Tea: A Retrospective
Don’t worry, lizards. This is the only blog-pimping you’ll see out of me.
A year ago today, I was curious. I attended a tea party, recorded the experience, and published it on my website. Over the year, I started noticing strange things, and eventually turned from the wide-eyed libertarian idealist of yesteryear to the crotchety, distinctly lizard-lipped furry you see today. Now, I reflect on these experiences and conclude that as much as I tried, tea parties are beyond my help.
You may remember last year on July 4th that I found and reported on a tea party. At the time I made it quite clear how while I found many speakers’ claims to be inaccurate, I thought it had good fundamentals. I was even nice enough to defend against claims of extremism and astroturfing. Hey, if it paves the way for a rationalist libertarian revival, I guess we could rip down the falsehoods presented in the protests later, right?
Jump ahead one year: Do I feel the same? Where do I stand now on these guys? Last September, I noticed that the same local tea party was advertising for anti-Semitic cult leader (and ironically, ex-Marxist) Lyndon LaRouche on their website. I emailed an administrator about it, and the mistake was almost immediately acknowledged and rectified. So, we’re good, right?