case in point: I voted to re-elect Bush in 2004, but I get to hide behind to cover of living in a Blue state. This, at the small cost of being disenfranchised every four years.) Bush’s victory cleared Gore to spend his time fighting his war against global warming and win Oscars and Nobel prizes and stuff. It cleared his supporters to spend the next few years sulking over how Bush stole the election.

September 11, 2001 – I’m sitting in Mechanical Drawing class, trying to draw a sprocket or something on graph paper. The DJ on the radio (Mix 96), somewhat shocked and confused, tells us a jetliner hit the World Trade Center. He didn't know any details yet. I like to think we were the first in the school to know. We turn on the TV, and no one draws anything for the rest of the hour. No one in the school gets anything done for the rest of the day. We pray in band. They send a note home. They tell us we’ll remember where we were that day for the rest of our lives.

Foreign policy changed. Everyone’s did, including my own. The president said we were going to get the people who knocked down the buildings, and I couldn’t wait to see some bombs drop. We went to Afghanistan, I went to college.

The Iraq war is hard to write about. There’s not a lot that I can say that hasn’t already been said. We’ve all thought about it. We've been inundated with news reports about it. Since its start, we’ve been divided over it. We all have an opinion about it. When it began, I was behind it. Even now, the last place I want to be is at an anti-war protest. But it’s my generation that is fighting it, shrinking because of it. And we all hoped it would be over by now.

History, I think, will be a far better judge of the war than a business-minded media and college students with picket signs or graffiti artists with stencils. The same should be said of George W. Bush’s presidency. History, I think, will be a gentler critic than Bush’s harshest detractors, but certainly more harsh than his most adoring and tenacious supporters who ignore a ballooning government, a tanking economy, and an arduous, divisive, seemingly endless war. Where I had once been a part of the adoring and tenacious group, I have in the past few years ceased to consider myself a member.

To be continued…

(I told you part two was coming didn't I? Part three is on the way, I swear.)

My politics (as though you cared.) Part One

Maybe my biggest issue with being a grown-up is finding myself caring about grown-up type things. For example, since when did I care about the economy? I find myself watching the stock market, even though I don't have any investments; I read the business page of the paper, even though I'm just a pizza guy. The world's problems have become my own. I do grown-up things, read grown-up books, have grown-up conversations (a real grown-up might disagree if they listened my brother and me). My PS2 is gathering dust right now.

And entwined in all of this is some real personal stake in politics. That's nothing new, actually. But my political tastes have evolved considerably since I was a kid.

I remember the presidential election of 1988. Is that normal? It's one of my oldest memories, somehow being aware that George Bush and Michael Dukakis were trying to become president. There's very little I remember prior to this, apart from standing in a wading pool in my backyard, blowing bubbles, and other random things that you probably don't really care about. I remember seeing Michael Dukakis on television in a tank which, since I had little awareness of the electoral process, gave me a really warped view of how one becomes president. I was young and, being a wise four-year-old, didn't choose a side, though I'm pretty sure in some Freudian repressed-fear way, Dukakis in a tank gave me the impression that the Democrats were the aggressors. (Turns out, this is a famous and historical PR blunder.) So in a way, you can blame him for the fact I still vote Republican today.

My parents were (and still are) Republicans. Not upper-crust country-club fundraiser Republicans, but conservative lower-middle-class worked-for-their-money-and-want-to-keep-it Reagan Republicans. When George H.W. Bush got elected, mom and dad were happy, and I was happy.

I remember with more clarity the 1992 election, when George Bush ran against Bill Clinton. I was eight years old and thoroughly aware of Mom and Pop's political bent. I remember asking the Janitor who he voted for, and I remember that George Bush, if nothing else, carried the popular vote at North Godwin elementary school. Clinton won and launched me into eight years of siding with my parents against Clinton's debaucherous crusade of evil.

We had a Dole/Kemp sign in our yard in 1996. I guess it was fitting that our country should be run not by the guy who went on to shill for Viagra, but the guy who had the fortitude to get it on with a 23 year-old intern.

