Allegiance

“The Tea Party's Unwavering Loyalty to Propaganda

By J Langford

“Party loyalty is usually the most unscrutinized aspect in politics. There are variables even in socio-political theory that have a tendency to fracture the scientific process. Political science is, therefore, a mediating authority on politics and the processes involved. But there is usually more at work in politics than leaders, assemblies and political parties. This science must take into account every individual and their shifting alliances (a particular facet in the U.S. political climate). If there were a single-party system in the U.S., like Soviet Russia, then that alliance is clear-cut, keeping everyone under the same scientific umbrella. Sure, there were variables relating to loyalty and ideals with individuals, but open loyalty to anything other than the Politburo was extremely rare. What the U.S. has in relation to the Soviet system is the unwavering support of some die-hard individuals.

As of 2010, the Tea Party movement has established itself as a fringe movement of the right--somewhere between Libertarian and Conservative. Their politics reference the rhetoric of anti-colonialism and taxation-without-representation that built the foundation for the Declaration of Independence. Some of the important voices involved are right-wing icons and republican ex-patriots: Sarah Palin, Ann Coulture, Ron Paul etc. These few are providing a platform for the disintegration of taxes, a ban on liberal policies (e.g. - keeping "don't ask, don't tell" on the books and defeating healthcare reform), and establishing itself as a competitive voting contingency on Capitol Hill. But their inception was only due to the media.

Fox News asked its viewers in 2009 to publicly protest taxes on April 15, the deadline for filing American taxes. Concerned citizens packed the sidewalks at state and local capitol buildings to protest. The media (particularly Fox News Corp) flocked to the spectacle to film protesters holding signs with teabags stapled to it. They were tauted as "tea-baggers" initially until they later understood the pejorative term, a term that gave filmmaker John Waters a good snicker. What they hoped to symbolize by their micro-movement were the tenets of the Boston Tea Party, an historical event that protested taxation from the British throne without representation from their local governing body. (We can now see a parallel.) From then on, the media coverage of this rather minimally-supported movement gained speed. This was only a few months after the democratic president took office.

Fox News Corp., an openly corporate media outlet, saw the election of a democrat as a perceivable threat. There was fear of their CEOs and major stockholders being taxed, which perturbed them. With corporations losing their corporate-sympathetic constituents in high-ranking government positions and corruption charges and white-collar crime seeping into other American-lead corporations, Fox News Corp. did not want to lose support from the public. They acquired public support through propaganda. Fox always carried the banner for American Conservativism and put the opinion of anti-taxation leaders near the fore. They were the only voice that would hear the cries of the tax-oppressed. Fox News Corp. produced the first political party established solely through corporate media support.

The Tea Party movement is essentially a commercialized hoax. First, we see how the minds of certain demographics were commanded by voices on the screen to put together signs and stand on the streets as if they were fearful of government takeover. Crying out that Obama would lead America into Socialism and take away our civil rights. (However, under the auspices of the Bush Administration, we saw the PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security develop; the two designed to by-pass civil liberties if it involved matters of national security. There was a bit of paranoia when these two were established but nothing on the scale of a political movement.) Another matter of import that has gathered the Tea Party movement into a tidal force of dissent was "fiscal responsibility" as if the words were shouted from the heavens. The Tea Party demands that taxes not be raised and that government spending should be prioritized and stabilized. The rallying cry was understood and aired for the world to hear. (Yet, when it came to the Bush Administration selling the U.S. debt from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to China, there was little more than a peep from these same citizens.) It is truly hard to consider this movement as authentic as certain media outlets paint it. It is rather suspicious how a major media outlet would capture the duress of a few and support their political agenda while at the same time ignoring historical relevancy from the immediate past. Is this movement really about the people holding the banners, or is this about the people funding the spectacle?”