Idle Minds, the Devil's Un-American Tea Party

Examine Your Motives!

We've read so much about the Tea Party movement in the past few months and have seen its members across our televisions and filling our newspapers. Sometimes, we even wonder if some of our friends are part of this movement, but we are not sure. People can be very incognito about their side activities. They come to work seemingly normal and balanced, and only later do you discover the shenanigans in their after work life. Thus we find it appropriate to lay down some simple ways to help identify a Tea Party activist. You might even discover that you are one yourself and this new self knowledge will go a long way to helping you fill your spare time with frenzied activity that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

But let's begin.

• First, while there is no prerequisite that you be white to be an authentic Tea Party activist, and while we are sure there are black ones here and there, the general lack of racial representation should be an obvious clue that you are dealing with an authentic Tea Partisan. We cannot fault the movement entirely, since blacks involved in politics rarely like to stray off the Democratic ranch.

• If you the person in question has the unique ability to hold contradictory facts in their head simultaneously, and while not being ethnic, then the authenticity rises even more. For example if you are on Medicare, or receiving Social Security, which represent two of the unfunded legs of rampant government expenditure sending us into debt, and yet you are ranting and complaining about government debt and bankrupting America, you are a Tea Partite. Perhaps you rationalize and say you paid into those two programs. No freeloader are you. But you didn't pay enough and the net result of underpayments is the same debt on the nation's books as every other major undertaking. In one case Obama gives kids healthcare on the government's dime (taxpayer money), in the other case the government gives you healthcare on the government's dime (taxpayer money). 

• A true Teatotaler (teetotaling from the complications of logical thought, drunk on rabid fantasy) can probably be found simultaneously arguing (still), that Obama is an empty suit or lacking in ability, while in the next breath assuring everyone that the same man will be responsible for the complete reworking of society as we know it. Sometimes it is not a real Teabagger, but a Republican in drag, so you can never be sure. They will often come to the same conclusions, most of which result in Obama destroying the known world in an evil for evil's sake kind of conflagration filled with deadly terrorists, Islamic Christmas specials (see ya Frosty!), death panels, Kenyans uncontrolled in Kansas, forced camps, unlimited government spending on crazy shit like healthcare for kids. 

• An authentic Tea Parttite does not see the big picture because the world began the day Obama was elected. The subtle or blatant blaming of has nothing to do with his blackness of course, just so you know. Tea Partites didn't care that the economy was in recession before Obama was in office. They didn't care that the government was creating more debt and doing purchases on credit for things like Medicare Part D, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They didn't care that all branches of government could be faulted for not reigning in the financial sector. They didn't care (and probably participated) when Americans across the land had their mass orgy, copulating the hell out of the home ownership apparatus. Nope. They didn't realize any of this until the precise moment Obama came into office. And upon entry it was his responsibility to 1) fix everything in the first month or three and 2) also ignore doing all that he said he would do when voted into office by a plurality. 

• The Tea Party member is humble. Simple. Of the earth. From the special land just over that rainbow where real Americans come from. California? Mostly un-American. Indiana? American. Iowa? Probably American though they got duped by Barry and probably need their American cards checked. New York City? Uhm, no. Godless. Real America can be defined by location, but it's more than that. Because sometimes you are a real American, but everyone around you is not and you exist as a John the Baptist of patriotic purity crying out in the geographical wilderness of un-Americaness (like in San Francisco). Which of course if you are a Tea Partite in San Fran, check your motives.

• If it's a female, she will probably be a bit frumpy, a bit middle-aged or old and wearing a fanciful hat that belies the actual danger that can be caused by people with time on their hands and non-corollary and causal false truths in their heads. The hats and patriotic plumage and signs can sometimes obscure it all.  

Here is the New York Times, profiling, so that we can get a better glimpse:

She and others who receive government benefits like Medicare and Social Security said they paid into those programs, so they are getting what they deserve.

“All I know is government was put here for certain reasons,” Ms. Reimer said. “They were not put here to run banks, insurance companies, and health care and automobile companies. They were put here to keep us safe.”

She has no patience for the Obama administration’s bailouts and its actions on health care. “I just don’t trust this government,” Ms. Reimer said.

And here is another:

When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.

(N.Y. Times)

It's hysterically funny to begin an article with the above sentence, in part because it highlights that special super power of being able to hold contradictory ideas in the head at the same time, each thought unaware of the existence of the nullifying other thought. Tea Partisans have mastered that skill to the point where someone like Tom can turn to the government for personal help, not get it, and then discover the government is bad and thus nobody should have help. Or everyone should have help? Or exactly what? Because it's never clear what the Tea Partites really want.

Obama's efforts that will result in everyone actually having to pay for some portion of their healthcare, much like everyone has to pay  some portion of their Social Security, but that is too hard a concept for Ms.Reimer to grasp. Ms. Reimer's comments that she just does not trust the government, if you scrape away the illogical frou-nonsense, converts to, "I just don't trust Obama".

It's amusing. The Tea Partyists call for small government because the government did not help them in the fashion they expected, and even while benefiting from the same debt fueled government largess. Idle minds are the devil's workshop, and just the cup of tea for non-productive mayhem.