Wednesday was Tax Day in America. Like many of my collegiate peers, I paid very little in taxes. In fact, my parents still claim me as a tax deduction, which means that my very existence produces red ink for Uncle Sam. This may be a satisfying fact to remember as I watch the mailman pick his nose, but it hardly qualifies me to preach the virtues of taxation. In reality, I am almost completely divorced from the modern American reality of paying taxes.
Naturally, this blissful ignorance seems like an ideal perspective from which to opine. What's the fun in bloviating if you actually know what you're talking about? It certainly hasn't stopped most of the primetime lineup on Fox News.
If you're reading this, I will assume a few things about you. First, thanks to the combined efforts of local police and the U.S. military, you are not dead. Additionally, as a product of our education system and a recipient of state college funding, you are (probably) literate.
My point is this: security, law and order, education - they have a price, and I'm not quite cheap enough to subcontract the federal government's responsibilities to the Tennessee Bible School and Militia Training Center. So unless you're prepared to dissolve every arm of the federal government and cast the country into anarchy, I'll assume you accept the imperative of taxation in some form. If not, I'd invite you to examine Somalia as an example of a failed state. If you're proud of the U.S. Navy, just wait until you see U.S. pirates in action!
This year, Tax Day came with a cherry on top. In addition to the usual fringe lunacy about abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, we were treated to the spectacle of Tax Day tea party protests. These events, organized in large part by Republican strategists and promoted heavily by the "fair and balanced" Fox News Channel, were manufactured to convey the image of a grassroots revolt, a nationwide cry of protest against the unjust taxation and spending policies of the Obama administration. For some, the protests provided a perfect excuse to be drunk, angry and stupid in public. For others, perhaps those more in touch with their inner Samuel Adams, the tea parties became a license to say and write ridiculous, faux-revolutionary nonsense.
Case in point, Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman, writing on Politico.com: "My message to those in power is a simple one. Get out of our way!… Mr. President, you can tell your socialist buddies at home and abroad, tyranny in 2009 shall not prevail in America. Like 1773, it is Tea Time in America!"
I'm tickled by his message to the powerful. "Get out of our way!" cries the mouthpiece of the politically exiled and impotent. "Or we will complain at you!"
The excitable (and wealthy) Mr. Blakeman, in his haste to bayonet that damn Redcoat, President Barack Obama, has predictably omitted a few critical facts.
The president's recovery package, passed with the help of only three Congressional Republicans, contained the largest progressive tax cut in American history. Thanks to the president and Democrats in Congress, 95 percent of working families are paying less in taxes now than they were a year ago, a fact conveniently forgotten by Mr. Blakeman and the rest of the Minutemen. These Republicans clamor for lower taxes and then vote against them.
More Benedict Arnold than George Washington, if you ask me.
Despite the impression created by frantic derelicts waving signs like "No more debt!" and "Stop mortgaging our future," about 80 percent of the current national debt piled up under Republican administrations. President George W. Bush allowed more deficit spending than any president in modern history, almost doubling the national debt during his tenure. Yet, for eight long years, we heard nary a peep from these Teabaggers. Where were the deficit hawks while former President Bush was financing his ill-conceived militarism with borrowed money? Apparently deficit spending becomes perilous only when it is harnessed to a leftist Democratic agenda.
Health insurance for the working poor? Heavens no! But there's always enough money for a war or two. I'm sure you understand.
I didn't see any signs of populism from the right wing while they were in power. They consistently stiffed the working class, offering a culture war instead of economic assistance, laughing all the way to the ballot box. And when they fall from grace, knocked off their pedestal by a combination of arrogance and ineptitude, they turn to the working class for help, for political solidarity, for tea parties. They embrace the populism only when they need the populace. If they fool enough people to make it work, it will be called good political maneuvering.
I have another word for it, but I probably can't publish it here.
Jake Miller is a political science and anthropology senior. His column appears weekly.
