Taki's Mag

For those who still try to draw parallels between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, allow me to explain:

The Tea Party represents all the people working, producing, and PAYING for everything, while the Occupy movement represents all the people wanting to TAKE things from those who have earned them. 

There. End of essay.

OK, fine. I’ll elaborate. While the two movements may intersect in some very minor way when it comes to corporate cronyism with the government, they are polar opposites in their conceptions, purposes, logic, and prescriptions. The Tea Party ultimately is a taxpayer revolt. It was born initially of extreme anger and frustration with a government that largely created a horrible set of economic circumstances—primarily through the encouragement of bad behavior—and then wanted to bail out the corrupt industries and companies with money from the people who worked hard and played by the rules. It was a response to years of Constitution-trampling, profligate government spending, cronyism, and backward economic thinking. 

The Tea Party wants drastically smaller, less powerful, and decentralized government that abides by the Constitution and respects the money it confiscates from the individuals it’s supposed to represent.

In short, the Tea Party represents those who have been taken FROM. Oh, and they found time to protest (largely ignored by the media) during their lunch breaks or on weekends—when they could take time off from WORK. 

Meanwhile, if there’s any strain of consistency within the disparate array of freaks, hippies, drug fiends, bobble-headed students-for-life, free-energy dreamers, the lazy, and even those who capably impersonate someone remotely respectable within the Occupy movement, it’s that somebody else has something they want. And they want you to give it up, dammit! 

There used to be a word for this: Envy. How many of the other Seven Deadly Sins are roots of their ideology? I was taught as a young lad that if someone else had something I wanted, I had to ask him nicely if I could use it. But if it was his, and if he was kind enough to lend it to me, I’d have to give it back when finished. Or I could do some chores, save up some pennies and dimes, and buy the damned toy myself. (I don’t know how my schoolteacher mother was not banished from the teachers union for such radical views on child-rearing.)

All this whining and complaining (all the more hilarious when done through the human microphone system)—combined with the organizing and funding by those grassroots communists in our midst—creates entertaining fodder for the right-wing media. 

Here’s the problem: No one’s talking about the Tea Party anymore. 

While others have suggested that the Occupy movement was born of jealousy of the Tea Party (How dare these conservatives take to the streets in righteous indignation! That’s our job! These are our streets!) the Occupiers’ nonsensical lunatic rantings currently dominate the media landscape.

Perhaps the terrorists have won.

But isn’t this what always happens? A legitimate grievance takes hold (taxpayer abuse), they petition and protest the problem’s source (Government Gone Wild), organize (Tea Party movement), shift the conversation, and achieve successful results (the 2010 elections). Then the other side, fearing for their loss of power and free candy bags, starts literally banging the drums loudly, obnoxiously, and nonsensically. It’s like the two-year-old upset that he’s left out of the adult conversation at the restaurant table, so he grabs whatever blunt object he can find and starts banging away at whatever’s in front of him. Obnoxious? Yes. Effective? Well, yes. 

The Occupiers have a distinct advantage over the Tea Party—one of their own occupies the White House. He’s been banging the drum against the supposed “haves” in favor of his zombie street army since he was old enough to talk. 

So like most everything else in our current culture, a set of genuinely good ideas has been usurped by the dumb-downed mobs so they can continue sucking blood like parasites. While dumb they may be, they’ve successfully shifted the conversation from something responsible—and, well, adult—and turned it into a spoiled child’s obnoxious wailings. 

We’re already broke and getting broker by the second, and while the adults want to turn the tide and return to some semblance of responsibility and sanity, the other side kicks and screams for more free stuff like spoiled brats. And everyone, right and left, can’t help but look at the spectacle. 

And that is why I support spanking.