Jamail’s Dispatch
by DARRYL JAMAIL
I’m proud to say that I attended one of the first TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party rallies in San Marcos on April 15, 2009. It was less than two months after the second so called stimulus bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. I was just as opposed to that legislation as I was to the first stimulus bill that was signed by President Bush in the fall of 2008. With a wasteful, out of control federal government like ours, the worst thing we could do was to give it more money.
We were promised “economic progress” by Mr. Obama, but all the economic indicators since then have shown the opposite has been the case and all that money was wasted just as we said it would be.
I still recall the TEA Party rally like it was yesterday and the thing that stands out in my mind the most is the people it drew, who they were, and how they behaved. There were people from every walk of life there that you would probably never see together under normal circumstances. From hippies to businessmen, infants to grandparents, you name a group, they were represented. Their behavior was what really struck me. I’ve seen a lot of crowds in my day, from anti-war protests to drunken Mardi Gras crowds, but nothing ever like this. Everyone arrived, held their signs, listened to speeches, and behaved. I never heard one profane word. What’s more, when they left there was not one piece of trash. Make no mistake; everyone was extremely passionate about our out of control and wasteful government. But no one used that emotion as an excuse to misbehave.
In 2009 the TEA Party was just a loose collection of individuals united in the common purpose of stopping an out of control, wasteful, power hungry federal government. Today it is still a collection of individuals with that common purpose, but several national political candidates have won major elections under that banner. They have tapped into a groundswell of public opinion that our president and federal government need to be reined in immediately.
Opposition to the TEA Party is following a predictable pattern that Mahatma Gandhi identified long ago, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The first stage is clearly documented in archived media coverage, or more correctly lack of it, from 2009 when the movement began. Today they are in the attack stage, and calling us racists is their strategy. When someone makes an allegation like that the first thing I always do is ask for the evidence. In this case who is a racist? What did they say? Where did it happen? Is there video? Is there audio? The answer to all these is that there is none. In this day and age of video cameras in cell phones it is unbelievable that no one has video of one of these alleged TEA Party racists.
One other thing that is obviously missing here is a valid counter argument to what the TEA Party stands for. None of the opposition will come out and say they stand for bigger government, more wasteful spending, more oppressive control of our businesses and lives, government takeover of private industries, and failed programs. So they call us racists.
