I have felt a great affection for the tea partiers.
I think my affection stems from the fact that these tea partiers, for the most part, seem so genuinely—well, nice. They seem a little embarrassed and self-conscious because they probably never imagined themselves as street protesters. They have always been the ones to go to work and pay the bills. Chanting and carrying signs? Nah, that was not for them. See, they believed that people should play by the rules. Don’t like something? Then work to change it, but work within the system. Now, though, the system seems broken, and they have very reluctantly decided to step forward to try to fix it.
My affection has grown in direct proportion to the efforts made to ridicule, distort and destroy the movement. There they are, on their best behavior, kids in tow, picking up after themselves, for God’s sake! Have there ever been political protesters who have tried this hard to be good? No!
So very hesitantly, teachers and doctors and factory workers and hardware store owners are joining the party. If you can’t hear them, you aren’t listening. And if you aren’t listening, their voices will swell until you cannot hear anything else. These are the people that built America, dammit, and they can sure as hell tear it down and start over.
Good luck tomorrow to all the tea party protesters who love America enough to take a stand.
