Teabaggers: Dazed and (utterly) Confused

A quick browse through the news channels today brought me to Fox. There milling around outside the capitol build in DC was a throng of thousands of Americans dressed like Midwesterners at a county fair. These are the 'I've heard-of-them-but-who-are-they-exactly?' Tea-baggers, a rag-tag group of protesters whose protests are not that well known outside of their own circle nor indeed is their raison d'etre.

As a disinterested if mildly bemused onlooker I cannot help but notice that the Tea-baggers (Baggers) remind me of a herd of confused animals in a thunderstorm. They dress in varying colors, wave placards and shout slogans. However they distinctly lack a singularity of purpose. I mean who knows why they're there; do they?

After the million-man March on DC people were impressed with the effort and the message - we understood the notion of responsibility promoted in that community. The 'Baggers' leave one unimpressed, the news of "ten thousand march on DC..." leaves one saying 'so what?'

From what I can see they claim to be (among other things) anti-tax and spend. If that's the case they're protesting the wrong administration. Bush bankrupted the country financially and morally over two long terms. Obama has been shoring up a leaking dyke. Yet these 'Baggers" blame him for the woes we face. Others protest the politicians in office. Where were they for the Republican's who ruled the roost for many of the eight years of GW's reign? Where were they during the financial, mercenary, geo-political corruption that left America alone in the world and over a million Iraqis dead for no apparent reason?

You can see the confusion right here; they are a people in the right place at the wrong time. They give the impression of being the not-too-bright and are not taken (from what I've seen) seriously by the media; Fox included, which leaves any protest group flaccid and impotent. In the absence of knowledge about what they're about let me wander down the lane of speculation for a moment.

Could it be that they are a lunatic fringe protesting under the cover of self confusion and delusion? I cannot help but express an opinion echoing what I am hearing more often in media and in general conversation. There is a rising chorus of racist undertones among national protesters, furious that we are a country with a black president and first family. I believe that it is driving a large section of our conservative Republican population crazy, from white supremacists on one hand to the religious right on the other and all others in between. We may never know just how deeply the sentiment runs because they're not dumb enough to come out and say it. You can however read between the lines.

We've seen firings over racist jokes, we've seen a Congressman disparage a President during a speech, we see Republican en masse determined to counter every move of this President for no apparent reason other than just to stop him. How can a group of politicians who trashed our country stand by and refuse to participate in its repair? They're like the group who stood with Nero as Rome burned and are now upset with the firemen.

As the 'baggers' head home after their little outing to the nation's capitol perhaps they need to work on determining what their purpose really is. They are certainly not the cloth from which nation-changing revolutions emerge; they are a rag-tag group of disgruntled Americas upset that they are left voiceless after eight years of Republican rule. They forget of course that America fired the Republics en masse. They also forget that during Bush's days protesters were herded to 'protest pens' and given little news coverage at all. I guess the irony is lost on them.