Tea Party Lunacy

That the Tea Party movement has found satisfaction and branding in a cheeky little two-word phrase is perhaps aptly illustrative of the lack of complexity in its collective mind. Were it that a two-word emblem were so readily available to portions of the population whose minds work with greater nuance and inquisitiveness! Taxed Enough Already, huh? No kidding? Is that any less obvious or more enlightening than "No rain at the beach!" ?

Not surprisingly, it is those people for whom it is de rigeur to tell others how to live rather than concentrating on self-improvement--however they choose to define it--who are also dealing in symptoms rather than problems. It is a characteristic lack of internal reflective surfaces that finds them looking outward rather than inward. Translation: It's easy to identify problems and complain about them with the vengeance of an angry child on a rainy beach in July when you deem that they are all outside of you! If Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party find themselves too heavily taxed, wouldn't they be making a greater contribution by asking what the sources of that taxation are, and why they are necessary---and even maybe what they can do about them that amounts to more than rejecting bad weather at the beach? Will they drive less, generate less trash, and volunteer in communities where there is not a leg-up to be had?

Ultimately no citizen vies for greater loss of income in the form of higher taxation, and by branding themselves around an objection to taxes, the Tea Party people show that they....do not understand this. Is this really what differentiates them from me? Can they really imagine that I want to forfeit more of my paycheck than they do; can they realize that this is what their branding implies? No, what makes them different from me is that they misidentify symptoms as problems. Taxed Enough Already is not a movement; it's a superficial criticism leveled by a group of people who naively and inaccurately see themselves as separate and apart from the machinery that uses their money.


Jamie Radtke
Richmond, VA Tea Party
Mechanicsville, VA Tea Party
Hanover, VA Tea Party
Virginia Tea Party