Tea Party Terror

Like the rest of us, the Tea Party would like America’s problems to be simpler than they are. But unlike the rest of us, the self-proclaimed “patriots”  are convinced that their simplistic, gut-driven slogans (“take back America”) offer realistic solutions.    Parroting  meaningless epithets rather than thinking through complex challenges and proposing workable approaches achieves no goals except those of Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh. Rather than rise to the challenges facing America, Tea Partiers’ minds appear to snap shut at the point of problem identification.  They complain endlessly about the bank bailout, but financialstability.gov says that the “Treasury currently (April 2010) estimates that its programs aimed at stabilizing the banking system will earn a profit...”

I agree with Partiers that government is dysfunctional and out of touch with the people it serves.  But they seem  misguided in promoting name calling as an essential part of political dialogue, in favoring religion over reason, and by harboring the conviction that only their vision of the truth matters. Socialism, a system they despise,  works no better than communism, as President Obama says in enough different ways that anyone listening should understand his point.  Capitalism and market forces are the only economic system that results in expanding economic prosperity, as he often emphasizes. But today big business is as culpable as big government in leading us toward the abyss, so we can’t look there for the solution.

Do the Partiers have a point? Undoubtedly. America’s spiraling debt spells the demise of our great nation status if it continues unchecked. Do they have solutions? None they’ve shared. Is healthcare the problem? So far we’ve spent almost no money implementing the healthcare bill, while we’ve spent $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Is it possible that military and diplomatic overreaching by conservatives helped create the indebtedness that so enrages the ultra-conservative Tea Party?  If so, it they have yet to mention it.

Social Security, defense, unemployment, Medicare, and Medicaid comprise 75% of government spending in 2010.  Unless Tea Partiers have concrete, legislatively acceptable answers to how to draw down these costs, they have little to contribute to the political dialogue. Their rallying cry, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gong to take it anymore”, helps them vent, but that’s the end of its usefulness.  Kicking out incumbents as do-nothings might be justified, but it leads nowhere if they are not replaced by strong legislators who can actually turn ideas into laws. Rand Paul, Tea Partier extraordinaire, demonstrates how befuddled educated people can become when they cater to our child-like desire for simplicity.