Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Teabaggin' the White House

So tomorrow is the fabled day, with the Tea Parties planned. I'm excited to see this disaster and wish I had the free time or the inclination to go to one of them just to see the results. Protest is all well and good, and I encourage it, but the way American history has been fetishized disgusts me just a little.

The Boston Tea Party was an act that helped spark the American Revolution. A British act placed a tax on the tea, and the so-called Sons of Liberty decided that it was unfair to levy a tax without giving elected representation to those under the tax. This is where the famous "no taxation without representation" line comes from. Essentially, the same type of situation is also true in Washington DC at current, but that's a different matter. The equivalence is of course living in a state with no direct representation in the national legislature today.

Anyway, I'm afraid I don't see the equivalency between this historic act and the protests of today. Everyone who resides in a state within the US is given representation under the federal government via their own senators and district representatives. If you want to go out and march with signs and yell a lot about how you own a lot of purestrain gold and hate socialism, go do it. If you need to find a historical context to make yourself feel more righteous or patriotic about it, maybe you should rethink your motives in the first place.

Perhaps the best part is the fact that people think that by just not paying their taxes they're going to make a difference. You can break the law, but you get to deal with the consequences, too.

As a side note, I really, really want an ACORN hoodie or t-shirt. I'd love to walk around in one after the insanity surrounding them in some people's heads, as if they're some kind of secret service militant group or something.

probably the best troll would just be a big sign with "Do You Even Know Why You're Here?" written on it

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