Tea Parties

The "tea party" tax protests are occurring across the country, with the March 15th Cincinnati protest gaining as many as several thousand attendees.

A good thing, as far as it goes.

Perhaps.

Let's recall the concept of "magical thinking", as outlined by this environmental skeptic:

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One of the aspects of the present-day environmental movement that gets up my nose is the tendency towards magical thinking that many of its followers engage in; notably, the belief that because doing something about climate change (and environmental degradation and peak oil and the whole dismal litany) is better than doing nothing, any particular something they can point to clearly must be done, however irrelevant it might be to dealing with the underlying problem. It generates make-work, an annoying wheel-spinning tail-chasing pursuit of distractions, at the cost of grappling with the very real and very serious problems we face...
***

In another context, I accused the participants of "baking biscuits to cure cancer", and thus failing to recognize that the actions being taken could have no effect whatsoever on the probability of the event to be avoided.

Here's the problem as applied to the tea partiers:

Yes, it is a good thing in itself to care enough to get together with other Americans and object to the FedGov's various lunacies.

But, mere protests -- no matter how widespread, well-attended, and thus facially "successful"- are highly unlikely to undo any of the harm already done.

Those same protests are likely to be similarly impotent against future harms.

The only way that tea parties or other polite forms of protest will alter the statists' agenda is when the consequences of those protests actually threaten something valued by the governmental overlords.

Does anyone really think that these protests actually threaten the Obama/Pelosi/Reid cabal and their underlings?

With what? The potential for Congressional re-election defeat in 2010? How?

Remember these folks?



Remember how each one of their votes cancels out a freedom-lover's vote?

How many more of the people as shown in the video are there, versus the number of voting freedom-lovers?

You don't think Obama/Pelosi/Reid understand that ratio?

Here's the net-net: unless and until the tea partiers and their allies understand that the political path is no longer open to them, they are doomed to futility.

Conversely, if they grasp that we are in a post-political age in America, they can harness the Tea Party movement and perhaps actually cause the Statists to back down.

What is "post-political activity"?

That's another post, but in preparation, read this essay and its comments on why tax protests, by themselves, will lead to failure.

To quote the author:

Was the Boston Tea Party at all about postponing buying the tea? How did it get the attention desired?

Audentes fortuna juvat.