I've been meaning to write about the Tea Party for a long time. Few people outside of this movement, and maybe some within in, seem to really understand what this diffuse organization's grievance is and what they really want. Is the Tea Party a revolt against a government that is not close enough to the people? Does the Tea Party represent a collective giving of the finger to intellectual elites? Or, is the Tea Party comprised of ignorant and intolerant individuals angry at the changing face of America, heightened by economic insecurity? In a sense, the organization (if it can be called one) is partly all of these things.
The Tea Party does strike a chord with people who believe that the government is too far from the people. Now, it is crucial to identify who precisely "the people" are. The government has never been that responsive to the needs of the lower classes, urban/rural poor, blacks, Latinos, or wage laborers in general. Of course, many people in the Tea Party movement feel that the government is helping the "consumers" of public goods rather than the "producers" of private wealth. Rand's dichotomy of "productive" vs. "unproductive" people is at work here. Bourgeois whites who make up the majority of the Tea Party movement see themselves, predictably, as the productive ones. Also, they are used to having their voices heard, loud and clear. In fact, they are not used to even having to mobilize to have their voices heard. This adds to their appeal in that they can be seen as "everyday Americans" rising up. Some say that the Tea Party stems from the financial crisis and the bank/automaker bailouts. These things may have been the impetus of the movement, but it would not be what it is without health care reform and the stimulus.
The bank/auto bailouts were initiated by President Bush so it is hard to label them as President Obama's doing (the most socialist and scary president in history without question according to Tea Partiers). The stimulus and health care reform were the real culprits, but especially health care reform. The fact is, health care reform would have never passed if the American people had voted on it directly. Health care in the United States is more politicized than anywhere else, and the status quo is supported by a wide range of powerful interests. The people did not, and do not, understand key concepts in the legislation which makes it susceptible to demagoguery. Moreover, the have-not, voiceless people in our society stand to benefit the most from the legislation, so their point was never heard. The rambunctious town halls in the summer of 2009 seemed to confirm that ordinary Americans were against this legislation. So what argument does the Tea Party make about health care reform beyond the whole "government takeover" thing: that it is going to deny choice, bust the budget, and strip Medicare. Now, if I did not research and understand the insurance business I would probably not question these arguments on empirical grounds. It is common knowledge in US discourse that the private market expands choice and the government restricts it, how can expanding an entitlement program not bust the deficit? How can cutting half a trillion from Medicare not undermine the program? All these arguments make sense at the surface level of discourse in America. How do you explain to someone with health insurance that they "are satisfied with" with the system is so incredibly inefficient that the changes proposed can actually expand coverage without increasing the deficit, that an individual mandate is absolutely necessary to let the cost sharing part of insurance work, that millions of people working low-wage jobs have NO CHOICE AT ALL when it comes to health insurance, that caring for the people without health insurance is already built into the private insurance premiums that you pay. That is really hard to argue against platitudes like "government takeover" or "socialist medicine." The Right has the benefit of parsimony, they describe an American dystopia in one or two words. The fact is, the main feature of health care reform is expanded coverage, but that does not benefit the already covered who have the political microphone. So when the Tea Party says the government is not representing "the people" you have to ask yourself, what kind of people is the government (not)representing?
The notion of the Tea Party sticking it to the intellectual elites is partly true. Here again the Tea Party views the intellectual elites as not representing their views. To say that the Tea Party dislike academia and educators is to put it mildly. It is not just the condescending tone that some, ok many, intellectuals take toward people of Tea Party ilk, its is that they view academia and even grade school as undermining American values by not teaching, or teaching critically, our founding principles. In the Tea Party mind the Constitution and other documents like the Federalist Papers were pretty close to divinely inspired. The Founders were demigods. Academia is infiltrated with socialists and people who "hate America." That is simply to the truth and no rational argument will disabuse a Tea Partier of that notion. It does not help that people from educated backgrounds flee their small towns and cluster in Liberal cities. There is no one left in rural/small town America to defend intellectualism and free inquiry. So, you have two groups of people self-selecting their communities and gazing at the other with bewilderment. They really do live in separate realities, different "nations."
Lastly, the Tea Party clearly has intolerant elements. The discourse on immigration reform, welfare, poverty, etc. that comes out of this group is racially tinged. I'm sure that many people would completely deny racism. They aren't the type of people to use the "N" word (some maybe) but they wouldn't object to a somewhat racist joke and would maybe get a little laugh out of it. The election of the first African-American president is important here. Now, Tea Parties would claim that they have black members and that they would not object to a black president, if he were say, Clarence Thomas. Tea Partiers don't necessarily object to the race, but to the fact that Barack Obama is a race-conscious black man. He does not deny the disadvantages that African-Americans face, and sees it as a social rather than an individual problem. Tea Partiers are not against black people, or Latinos, or low-wage workers, they are against these people advocating for social justice and for economic redistribution. In the same vein, Tea Partiers will support women so long as they are not feminists.
In short, the Tea Party is a movement of righteous indignation on the part of people who are not used to sharing the microphone.
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