Taxes, Triggers, and Tea

Times have been tough for a lot of Americans these past couple of years. One of the things that tough times tend to generate is fear. Roosevelt saw that tendency and tried to negate its magnetic pull by declaring: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” However, this time around, there was no Roosevelt to reassure us. There was a black man sitting in his former seat.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.