oh! i thought they meant like in BOSTON tea party, but it's the other one...

As the meeting wound down, I helped myself to a couple of tasty brownies from the snack table and slipped out the back door. There were, however, a few questions I wish I would have broken out of fly-on-the-wall mode and asked: Where was all this righteous anger about careless government spending when the last administration was merrily handing out $600 billion in tax cuts for the super-rich that sent the deficit skyrocketing? Where was all this fear of big government and Constitutional watch-dogging when the Patriot Act was passed and the government started monitoring every American citizen’s phone calls and emails and web traffic? Where was the rage when President George W. Bush reserved the right to arrest any American at any time for any reason and hold him or her without charge indefinitely, when habeas corpus was suspended, when torturing prisoners became just how we roll, and when hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were dumped into the bottomless money pit of two wars? Where were the Tea Parties when all that was going on?

Just to be clear: The Tea Partiers I met aren’t bad people, they are not overtly racist, and they sincerely believe there is something patriotic in their kicking-and-screaming resistance to the Obama agenda. Therein lies the appeal, because we can all agree we are being screwed. It’s the question of who is doing the screwing that breaks us off into different tribes. I tend to blame the corporate oligarchy, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The Tea Party is pretty sure it’s ACORN.

Still, in their own way they are inclusive, the big tent party of American anger. The incoherence of that anger only broadens its appeal—like Obama’s “change” mantra in reverse, it’s a mirrorball that can reflect whatever you project onto it. But when you get right down to it, the Tea Party crowd is just a lot of embittered old white people that watch too much Fox News. They take great comfort in the easy moral narratives the network peddles: that it’s us versus them, there are good guys and there are bad guys and never the twain shall meet, that America is special and can do whatever the fuck it wants because God is on our side. They feed on the manufactured outrage and non-troversey that every news cycle seems to bring because it dovetails nicely with the sublimated anger and fear of their own lives. They are at war and have been for years, they are overextended and under water, they are certain the game is being rigged against them and the terrorists are holding a gun to their heads. For them, the 2008 presidential election still isn’t over—not by a long shot.

also, palin staying course for nashville tea party nation convention and more links.