The Overwhelming Stoopidity of the Republican Anti-Tax Tea Party

Oh the stoopidity. Leave it to the radical right-wing fringe of the Republican party to concoct a publicity stunt so ludicrous, so contradictory, and so grounded in ignorance that it gains national media attention.

April 15th, for the majority of Americans—e.g. the sane—is Tax Day, a time where we fulfill our inconvenient-yet-essential role of citizenship by supporting our government and paying our taxes. For a the lunatic fringe of the GOP, though, the day serves as the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," a national protest allegedly taking place in 115 cities where Americans (mostly white and paranoid) gather at seaside to cast packets of tea into the water, a move reminiscent of the famed Boston Tea Party (more on that later).

Since being spearheaded by Rick Santelli—the CNBC clown whose rant on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade made Jim Cramer look like Gandhi—the event has been hyped by Fox News, particularly Glenn Beck, as a call to arms, a vicious protest of populist rage at the unfair tax-and-spend policies of President Obama! The outrage! Michelle Malkin, the idiot pit bull of movement conservatism, has written that "Revolution is brewing."

The ignorance and stoopidity of the "Anti-tax Tea Party" is so pervasive and extreme that it challenges me to know where to begin, but I'll consolidate the fatuous event into three simple points:

1. Don't know much about...the Founding Fathers!

The funniest thing about this ridiculous event is that it incorrectly assesses the very historical event it seeks to imitate. The Boston Tea Party, the famed colonial protest in which colonists, some in Native American garb, slashed and dumped the tea of the British East India Company into the Boston Harbor, was a protest against CORPORATE EXEMPTION. It was protesting a TAX HOLIDAY. In an act of severe self interest, Great Britain's Parliament passed a Tea Act that revoked the 25% tax rate that formerly applied to all East India Company tea sold in the colonies. The colonists, with the Tea Party, were protecting LOCAL BUSINESSES, the Mom & Pop shops whose businesses would be jeopardized by the tax-exempt products of the Company. The British East India Company, therefore, was the colonial equivalent of Wal-Mart.

Now, notice the insane hypocrisy here: the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," for one, is resisting supposed tax hikes (more on that in a moment), so the very essence of the protest is Topsy Turvy, but more importantly, it is funded by prominent right-wing think tanks (such as the idiotic Institute for Liberty), who are, of course, funded by right-wing, sweat-shop-utilizing corporations. An anti-corporate protest morphs into a corporate funded protest. Sweetness.

2. Don't know much about...Politics!

This obvious contradiction, though, would easily slip by the intellects of the people participating in the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," as these are namely the same groups of people who flocked to McCain/Palin rallies in October of 2008 with banners proclaiming Obama's socialism, his ties to Ché Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Muslim extremists, and other racist, inflammatory messages directly provoked by the McCain campaign. These are troubled, insecure people, puppets to the Mainstream Demented Media and willing to ignore any facts that challenge their deluded worldview.

The most prominent misconception regards taxes. The tax rates, aside from what you hear on Fox, have not risen for 16 years. The last time taxes were raised was when Bill Clinton raised the top tax to 39%. So currently, President Obama is functioning with tax rates directly organized by President George W. Bush, a man totally devoid of protest from this lunatic fringe regarding his own deficits and spending sprees. Even better, the top tax rate is still 10% LOWER than when Ronald Reagan, idiot actor and horrific president and idol to conservatives, was in charge. And what has Obama proposed to do to the top tax rate? Raise it an astonishing 4%.

Beyond taxes, though, the accusations that Obama is a socialist are childish at best. Medicare and Social Security, two of the more prominent social programs in the U.S., are not only products of past administrations, but they are overwhelmingly popular, effective programs. Furthermore, the very concept of modern socialism—the use of taxpayer funds to provide services to citizens—extends to our socialist police departments, our socialist fire departments, our socialist schools, our socialist libraries, our socialist roads, our socialist Food and Drug Administration, and so on and so forth. Clearly, we all engage in and benefit from some form of "socialism," yet the president who seeks to increase funding for these programs, to increase their effectiveness and harness a better America, is suddenly a socialist? Obama has not had a perfect 100 days (his issues with the banking crisis and Bush-era secrecy will be addressed in a future essay), but the arguments surrounding his supposed socialism is absurd on its face.

3. Don't know much about...GOP Propaganda!

This may be the most embarrassing point of all—the "Anti-Tax Tea Party" is nothing more than a propaganda campaign started by Rick Santelli and spread by GOP leaders and Fox News. It is no secret that the current incarnation of the Republican Party is in a bit of a crisis. Running on the heels of the most unpopular president in modern times and playing adversary to one of the more popular, the GOP is a party without a leader and without a message. John Boehner and Eric Cantor have both, by objective standards, been fairly horrendous party leaders, parading around the podiums with bizarre fabrications and humiliating anecdotes (Cantor, for example, missed a key Obama press conference (something he had criticized the week before) to attend...a Britney Spears concert). No coincidence, then, that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, the heads of the Republican Party during its "Republican Revolution" in the 90s, have both implicitly backed the "Anti-Tax Tea Party."

This is not a grassroots campaign of protest. This is a carefully calculated propaganda campaign started by Rick Santelli (in a speech that was pre-determined, mind you) and seized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

The saddest thing about this protest, though, are the groups of people suckered in to its ranks.
Ronald Reagan was labeled "The Great Communicator" for good reason: he effectively convinced scores of lower middle-to-working class Americans that despite all evidence to the contrary, his policies were making their lives better. Despite the fact that union membership was plummeting and wages becoming stagnant, despite the fact that an easing of tariff rates was beginning to transfer jobs from the U.S. to China (a process that would cripple our world-renowned manufacturing base and result in economies of fabricated wealth like today), and despite the fact, most notably, that Reagan was effectively transferring wealth from the poor to the rich by slashing taxes on the rich and easing regulations on their businesses while drastically raising income taxes on the lower class and payroll taxes—which only account for the first $90 thousand or so dollars of incomes—to account for the massive deficits his tax cuts created. Oh, and, on the advice from Alan Greenspan, Reagan also began taking money from the social security fund. How much wealth did Reagan transfer in this fashion? At least $3 trillion.

So Reagan, in a sense, was the most socialist president we ever had, though his brand of socialism directly aided the very groups of people socialism is supposed to combat. Reagan was able to convince the masses to the contrary; it seems they have still not gotten the message.