It is a misnomer to call the Tea Party a protest movement. It's just a bumper sticker movement spawned in irrational anger but without coherent protest. Genuine protest over war, injustice, racism, bigotry, and crimes of all kinds produces great protest poetry, the outpouring of inspired language capable of moving others and producing genuine change. I think of Allen Ginsburg's "Howl," which begins, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...." or Lawrence Ferlinghetti singing, "I am awaiting a rebirth of wonder," or Adrienne Rich saying, "The moment of change is the only poem." There's also my friend Alec Emerson who wrote a poem in memory of Kent State.
A girl, half kneels, awkwardly, beside a corpse.
Looking up, in stunned agony, she
raises one arm.
The Ohio National Guard
reloads to protect itself.
These and other protest poems arise from outrage but are expressed in a quieter insight, using language to arouse feeling and to mourn or take action or effect a change of heart. But this Tea Party movement has no heart and thus no poetry in it. It has only bumper stickers, like
I Am Not Your ATM
I Voted for Change, Not more Taxation
I Voted for Obama, Not Debt for Our Children
I Want My Country Back!
I Will Keep my Freedom, my Guns, my Money. You Keep THE CHANGE!
I Will Not Grab My Ankles
What drives these people is anger generated not by injustice, war, bigotry, racism, or crime but anger generated by fear, the fear that their America is changing, that providing health care, for example, for all Americans will ask them to share what they have and to level the playing field of opportunity for all Americans.
One of our great founding thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great, great grandsire of my friend Alec Emerson, spoke and wrote about America as Opportunity and because he had witnessed the destructive nature of illness, said this about the importance of good health:
...but I will say, get health. No labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain it, must be grudged. For sickness is a cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. I figure it as a pale, wailing, distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good and great, attentive to its sensations, losing its soul, and afflicting other souls with meanness and mopings, and with ministration to its voracity of trifles.
Among the thirty-three advanced countries in the world, only America does not offer its citizens universal health care, and if the Tea Party has its way, ObamaCare, as they call it, will die in the womb and be stillborn. Somebody find me a poem about stopping health care or why illness is a good thing and should be cherished, or, perhaps a poem about denying an Hispanic child the right to a good education.
No, the so-called Tea Party movement will die childless because it has no soul as well as no heart, which is why they won't win in politics. As we say in sport, they haven't a prayer of winning the game.
Follow Richard Geldard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/richgeldard@gma
Steve Clemons: Lindsey Graham: In Today's Republican Party, Reagan Wouldn't Make It as a Republican
Today's Republican Party is not a comfortable place for many classic Republicans. This is why I don't see someone like General David Petraeus easily saddling up to the Republican Party in his post-military, post-Afghanistan Eisenhoweresque rise.
Here is how I was able to get past that part:
TOWERS OF LIGHT
I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself
into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
--Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
The thousand dollar xenon lights all sat
There waiting for the orphaned twelve-year-old
Girl to begin the ceremony that
Her murdered parent lingers to behold.
The switch is thrown by Valerie--her right.
The phantom towers rise, the symbol of
Our Love, the world’s most brilliant shafts of light,
Like spirits, try to touch the stars above.
The worst attack in years on our land
Has murdered them all. We are their begotten
Children here at this ceremony and
Three thousand souls will never be forgotten,
The office workers, firemen, and police.
Three thousand souls will never rest in peace!
Thomas Newton
Tea Party Movement Poet
Thomas Newton
Tea Party Movement Poet
The TP's may not wax poetical. I am no poet myself and no great fan of poetry (sorry I'm just not into it). But what piqued my curiosity is the above quote about healthcare...do you really believe Obama is going to be paying for people's health care (via leveling of the playing field of opportunity). How will it work exactly? I would love to have quality health coverage for my family of four. Last I checked the premiums for quality insurance were about $1600 per month which equals 50% of my income and there was still an annual deductible to be met and the prescription co-pays were more than the cost of the medicine (at Wal-Mart). Further if/when I become ill and can't work I won't be able to pay the premiums and then would lose the coverage. Is the Fed really going to cut me a check for the $19,200 I need for the premiums annually? Sounds great but how will they pay for such expensive insurance for so many millions? I would be the beneficiary of such a program but I remain skeptical of how it could work in a country that is fast going bankrupt.
Quotes from Thomas Jefferson
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give the them who would not.
We must not let our rulers lead us with perpetual debt.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Never spend your money before you have it.
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
It is heartening to see your post here on HuffPost. This is a great shot across the bow. And well-timed to fall on the nation's celebration of Independence Day......
I have read your most recent book, "Emerson and the American Dream," with profound interest and deep admiration. You have done us all a great service by tying together the historical and spiritual roots of the United States to produce a constructive vision of our part in the future. Folks interested in seriously pursuing the questions--especially at this crucial juncture in our history--ought to take a look at the book.
Emerson, besides being the mentor of Thoreau, among others, was an origin of Transcendentalism and a vocal Abolitionist--a spiritual teacher and political activist both: yet neither activity ever far-removed from his poetic flights of visionary nature-mysticism. He has everything to say to today's farmer and rancher and eco-activist and Green advocate. A lover of The Land and The Nation and The Divine, he was early to incorporate Buddhist thought into the Perennial Philosophy passed down to us through the Greeks. He was a radical thinker always advocating for "the infinitude of the private man." Ancient and modern at the same time.
You are in a unique position to speak to--and for--the Spiritual Left, Richard.
I look forward to many more of your inspired and inspiring posts.
All The Best,
William
"Genuine protest produces poetry, not slogans." Sounds like a slogan to me.
...and the point stands, in that case.
Here's the author's reasoning: "genuine protest" is only genuine if it "produces great protest poetry."
This is simple if > then structure.
This fails immediately because neither one of these ideas can be defined objectively. We must rely on the author to tell us what "great...poetry" is. Just as quickly it becomes apparent the author is counting on you, the reader to be on his side and to share his prejudices.
To the objective reader, it is nonsense. It's like saying genuine sickness is only genuine if it produces dramatic symptoms.
Next time you and your spouse (or child, or friend, etc.) are in a heated discussion, try saying to him or her, "I'd like to take you seriously, but according to Richard Geldard, you'll need some moving and meaningful slogans before I can."
Not very reasonable, right? Oh wait, it's HuffPo...
My opinion? Geldard has a great deal of audacity and prejudice.