The following will be the most trenchant and insightful blog on the subject of the Tea Party I have ever written.
Or not.
Anyway, it seems to me, having read a good amount of responses from people who have taken issue with my political views, my writing style or just the audacity that I, an Ak-tor (I just swept my silk scarf over my shoulder and hailed a cab), should have an opinion at all, that I may have been focusing on the wrong target.
See, "they" -- that is, the corporate behemoths intent on creating a nation of mindless consumers -- are doing to We The People what they also do periodically to foreign countries with phlegm-producing names and brownish people who wear weird headdresses and who have something we want: weaving a fictional scenario in which said foreign peoples are demonized and dehumanized in order to elicit a gut (and therefore thoughtless) response from We The People so We The People will do what "they" want.
(Anyone who loathes my writing style -- and Satan knows, you're out there -- should be good and whipped up by now. But hold onto your froth. There's more.)
Because, let's face it: corporate-bought government has let us all down, liberals and conservatives alike, let the promise of America down.
The apocalyptic gridlock that has become government itself, along with the now routine parade of corrupt, double-dealing corporate shills posing as elected officials, conspiracy theory-inducing disasters both natural and man-made, not to mention the hash that's been made of the basic decency and generosity of the American character through relentless exposure to mind-numbing "reality" shows and bleating talk-radio, have finally caused the usually complacent blob body politic to feel something like rage.
But true to their strategy, "they" know just what to do when the blob stirs. They put a little English on it and send it careening off target.
One thing "they" do is to recruit low brow, low expectation, highly unstable fringe types to run as candidates, "representative citizens" of the mass's righteous anger. These Know Nothings seem to be propped up in front of microphones like the CIA scouts potential assassins, for they are chillingly dumb, malleable as warm putty and believe that Obama is not an American citizen, health care is a socialist plot and people should be restrained from masturbating.
I mean, I will only stop masturbating when they pull my genitalia from my cold dead hands. But I digress.
The lengths "they" go to in order to keep citizens divided, confused and terrified are, well, lengthy. Seeing that real anger has been roused in the hearts of normal working citizens, "they" went into action and placed arguably attractive drones to lead the flock away from the real source of their anger, all the while playing the victim and attacking. No wonder masturbation is off limits. Who has the time?
Those who stand in opposition are similarly led into the contrived fray, having their responses triggered by the spectacle of misspelled signs, automatic weaponry and endless seas of waving flags and thankfully still-out-of-fashion tricorn hats and, true to their character, analyze, probe and dissect the situation to little or no effect.
Unfortunately, decades of consumption-mania have rendered America's collective IQ somewhat diminished from that of its international counterparts. And guys like Glenn Beck, who daily issue calls-to-arms from his mouth/ATM against the evil liberals, are the equivalent of corporate villainy hiding in plain sight, for "they" know that it just fuels people's images of cartoon tyranny, while the real subjugation is going on away from the fray.
So here's the point: it all depends on what you believe in.
If just winning is the goal, if one's life is less that of an American citizen living in the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever seen, and more a Vince Lombardi pep-talk poster hanging in an office cubicle, then change nothing.
But if a productive, prosperous, creative, strong, wise and fertile future for America is the goal, then uniting all that has been purposefully divided is what will win the day; the unity "they" seek to deprive us of is the very thing that will defeat them.
A triumphant, democratically stable America is one where gunners, godders, birthers and death-panelers mingle freely and exchange recipes with treehuggers, truthers, Mosquers and gay(er)s. We've all been living and working side by side for more than two hundred years already anyway before "they" had to get all greedy and mess things up.
So how about you right-leaners use your superior organizing skills and commitment and we left-leaners use our hyper-sensitivity and analytical abilities to find the best candidate to express what is ailing both of us, uniting in spirit and body to create a true coalition of diverse Americans, with room for all (except the patently psychotic haters who have gotten way too much air time) to take back America from the real thing that's stolen it? And we know who that is.
How's that for trenchant and insightful?