Thought for the night: just as Jesus would probably be pissed at the stuff being done in his name, this nation's founders would be pissed about the stuff their names are being attached to.
I'm still pissed about the TEA Partiers and their blatant ignorance to history. The original Tea Party (you know, that one back in the 1700's) wasn't because of being taxed too much. It was because of a big corporate tax break - the East India Company wasn't being taxed at all while everyone else still had to pay taxes. The corporation controlled the government.
Does any of this sound familiar? Corporations buying politicians? Whining for more and more corporate tax breaks? People getting pissed?
The irony is just wacky.
Meanwhile, while the corporations get more, the average American is getting less. The income gap continues to widen - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. This isn't capitalism, it's greed!
And the ignorance isn't quite as complete as I wish it was. Ignorance in itself is forgivable, as the ignorant can be taught. However, there are instead active misinformation campaigns. The TEA Party of today kept trying to change Wikipedia to make history closer fit their view of things. Texas chooses to mostly leave Thomas Jefferson out of the curriculum because his views differ from their own as to what America is supposed to be.
History is being silenced. Just as many Christians shun the teachings of Jesus, many self-described patriots choose to shun the founders, only acknowledging the parts that fit their views. So the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 said that America was not in any sense founded on Christianity? That's fine, we'll leave that out of history lessons and make damned sure that "under god" stays in the pledge, and "in god we trust" stays on the currency. Corporate tax breaks were a big part of why we fought the Revolution? We'll just leave out that little detail and say it was because of taxes and tyranny.
If you care (and you damn well should), then it's your duty to make sure history is not silenced. Make no mistake, it is repeating itself. The only differences are in technology and in scale.
If I had a larger following and it didn't seem such a cliche, I'd be tempted to launch my own campaign to "take back the TEA Party," aimed at educating people as to what it was really about.
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