Revolution Calling

The other day, I stumbled across the news that South Carolina is now requiring that all subversives register with the state. There’s even a $5 filing fee and a $25,000 fine if you fail to register within thirty days of starting up your subversive organization. The logic, I suppose, goes something along the lines of, “You better let the state know if you’re planning to overthrow the state, otherwise the state will fine you a bunch of money before and/or after it throws you in the clink.” It’s a bit absurd and a bit laughable, but I’m sure it has some sort of purpose. However, while this action is clearly aimed at somehow thwarting terrorism through the inexplicable application of unnecessary bureaucracy, it’s still pretty darn funny. Maybe South Carolina is as afraid of Islamic extremists as it is of the army of undead waterheads who follow the likes of Glen Beck across the country, teabagging their way from sea to shining sea. Maybe the Palmetto State truly is worried that people are going to rise up and wrest control of the country from the clenched fists of government, but there are much better ways of pacifying a rebellion than threatening to fine the revolutionaries if they don’t let the state know about them ahead of time.

Revolutionaries aren’t typically intimidated by fines and fees, although it might help to control the meeker sect of the aforementioned teabagging variety of freedom fighter. I suspect that, for them, the revolution extends about as far as it takes to go from a fun party atmosphere of like-minded waterheads to tear gas and rubber bullets being fired into the crowd from a faceless horde of masked cops in full riot gear. Threaten their upper middle-class lifestyle and the teabaggers quickly back down, so the $25,000 fine seems like a proper deterrent to their antics. That, and requiring that they register with the state or face the fine may perhaps prove to be a master stroke of legislative genius. Then again, it could just be new stupid shoveled onto piles of old stupid.

I give the Tea Party people a hard time not because I merely hate them, but because I loathe them with an intense and unholy passion rivaled only by the furious and unstoppable force of a collapsing supernova. I loathe them because they are the flotsam cast off from the vox populi, the alienated detritus of modern society, unified only by their collective desire to set the world right by setting it backwards, by retarding the social development of the nation until we’re back in the good old days of Donna Reed and Jim Crow. Back when people knew their place, and the American Dream still held the luminous shimmer of hope and promise it once had before the illusion crumbled into the blood-stained dust of an inescapable nightmare. In short, these people don’t want to tear down the government to rebuild something new or something better – they just want things back the way they were, back when they believed in something and thought that what they believed in mattered.

Teabaggers want a return to the golden days of yore, when WASPS ruled the nation and a white man could grow up to be anything he wanted, as long as he wasn’t too regional or his name not too ethnic. Teabaggers want the prosperity of post-war America without the harsh reality of WWII life, when sacrificing and giving of yourself was vital to the war effort. Back then, people rationed everything and went without at home so that our troops wouldn’t go without on the front lines. Today, of course, the closest we get to self sacrifice is slapping removable magnetic bumper stickers on our cars and bitching about the price of gas. Never mind that the wars of today are born of corporate greed rather than national security, and that no single deployed troop is actually fighting to protect our freedoms, regardless of what the propaganda is telling us. Our freedoms aren’t threatened by Islamic extremists or even by Osama bin Laden himself; they’re threatened from within. Every time a person doesn’t vote, freedom dies. Every time a teevee pundit wins a victory over the airwaves and claims a new recruit in the audience, freedom dies. Every time we pass laws to limit the free and open exchange of ideas, freedom dies. Freedom is falling dead at our feet all around us every single day, yet few seem to notice and ever fewer seem to care.

Teabaggers are so concerned with parroting the pundits’ talking points that they’ve become blinded to the true threat to our republic. America is not becoming a socialist state, no matter how badly people like Rupert Murdoch want you to believe it is. No, if anything, America has been heading towards a corporatist oligarchy for decades now, and people are somehow okay with that. And, with the recent changes to campaign finance law combined with the continued apathy and willful ignorance of the governed populace itself, things will only get worse. Eventually, we may finally see an end to the days of the two party, Republican/Democrat system as we slip closer and closer towards a fully corporation-controlled ‘democracy’. Vote for the Wal-Mart candidate! The representative from the Disney corporation! The esteemed gentleman from Taco Bell!

I wouldn’t mind the teabaggers so much if they had cried out sooner, as that would indicate at least the merest scintilla of independent thought. As it stands now, however, they’re just rats jumping ship on the neo-con revolution that proved to be as disastrous for the nation as every sane and sensible person predicted it would be. For years, the teabaggers stood idly by and let reformation after reformation slide past, restricting and limiting our freedom with every congressional vote and Presidential signature. The Republicans stay quiet when their man in Washington is raping the Constitution, and only speak up when a Democrat usurps the office to continue the same behavior. Likewise, the Democrats yell bloody murder when a Republican is stripping us of our rights, then fall mute when Barrack Obama starts doing the same thing. It’s down to the old Us vs. Them mentality, and it keeps everyone distracted and blinded to the truth.

None of this is to say that I’m against a good revolution, however. In fact, I’m of the belief that the whole system has become so corrupt and gone so off-mission from the original ideas of the Constitution that we ought to just take off and nuke it from orbit, just to be sure. Burn it all down, (figuratively, of course…a sort of metaphorical burning involving no actual fire whatsoever, thankyouverymuch), then rebuild it – this time with a knowledge of the past and our present, with an eye towards the future. Then again, what do I know? Maybe the corporation-driven future oligarchy will come closer to a true Utopia than man has ever before achieved. Perhaps our enslavement through technology will somehow enlighten us and enrich our lives in ways my luddite brain cannot imagine. Maybe. Perhaps. We’ll see.

But for now, I’ll shut up. I’ve given you enough of a rant for one day and besides, I’ve been over this ground before. For whatever reason, (today’s essay having been prompted by South Carolina’s stupidity), these themes tend to creep back up in my mind like insidious little cognitive monsters, and I have to slay the paper tigers here before I lose all control and start wandering the streets, muttering to myself and making random children cry. The South Carolina law is absurd and even comical, but it probably will quiet at least some of the impotent discontent coming from the Tea Party folks and anyone else who has a similarly anemic version of revolution. Of course, it won’t do anything to stop the true revolution when it finally comes, though. I hear it will not even be televised…

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