Really, Betty, how big would the Tea Party movement remain if there were a “No Costumes” rule?

Our Liberal Prog wardrobe designer has gotten much more layered in his concepts since the old tie-died days.

Whelp, time to head to the office! Where’s my nut-brown summer uniform jacket?

Well, the Founding Fathers wore Tea Party costumes—therefore, they must have been Tea Partiers!

It’s like those people who complain that Bram Stoker stole all his good ideas from “Twilight”...

Tea Partiers don’t want “their country” back—they want a theme-park version of America with clean restrooms, funnel cake, lots and lots of macaroni and cheese and a Fascination parlor where you can park Nana for the day.

Thanks for brightening up my blessed fourth! I seem to have missed the part of the religio/nutcase combine in which the fourth of july was declared a blessed holiday and not, you know, a day off for shopping with benefits.

Also, I couldn’t agree more with all the comments above mine—these people are profoundly confused about something as straightforward as the arrow of time.  But I suppose its rather comforting for them.  First, you imagine that no one but yourself cares about history, symblism, and the founding of the country.  Then you go outside to a theme park and watch some history, symbolism, and founding moments re-enacted and you are delighted to find out that you are not entirely alone. An entire theme park shares your cares.  Then you go home and turn on Fox news and discover it was all a sham.  Become enraged and saddened. Write angry letters to k’lo. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is what it means to desire to be simultaneously a righteous majority and an oppressed minority.  Every single experience has to reinforce one or the other points of view.  These are the political offspring of R.D. Laing’s Sanity, Madness, and the Family.

aimai

We stopped at the Bakery for cold cider and toasted Independence.  Just a wonderful day.

I went to Wrigley Field and toasted Harry Caray. I bet I had a better day than this lot, even if the Cubs lost 14-3.

Someone tell K-Lo that Real Americans don’t drink cider until Autumn. Summer is for Busch Light and cheap strawberry daiquiris.

You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that the average Teabagger not only doesn’t give a damn about actual liberty and freedom—as opposed to their highly Platonic Tea Party versions—they rather hate them.  They’d love to see a US filled with only people like them, with the people not like them sent to the needed forced labor camps prisons to keep their dangerous differences away from them.  But in their black little hearts a vague awareness gnaws that this is—somewhat unAmerican.  And so they wrap themselves up in the symbols, and worship imaginary versions of the Founding Fathers to try and keep themselves from realising how opposed they are to the ideals of the real ones.  This is why they do not merely respect the Constitution—they revere it, independent of what it actually says.

It is tremendously sad, of course.  But also, quite dangerous.

@ Aimai—I’d never considered teabaggery in the Laingian context, but it makes all kinds of sense. Or rather, the contradictory fantasies that make absolutely no sense are more easily understood in that context. Thanks!

@ John Ball—Long before teabaggers, Al Franken described the difference between liberal and conservative patriotism in “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” He said it about as well as I’ve ever heard it explained before or since:

We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing.

Ha! I busted out that Franken bit at a family gathering Saturday night (paraphrased, obviously—I haven’t read that book yet but he said essentially the same thing on his radio show back in the day).

BTW, I highly recommend taking the debate offline if you’ve got teabaggin’ relatives. All the seething personal resentments give you a certain amount of cover for political argumentation.

How’s that saying go? “Family are the ones who, after you’ve told them they’re worshipping a bankrupt ideology, still have to pass the cole slaw.”

Here in Colonial Williamsburg the Declaration was read by several interpreters and received enthusiastically by the crowd.

The DoI needs interpreters y’see, because it was originally written in French.

Lots of flags and patriotic apparel to be seen.

Flags and patriotic apparel in Williamsburg? On Independence Day?!! My blown mind, let me show u it.

Jesus Christ, that almost blunts the full frontal dumb assery of a “blessed” 4th.

It’s like those people who complain that Bram Stoker stole all his good ideas from “Twilight”...

I trust you are stabbing these people in the face with a sharpened stake.

Lots of flags and patriotic apparel to be seen

What the hell is “patriotic apparel” anyway?

Because if it’s what I think it is—wearing the flag as clothes or your hat—then ur doing it wrong.

I trust you are stabbing these people in the face with a sharpened stake.

Yeah, but they just… won’t… die…