I should point out that this guy isn't a typical tea partier. He's an immigrant from Nicaragua. I have found that immigrants from countries that have experienced communist regimes tend to go completely berserk when anybody suggests that they moderate ANYTHING that they feel has to do with their freedom. I live in a city with many many immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine, and they are ALWAYS screaming "COMMUNIST!" at Americans when Americans suggest that other people have rights.
The Slavics HATE gays, they do not feel that gays have the right to exist. Suggest to them that gays are protected by the Constitution in their pursuit of a different sexuality and you'll get something much like the Nicaraguan's meltdown. In one case, a guy and his platonic guy friends were dancing and sharing beers at Lake Natoma, and some Slavics went up to them, screamed that homosexuality is against the Constitution and the Bible, and started beating them. They beat one of them to death! The offending guys were NOT GAY! That's just one example.
I have found that such hissy fits are common among people from former communist countries. They simply CANNOT tolerate ANY infringement on their "freedom", although they are perfectly willing to infringe on OTHERS' freedom! The tea parties have a heavy anti-immigrant sentiment, and guys like him aren't fully accepted in the tea parties. He may have felt the need to "prove" himself. He may simply be batshit crazy, possibly from war trauma (he's about the right age to have served in Desert Storm; he could have served more recently as well).
The thing about most tea partiers is, they've never known anything but basic survival. This man came from Nicaragua, either as a dirt poor immigrant or middle class refugee, and joined the army to get citizenship, which is more common than many realize. Now he works three likely part time jobs in an America whose glory days are long gone, and thinks it's normal, since everybody in his home country worked like dogs for peanuts too.
Other tea partiers are young, and have only known the jump and crash bubble economy that is Reagan's main legacy. The gyrations have been hell on the lower classes, and left millions struggling to earn enough to eat. Obama is viewed as the black men coming to take away what little they have, and leave them with nothing at all, no food no clothes no home, while the undeserving dance on the backs of the bruised, to quote Nine Inch Nails.
Millions in America are struggling to earn enough to eat, they have kids to feed, and there are no jobs and everybody from the mortgage company to the President himself cruelly laughs at them, and expects them to take it. They really do feel like they have reached the end, and that if they're going down that they will take as many of their tormentors down with them as they can. Remember Joe Stack this spring? "Mr. Big Boss IRS Man, take my pound of flesh and sleep well."
If you dig into the tea parties you will find people who never had a chance for much of a life at all in a country where Wall Street hedge fund titans buy watches that cost more than a years salary for a dozen average Americans-for a SINGLE WATCH!-and own 30 such watches, and buy shoes that cost a year's salary, and blow smoke from illegally imported Cuban cigars in the faces of people bearing all the losses for the titans' deals while the titans enjoy the benefits.
The politicians keep piling it on the backs of the little people. Every single reform is ruled "unconstitutional", while the oceans of money that buy presidents somehow are perfectly legal, and the average American is working three jobs only to have it all confiscated so that a handful can buy $500k watches. Of such situations are revolutions made. Ask the French nobles-if you can find any.
11 Jun 2010, 2:18 pm
