I apologize for not getting this out sooner, but the events of the day -- specifically, the headlines that scream "Falling Behind, Santorum Drops Out" -- have forced me to sit down and actually punch out my first diary. Since I haven't seen or heard this friom any quarter, I am assuming that the amazing mystery revelation at the end of this short screed will SHOCK and TITILLATE the audience as much as it has your humble author.
Having always been fascinated by the American Revolution and its ability to inspire people around the the world, as well as many people in America (black and brown, native Americans, women, gays) who seem to have been left out of American Revolution 1.0, I chanced to pick up a short history book recently on the Boston Tea Party. I found the book, "American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution", by Harlow Giles Unger (Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011) to be an engaging and well-researched account of what I am terming "Tea Party 1.0."
Now, I must allow that I am dubious about where the participants and the media are allowing the more recent "Tea Party" movement of the last few years to be shepherded by the Koch Bros and other latter-day robber barons and their marionettes in the "Publican party" (hey, they have no problem dropping 2 letters from my "Democratic Party's" official name -- why should they complain if I do the same?)
However, I would also be remiss if I didn't admit that the initial Tea Party events didn't seem to me to be inspired at least in part by a sincere disgust over the interlocking directorate of big government/big corporate interests that defined the Bush/Cheney (Cheney/Bush?) administration. I think (and I hope) that there has been and ever will be a strong American spirit that says that nobody can tell me what to do (long as I'm not hurting anyone else) and I think that was half-there for a short time -- until Dick Armey and his army of dicks and assorted fellow travelers swooped in and started to eddycate the TPer's that it was that Kenyan Harvard-trained socialist elitist thug community organizin' Muslim who was the real threat to their Constitution, not to mention the reason why Bush bailed out the bankers.
So -- in the future I hope I can delve a little further into the similarities and divergences between the 1773 Tea Party (whose participants actually could have been killed for treason) and the 2000's version (whose participants might have had their Medicare-funded scooters ticketed). For example, the Boston Tea Party was led by the "Sons of Liberty" mob headed by Sam Adams but funded by the well-to-do John Hancock. Was he a latter-day Koch brother, or more akin to an 18th Century George Soros? Also, the crushing tax burden on goods imported to the Colonies, which the Crown felt were needed to support the British army in North America, were occasionally lifted and shifted to the British peasants -- as, Unger relates, "without even considering tax increases for England's financially bloated nobility." The 1% reigned triumphant!
However, given the news jolts of the last few days, I think it is timely to cut right to the shocking and surprising, historically resonating "piece de resistance" to this story. To stamp out the upstart American Tea Partiers rebellion, the aristocratic elites of England sent forth a mighty sailing ship. Unger: "A month later,...the ROMNEY, a fifty-gun British man-of-war, sailed into Boston Harbor, commanded by a ruthless captain who thundered to all within earshot, "The town is a blackguard town and ruled by mobs...and, by the eternal God, I will make their hearts ache before I leave." As he aimed his cannons at the town, Bostonians prepared for far worse pain than heartache."
So -- life imitates life -- the aristocratic overlords, threatened by the Tea Party and the democratic "mobs", send out the mighty dreadnought "Romney" to make the world safe for plutocracy. (Presumably that Romney could maintain a steady course, and not shift direction with every errant breeze!) We all know how well the elite's use of the Romney worked out the first time - let's do it again!