There is something odd about the tea party that I have not been able to pin down until now. The Tea Party is “mad as hell and ain’t gonna take it no more”. I see these older white folks talking about armed revolution and it makes me chuckle. Could you see gray haired, overweight revolutionaries being mowed down by the military? This sounds like a Monty Python skit to me. Anyway, the really funny thing is that these folks are demonstrating to conserve. There is an oxymoron knotted in this thought. The thought of ‘conserving’ is to continue the status quo. Traditionally, conservatives do not want too much change. They support establishment candidates that are not going to rock the boat. It would be ludicrous to demonstrate to stay the same. It would be like painting legs on a snake, a koan. These folks are using the thought ‘conserve’ to covertly introduce a radical agenda.

They do not want to conserve. They want to push an elitist, marginally violent (for now), questionably racist, quasi anarchistic agenda. They all came out of the conservative Republican ranks so they think of themselves as conservatives but they have not worked out the ideological specificities of their own anger. If they really wanted to conserve they would stay in the Republican Party and vote for the ‘true’ conservatives (whatever that is). These folks say they are ‘true’ patriots and ready to spill blood to prove it. Their deacto flag is the American Revolutionary flag that states, “Don’t Tread on Me”. They quote Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” They rarely state the rest of the quote but it is the part that I agree with about the Tea Party, “It is it’s natural manure.” They think of themselves as extreme patriots. They do not think they are racists as they find that position untenable but they make ‘rational’ claims and ‘mere’ jokes about Islamics, women and blacks. Personally, I am all too happy to see them tear the Republican Party to pieces. However, when they find out they do not want to conserve but overthrow traditional conservatives it will be interesting to see how far they will go with their lassie faire capitalism. They are against taxes because they see that their standard of living is going down and they blame it on the liberals. Many of the ingredients are in play for the dictionary definition of fascism.

Only one thing is lacking – a vibrant, charismatic leader. After World War 1 the Germans saw their standard of living go down and blamed it on the Versailles Treaty that ended the war. They saw ‘illegal immigrants’ and ethnic groups such as the Jews as the source of their plight. They still maintained their extreme nationalism after World War 1. Hitler seized the moment and played on their angry emotions. He rightly divined undercurrents that were making the Germans angry as hell and gave those emotions voice and clarity. He played up the ethnic antagonisms and voiced the ‘rational’ concerns of their anger. Like Sarah Palin, he spoke in thinly veiled terms of violence (i.e., locked and loaded, cleaning their guns, scope crosshairs, etc.). He played on the Germans anger with their current government and advocated throwing the bums out. He made the current German government the enemy which is not a conservative inclination. He appealed to the ‘true’ German national. He focused their anger on the liberals of his day the socialists and the communists (contrary to the obscurantism and revisionist history of Jonah Goldberg). He used the corporatism of his day to finance his campaign. There were some differences. He did not play on religious values as his megalomania would not allow it (although he did fan nationalism into a religious zeal). He gave the Germans a revisionist history of themselves.

I do not know if the Tea Party would follow this route even if a Hitler type came along but the Tea Party does need to clarify its ideology and unify its goal. They are ripe for the picking and these folks are not scholars. They distrust ‘liberal’ universities and to the contrary trust the antithesis in folks like Sarah Palin. I think the fascist tendency in this country has been redefined, revised, made virtuous and put lipstick on but the stench has been apparent since Reagan and growing. Fascism is really violent hate disguised. With a little push like a lower standard of living and a vibrant spokesperson it could grow legs. I hope that this is not the case. In any case, on the positive side, these folks will tear the Republican Party to pieces and if, as I have long thought, the religious element checks out the Republicans will be introduced to what the Democrats have been dealing with for decades, plurality.