"Reagan proved deficits don't matter." - Dick Cheney, 2004
Tell that to the tea-baggers. While you're at it, explain to them that Ronald Reagan's deficit spending represented a far greater percentage of GDP than today's cost overruns. Of course, then you'd have to explain what GDP is, and you'd soon be wasting your time.
So what's with these people, anyway? Who the hell do they think they are? That's not a rhetorical question; they literally don't seem to know. On any given day they're apt to describe themselves as independents, conservatives, libertarians - whichever hat suits them at the time.
They're not honest, whatever they might be. If they were, they'd face certain truths, like the fact that our economy boomed under marginally higher tax rates on corporations and wealthy individuals. If they were, they'd appreciate that President Obama is keeping an honest accounting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unlike his predecessor.
So far, the best assessment I've heard of this self-described movement is that the tea-baggers are "angry at government". I can hear a smattering of beads rolling around in all the heads that are nodding at that one, so if you are a tea-bagger, I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you a few easy questions.
Where was this anger at government when George W. Bush was in office and his Republican cronies were in control of Congress? Where was the anger when they rolled out tax cuts for the top one percent? Where was the anger at the runaway deficits of the last decade?
Where was this single-minded fury when Bush's Treasury Secretary presented a three-page explanation for a policy that gave nearly a trillion dollars to the same investment gurus who had just driven our economy into bankruptcy? Did it hide in the same place it hid when Bush used signing statements to effectively legislate from the Oval Office?
Why was there nary a peep of discontent when the greatest failure of national security in U.S. history took place on September 11, 2001? Where was the anger when the response to said failure was to attack the wrong country in Iraq? Where was the anger when thousands of American troops were killed in that ghastly mistake of a conflict?
I wonder where the anger went when the executive branch wiretapped our phones. Or when it sifted through our e-mails. Or when they asked us to spy on each other. How much ire was raised when Bush pushed for the greatest expansion of government ever seen in this country in the name of "homeland security", ripping the 4th Amendment right out of the Constitution?
Who got pissed off when Bush slipped (not one but) two activist judges onto the Supreme Court, thereby tilting it toward corporate supremacy? Who was peeved when Bill Frist and the GOP wanted to blow up the filibuster, which has since been employed a record number of times by the same GOP?
Whose nose got out of joint when a conservative government attempted to step in and make all the health care decisions for Terri Schiavo? Or when Bush limited the kind of stem-cell research that might have helped that poor woman? Where was this anger then?
Where was the anger when the Republican Party created the largest prescription-drug giveaway in history, which was signed into law without any funding mechanism whatsoever by a Republican president? Now you're all of a sudden angry?
I guess there was no anger back then, only madness, despite all of those foibles and a few dozen more I haven't bothered to mention. So what's different today? Anything? Can you name one thing that has changed since the disastrous era of George W. Bush and Republican rule? I think most people can.
For centuries, humanity has looked to William Shakespeare for guidance in times of trouble. It doesn't really help matters, but it gives us a point of reference, a sense that we've probably seen all this before. I hope old Bill won't mind my paraphrasing one of his finer points as I make it to every one of the tea-baggers today:
Methinks thou dost protest too much... racist.
pH 2.1o.1o
