In the December 2008 issue of Harper's, Garret Keizer penned a piece that would prove prescient, "Of Mohawks and mavericks," the first three paragraphs of which I'll reprint here (though you really should go read the whole thing):
I have never gotten over the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act of masquerade. On the night of December 16, 1773, “a number of resolute men (dressed like Mohawks or Indians),” as later reported in the Boston Gazette, managed to dump some 90,000 pounds of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. They did this, again as reported by the Gazette, “to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted.” From a distance it is hard to say which disguise was the more outlandish, that of the local merchants got up as Hiawatha or that of a beverage tax got up as the tyrant’s scourge. To come even close you would have to dress up a million- dollar-a-month AIG booty bag as a “consulting fee.”
The Tea Party proved catalytic—one book devoted to the episode bears the title The Night the Revolution Began—and prophetic as well. Americans have been dressing up ever since: Ku Klux Klansmen costumed as ghosts, ghost-white college kids posing as homeboys and Rastas, corporate lawyers decked out in Stetsons and cowboy boots, Wall Street sharpies affecting the flabbergasted expressions of sucker-punched rubes (“That thar’ mortgage thingamajig done blew itself up”). Add an extra touch of fantasy to the makeup and you get Ronald Reagan as the savior of democracy and John McCain as the patron saint of reform. J. Edgar Hoover may never have stood so resolutely for the American way as in those legends that have him flinging a boa round his neck and prancing before his full-length mirror in drag.
Numerous studies have been written on the role of masking in traditional cultures, but they throw little light on the false-face societies of the United States. Probably no one theory could account for our every disguise, for Al Jolson in blackface and Rush Limbaugh as the aggrieved common man. I suspect that aside from the obvious explanations—the fun of dressing up, the benefits of anonymity as you hatchet open chests of tea—the main reason we mask ourselves is to hide from the claims of common life, which is to say, the claims that taxation in its purest form attempts to address. The partisan badge, the counterculture face paint, creates the illusion of membership in something less dull and burdensome than the whole human race. Against the reality of our shared need for food, clothing, and shelter, education, health care, and meaningful work—and the gross inequality of our current portions of the same—we construct a fable of society as a vast ecosystem of diverse species, each with its niche and unique preferences, the top dog and the bottom-feeder apportioned their various integuments for reasons known only to Darwin or God. The iconic communal table of the first Thanksgiving thus gives way to the cantina scene in Star Wars, with special effects that are truly (and politically) out of this world, including recent cameo appearances by John McCain as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Sarah Palin as Princess Leia.
And now, as the "tea party" movement gains steam, we are treated, once again, to an act of masquerade. Men and women dress up and play revolutionary, fighting for "freedom." Freedom for property and not for people.
Men and women who believe themselves to be an abused bloc, but actually recieve more consideration than most. Consider the latest fracas, brought to my attention by Marc (via Comic Book Resources):
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada says that while he can understand why some people are upset by a "tea bag" reference in Captain America #602, he thinks "there’s also a portion of this story that is being blown out of proportion and taken out of context."
Some members of the Tea Party movement are offended by a scene in the January issue, Part 1 of the "Two Americas" storyline, which depicts an anti-tax rally in Boise, Idaho. Among the protesters is a sign that bears the slogan, "Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!"
The offending panal (here):
Of course, this is much ado over nothing (but Fox is all over it). The sign is a direct copy of a sign that actually appeared at a Tea Party rally (here):
This speaks to a larger masquerade: the entire Tea Party movement is nothing but a masquerade. They are upset over a sign actually made by one of their own, and they can be because the term 'Tea Party movement' refers only to what you want it to at a certain point. Says Jesse Taylor at Pandagon:
Melissa Clouthier writes what’s become the standard Tea Party trope: the Tea Party is not responsible for anyone associated with the Tea Party, because no Tea Partier ever has to be associated with things they don’t like. In fact, it’s the central tenet of the Tea Party movement: no Teabagger is responsible for that except which he or she personally deigns to Teabag, and no true Teabagger would ever do something that whatever Teabagger is speaking doesn’t like.
Sarah Palin’s not a “leader” of the movement, because the movement has no leaders; it just has contributors. In a way, they’re like a living, breathing version of Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat, except that they’re lying because folks like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck are all very clearly leaders of the movement and Marxists were almost certainly saner than most Tea Partiers.
But it speaks to the inherent power of the Tea Party’s postmodern incoherence. It’s a movement which claims millions but for which each member can deny every other member’s validity as a member per se, yet also make up that all those other people whose affirmative beliefs they deny in fact believe something else which reintegrates them back into the whole. It’s like the Borg, if the Borg operated by Calvinball rules where they could just land on a planet, point at a tree, a ceiling fan and a stereo playing Phil Collins and simply say “All of this - Borg”.
And of course it's a masquerade because no one really knows what liberal and conservative are anymore; certainly the modern body politic, sick as it is from Self-Satirizing Syndrome, couldn't tell one from the other.
The key difference between liberal and conservative--not, you'll note, Democrat and Republican--is twofold: (1) how narrowly or broadly she defines "public good" and the (2) emphasis placed on property versus personal freedom.
First, the conservative defines "public good" narrowly: in her view the government should supply only the most bare-bones services and ignore--or slough off onto the private sector--the rest. The liberal, however, defines "public good" broadly: in her view, the government should do much more to ensure strong communities and social fabric.
Second, the conservative places a premium on freedom of property: coercive taxes are a constraint on freedom, and that should be avoided. The liberal, on the other hand, places a premium on personal freedom: Inequity ravages communities and preys on the already-downtrodden, and in order to ensure their access to the American dream we need to provide services.
I had two illuminating conversations recently. The first was with my parents. They were deploring the recent cut in services in Minnesota, which will almost certainly lead to the deaths of hundreds--if not thousands--of people. They called it murder. I wasn't so sure. After all, I said, proximity matters, and Governor Pawlenty and the State Legislature isn't going around shooting the homeless. And, of course, the removal of services isn't murder, it's manslaughter. Both points, cold as they are, I still think have merit, but there's more to it than that.
Murder or manslaughter, it makes no difference. There is blood shed in Minnesota--in every corner of the country--because our country places and emphasis on property rights. That blood is on the hands of every community, no matter how hard individual members may struggle against the decline in services.
The second conversation was at a recent dinner party. We were debating the pros and cons of missionary work. I took the rather extreme position that, despite the good religion can do, we now have secular ways of organizing communities--ways that do not include epistemological mis-steps. My friend Mike, however, pointed to Liberation Theology, Archbishop Romero, and a host of other religious movements that have done so much good for so many people.
I relented, if only a little, allowing that religion is a potent community-maker, and, as such, a potent way of providing relief--more potent, perhaps, than secular civic institutions. Upon further reflection, I think I need to go a bit further; when secular civic institutions fail as heartily as they have in this country, we have an obligation to pursue whichever ways we can to salvage our community. Perhaps our own country could use a health dose of "missionary" work.
When men die of exposure in Minneapolis, when women choose between health care and food and rent, when our communities fail to fund schools and hospitals, we require something more; we need a way to rebuild our communities.
Garret Keizer writes: "I have never gotten over the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act of masquerade." I have never gotten over the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act in defense of property rights. Well, we started there, let's see where we go from here.
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