I hope the first tea party meant something

I'm old enough to remember when the protest movement wanted to stick it to "the man" because "the man" had everything and the rest of us didn't. The man ran the big companies, and promoted the wars, and kept people of color suppressed, and wouldn't let women advance, and fought to criminalize homosexuality, and, well they just wanted everything to go back to some imagined good old days that may have been old but weren't necessarily good. And youthful Americans who didn't want to respect this mythical man raised their voices in protest.

Now it's all changed. The Occupy movement has lost its vigor (unless they pull a surprise occupation in Tampa this week) and the only remaining protest group is the Tea Party, and they're protesting against what any right-thinking human being should be protesting for. They don't trust big government, so they've thrown their support behind big business. (If they thought big government was a problem wait until they see how the corporate philosophy in government.) They oppose health care even though they're the ones who need it, the ones who will continue to swell the coffers of the insurance companies who don't give a damn about their policy holders. They're convinced that government intrusion must be stopped, but then they're convinced that government intrusion like Medicare and Social Security must be saved. In short, they don't have a clue, but they're being led around by a Republican party that itself has sold out its principles for the opportunity to win an election. They divorce themselves from Todd Akin when, in fact, Akin should sue his party for nonsupport: they espouse the same principals he enunciated last week.

 Protests are coming, though. They'll begin a year or two into the Romney presidency (and yes, I think he can win) and the right-wing loonies—and there won't be many left anyway—will once again retire to their fringes so that maybe the country can begin the recovery these well meaning but misinformed people have hindered.

A dot.com whose time has dot.come

I'm wondering if there's a website called Ihaterepublicans.com. There must be, and I'm going to check as soon as I stop feeling too lazy to check. Actually it's not republicans per se that I find so odious—I always considered them a bit stuffy and old-fashioned and clinging doggedly to outdated ideas in the hopes that the good old days would somehow return. Did they ever read The Great Gatsby? So it's not the traditional republicans: it's the Grover Norquist-Paul Ryan branch of the party that wants to bring everything to a full stop. What they don't understand is that the world will move forward even without them and spit in their faces as it goes by. This antediluvian attitude of theirs in so many areas appeals to the basest instincts of people, mainly fear: more taxes will kill us; gay marriage will end childbirth; illegal immigrants will usurp the American worker; climate change is a myth. The list is endless. But the Ihaterepublicans.com website could become a clearinghouse for these ideas, where people could read them and laugh at them and wait for all these right-wing bozos to eliminate themselves from significance. But we can't ignore them, any more than we can ignore a lunatic with a weapon. You can call him crazy, even prove him crazy, but the damage he does before he's disarmed can't be undone. And the way things are going, these lunatics are going to be heard from in all their troglodyte splendor unless those of us who haven't boarded the reverse time-machine begin to speak out as loudly and stridently as they do.

The Gun Lobby—Let's Build One and Fill It

So a guy brings a gun to a movie theater and everyone freaks. I don't blame people for being on edge after the Aurora shootings, and I am baffled by his decision to bring this weapon to, of all movies, The Dark Knight Rises. Sung-Ho Hwang, the alleged guilty party, probably deserves a good talking to, and maybe some indication that he understands others' sensitivities (blaming the dangers of New Haven for his action was just dumb, as was his lack of cooperation), but I can't say he did anything worthy of this firestorm. Maybe we don't like the idea of the guy next to us in the theater—or behind us in line at Whole Foods—or waiting next to us at the stoplight packing a weapon, but it's the world we've allowed to develop. Allowed? No, encouraged. Not long ago, within the last two years, tea-partiers were encouraged to bring guns to anti-Obama rallies. These "attendees'" defense seems to be they weren't as dirty as the Occupy movement and they were nicer to the police...so they've got that going for them. But despite all the denials after the fact, they showed up with guns. I'm pretty sure not all those pictures were Photoshopped. Angry weapaons-toting gun nuts waving assault rifles in the air scare me a lot more than a New Haven attorney with a licensed handgun in his shoulder holster. Did I say gun nuts—of course I meant aficionados of the 2nd amendment—I must have been abusing my 1st amendment rights again.