We took a car ride once, and I asked my parents if anyone at our church was a democrat. I guess this was my early litmus test of whether or not Democrats could be good people. Dad gave me a name, and I asked him why that person was a democrat. Dad, ever sarcastic, told me, ever naive, that someone had put a gun to their head. I get it now, that it should be fairly obvious that political alliances are a matter of personal preference, but when you're a kid and you already think Democrats win elections with M-1 Abrams Tanks, this is all the confirmation you need that the GOP are the world's only good-natured freedom-fighters.

I took the conservative point of view in class, too, piping up with my worldview in discussions. I pity any teacher that decides to take on a class of third-graders in a political discussion, because they're all just repping their parent's point of view. I considered myself particularly well-informed, and went to bat for the Right side of things. For the most part, I'm pretty sure I held my own. I was a proud, outspoken conservative all through my elementary, middle school, and high school education. I even joined the college Republicans during my freshman year at WMU, but I didn't attend any of their stuff. I wouldn't have fit in, anyway. Had to join something, I guess. They kept sending me annoying email updates long after I decided they weren't my crowd.

To be continued [mostly because I know I've pretty much reached the limit of as much as I would want to read in one sitting if I were you.]

(Editor's note: This is only part one. Come back later to see if Jim is headed for a gutter-to-the-pew political conversion. Does his cynicism point to a resentment for his political upbringings? No. The answer is no. I'll explain in a few days.)

Congress. Turkey. Congress turkeys.

I know, I know.

I'm a liar. I tell lies. Because that's what liars do, we tell lies.

My first post was called "No technology, no politics, no jellies." And I'm about to go back on my word. And it's not because I want to talk with you about jellies. Believe me, I do, but as badly as I want to talk about my favorite preserves, that's one promise I intend to keep.

You didn't really expect me to stay away from politics, did you? How could I be expected to get by without ranting about our government? They're an easy target. We have to talk about the government. In fact, we have to hate the government. I hate the government. I don't hate government. I hate the government. I hate our government. (And you should, too. You should hate your federal, state, and local government. You should even hate your drain commish.)

I'm pretty sure I'm just a few more congressional blunders away from libertarianism.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a war going on in Iraq. (Also, OJ was innocent, and Pluto is no longer a planet. Sorry.) We don't like it. Nobody likes the war anymore. And this is probably not due to a vast left-wing media conspiracy. It's because we still have future teachers, doctors, mechanics, writers, businessman, lawyers, politicians, astronauts, and ice-cream men who are still dying over there, and they're doing it because brainwashed terror-goons aren't playing fairly. Wanna blame Bush for this, for not being prepared. Fine, not on my shoulders. Or blame a weak-kneed congress that put the handcuffs on and wouldn't let 'em go in guns-ablazin'. Blame Martin Sheen. Doesn't matter to me who you blame.

While this is going on, Congress is having a little trouble doing anything right back home. (See: 11% approval rating)

Yes. Democracy in action (Democracy Inaction?). You can pick nine people, and one of them will feel appropriately represented by congress.

And sooooo....

Congress, looking to improve their standing, takes a nice long look at a war from 92 years ago. They scrutinize Turkey and say "Well, let's make this official. Turkey... Armenians... That was genocide. Yeah, definitely genocide. Let's pass a bill and make it official."

I don't dispute that what Turkey did was probably genocide. And I don't contest the catastrophe of genocide. What I have to wonder about is the timing. (side note: The movement to call this genocide actually has been set in motion only in the last few years. Nevertheless, the timing is bad.)

You see, Turkey is kind of important in the way we supply our troops, particularly with water. So we shouldn't make them angry. So much for diplomacy, right?

And Turkey is attacking the Kurds who, let's be honest, are probably some of the last people in the middle east outside of Israel who don't hate us. (Attacking the Kurds is a little like the bully, having just been told he's a bully, saying "Am not!" and then giving a nice charley horse. Great way to plead your case, Turkey.)

On one extreme of this issue, you can look at who pushed this bill, Californian congressmen (with Armenian constituents?). And you could assume that congress knew it would make Turkey angry, knew that it was an undiplomatic move, and foresaw potential difficulties with the war effort in Iraq, and acted without concern, even acted in the interest of undermining our troops.

On the other end, we see a congress who saw this bill and passed it without awareness of its repercussions.

And so we have the following situation:

Congress is evil.

-or-

Congress is ignorant.

11%.