Tea Time......

Wow!! Did you know that you can now walk--actually walk, and not sprint--down MLK, Jr. Drive past Grady Memorial Hospital after dark with not a cop in sight and not be in fear for your life?! Atlanta's come a long way, baby!! I remember a time when you only went near Grady was in an ambulance--if you were on foot, it was because you were being chased by a mugger.

Two words I remember hearing from my Daddy--ad nauseum--when I was a kid: "Damn hippies!" Of course, he was usually watching something on TV on the news or about Vietnam War protestors......

And his girl has grown up to join what I suppose is my generations' version of the SDS and other radical groups from the heady days of the 1960s: the Tea Partiers.

Sounds benign enough, right? I went to my first Tea Party tonight, and definitely not my last....I am seriously considering going with Cherokee County's contingent who goes for the Tea Party in D.C. (which has, by the Tea Partiers, been dubbed the 'District of Corruption') on September 12 of this year. I found myself in the midst of between 10 and 15 thousand other people as opinionated as myself tonight! Whew....I was starting to think maybe I was just weird.

Before I launch into the ironies I found myself thinking about tonight on my way home, first--a few observations I had at the State Capitol:

John Berry, a country singer, sang with just his guitar and his wife--a song he wrote just for tonight's rally........a great, simple, folksy song called Give Me Back My America.

John Berry is by no means Jefferson Airplane--and he wasn't singing about White Rabbits (because I'd bet my next paycheck he's never done LSD) but I was dumbfounded to realize: Barry and Co. would probably find his song--about red-blooded, blue-collar American values 'subversive.'

Everyone's seen that old video footage about the war protests of the 1960s--and some of it is downright lewd. I looked around me tonight. Nobody's clothes came off. No free love. People ranged in age from college kids at Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and UGA to an old man who had a sign on his wheelchair: "World War II Veteran." The events started off with the Pledge of Allegiance (very cool here--everyone in attendance, with prompting from absolutely no one, put a huge emphasis on "UNDER GOD"), the National Anthem and a prayer. The Pledge, The Star-Spangled Banner, and prayers......from a 'dangerous faction of society'.....'racists'......'radicals'.......and my personal favorite, 'right-wing extremists.' There were absolutely NO parallels between the people I met tonight and the protestors I've seen from years gone by, and it occured to me more than once how sad and sick it is that our government actually thinks we are dangerous.

We were delighted to learn--from a lobbyist (I know, I know--but she actually lobbies for the PEOPLE and not special interest groups) that the powers that be in Washington may hide from us and ridicule us--but they are scared as hell of us. They're scared for their jobs--and good, they should be. However--unlike SDS and the Weather Underground, we won't be bombing any buildings--our bullets are our ballots.

We did have--I was a little bit excited to see--some party crashers. They stayed on the other side of the barricades behind the police, I noted. One man had a sign that read something about the Obama Administration's charity, and how Jesus preached for charity--the Tea Partiers were going to Hell. His only statement was 'We love our President!' and his wife's: 'We love our First Lady and her baby daddy.' Oh. My. God. From one of the other party crashers: "You lose your job! You lose your job!' I would also bet my paycheck THAT guy was on parole. Yet another man--when the subject of replacing Congress in November came up--screamed, "You will lose! You will lose! November's gonna be a landslide!" There were thousands of Tea Party Patriots--there weren't even a dozen of them. I'm gonna look that old boy up in November and ask him again about that landslide. Another: "This poster is ALMOST as white as this Tea Party." But.....the minorities in our society, I found tonight, need to speak up--they're being grossly misrepresented, too. Tonight, not only did I see African-Americans, I saw Latinos, I even saw a few GAY couples. And they were with us.

And I couldn't help but wonder, on my way back to the car......the current group in Washington. Barry, Joe, Harry, Hillary, Nancy--how is it, what with the things they were involved in, in their youth--how the hell is it they can call US subversive? The current president of the United States began his political career at the foot of a man who was arrested for numerous bombings in the 1960s......a man who is now a college professor. How can any of them know what is good for 'we the people'--much less LEGISLATE it to us--since most of them have never held a real job a day in their lives?

The Democrats in Washington are scared.......they know that WE know their past. The Democrats began the Civil War by and large over the issue of slavery--and disguised it as 'states rights.' The Democrats fought Reconstruction, women's suffrage, and started the Ku Klux Klan. (Someone forgot to tell Barry.) The wars this country has been involved in--both popular and unpopular, aside from the wars fought in the Gulf and Afghanistan--we were led into by Democrats. Liberals don't like to acknowledge a conspiracy theory as explosive as the ones they have about 9/11, and that conspiracy theory is the one about how FDR had his 'Day That Will Live In Infamy' speech written on December 6th, 1941. The Democrats don't like to acknowledge that they were involved in having what might have been the closest thing to a decent Democrat we ever had in the White House murdered and allowed Democratic Senator Arlen Specter to shove the biggest lie (rather, what USED to be the biggest lie) ever told down the throats of the American people with a bullet.......a pristine bullet, that is.

The gargantuan pristine bullet lie has been replaced by a lie this Congress keeps telling the American people via the legislation they pass: "We know what's best for you."

But I think--the Democrats are afraid not so much because we KNOW their past.......

........but we HOLD their future. And they ain't got one in Washington. November is coming.