Not that we ever needed to, but if we ever needed to prove to ourselves that the Tea Party protests were/are anything besides corporate-corralled dissent redirected into expressions of racism, misogyny, and staggering ignorance, the Tea Partiers reaction to the Occupy Wall Street movement provides all proof we could ever need. The predominately white, older, middle/upper class members of the Tea Parties have been seen taking every chance to insult and minimize OWS or its members, despite the overlapping portions of their agendas. The corporate and think tank controlled Tea Party decried the bailouts (among many other things, sensical and otherwise) too, so why does this Venn diagram refuse to meet? The strings attached to the Tea Party prevent any ability to recognize what all workers are suffering. It was designed to never do anything besides make noise and elect more capitalist politicians. So long as OWS can retain independence from a controlling authority like the Democratic Party or something similar, it flies in the face of the Tea Party’s agenda and abilities.
Those now calling themselves the 53% are styling themselves as the counter protest to OWS, even while being casualties of those they are trying to protect. So dormant is the class consciousness of America that large swathes of the poor, used as nothing more than cannon fodder in both literal and figurative senses, will come out to defend their persecutors – hoping to one day be a part of their ranks. Their debt is a badge of pride; their 2 or 3 jobs are a right of passage; their untreated health issues a problem not of a broken, predatory system, but trophy on their mantle. So long as they never ask for the community’s help, their diminishing returns matter not. If only they could be made to understand leftists love these peoples’ sense of personal responsibility, their ability to adapt in times of need, and their perseverance. We just don’t believe that their strength and abilities should be spent providing the rich with every comfort available while they send their children to bed hungry – determined not to use food stamps.
One has to wonder, if these people truly believe that this is the Land of Opportunity, with the freedom to be whatever they want if they just work hard enough – but where are their personal jets, Rolls-Royce, and butler staff? Are they not working hard enough? Do they just not want to spend a month in the Caribbean at a resort hotel? Have they chosen to go without healthcare despite injury and disease? Of course not. America’s culture of individuality has helped to blind us to what we have in common, and destroyed our class consciousness.
The 53% refuse to blame Wall Street, but love to blame Washington politicians and a mysteriously shiftless class of lazy individuals who refuse to help themselves (read: minorities). What they fail to connect is that Wall Street and Washington come as one package. They are right to blame Washington, but fail to see its connection to Wall Street and the theft of their livelihood! The lazy masses that they erroneously blame largely don’t exist and serve the same mechanism that kept poor whites in line during slavery. Their life might be slowly crumbling around them but at least they aren’t one of those, the welfare recipients.
The Tea Party is right to blame Washington, it is a place designed to legalize the theft being perpetrated against all of us. But the Tea Party will never recognize that capitalists, and Wall Street specifically, are the thieves being loosed by Washington because they can’t bite the hand that feeds. Their corral keeps them penned away from the truth, and so long as that is so, they will be unable to understand OWS and be doomed to enable the very system they “rage” against.
