Happy tax day, fellow patriots!
If you’re off to a tea party rally today to protest against the government’s flagrant spending of too much borrowed money, you already know to beware of saboteurs in your midst. You will know them by the deeply unpleasant things they will say in an attempt to get you to say them, too.
And if you’re a would-be saboteur, all ginned up to shout rancid slogans so as to discredit the people around you, well, here’s hoping you have such terrible indigestion that you have to go lie down somewhere.
Tea party opponent Jason Levin claims that his group, CrashTheTeaParty.org, has deployed 65 recruiters to bring together fellow troublemakers who will infiltrate anti-tax rallies around the country today. The idea is to bring into disrepute a movement that has had the temerity to question the Obama project of remaking the country.
Here’s Levin disingenuously explaining to the AP his view of those Americans who have in the last year gathered peacefully to protest the rapid expansion of government spending and federal debt:
“Do I think every member of the tea party is a homophobe, racist or a moron? No, absolutely not,” Levin said. “Do I think most of them are homophobes, racists or morons? Absolutely.”
It must be vexing that actual tea party attendees somehow keep failing to demonstrate their troglodytic, camera-ready homophobia, racism, and idiocy (and, wait, what does homophobia have to do with tax policy, again?).
Clearly these citizens need egging on, and in this ends-justify-the-means thinking, if they can be slandered by association with saboteurs who are deliberately there to disgrace them, well, that’s just what you get, rightie!
Agents provocateurs have been around for centuries, so this kind of cowardly and deceitful behavior has a regrettably long pedigree.
It can be seen today in the earnest letters to newspaper editors from “Ellie Light,” an Obama astroturfer who has pretended to be a local in, among other places, Ohio, Maine, California, and South Carolina. It can be seen in the scribbles of the charmless trolls of the Internet who write repulsive things under the names of people they want to humiliate.
But mask-wearing has darker manifestations, too, and has throughout history: Hamas militants have donned Israeli army uniforms to attack Palestinians, knowing the world press will unite in blaming Israel. By the time anyone realizes who was doing the killing, the guilt is assigned and the narrative is set. And just this week in the Philippines, Muslim militants disguised up as policemen and soldiers killed a dozen people in bomb and gun attacks.
Dressing up as tea party attendees in order to destroy their reputation is obviously far from that violent point on the spectrum, but it is just as shameful.
Levin’s site is open about his group’s tactics: “Whenever possible, we will act on behalf of the tea party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.) to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them. We will also use the inside information that we have gained in order to disrupt and derail their plans.”
This is, apart from anything else, an expression of a spineless, callow political culture in which people don’t stand have the guts to stand up and say, “This is what I believe, and why I think I’m right,” but must skulk about in disguise.
If the Tea Partiers are fools and morons, it should be easy to defeat them without resorting to mockery and lies. Unless, of course, they aren’t.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
