Two new stories have emerged in recent days to help underline the dark and dangerous side of the Tea Party movement. While Americans nationwide have demonstrated how their frustration with traditional two-party politics and government gridlock leaves an opening for a seemingly "independent" third party, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Tea Party is a case of the cure doing far more damage to the patient than the condition it claims to treat.
What Change comes next?
First, NBC News broke the story that Tea Party favorite Allen West, U.S. congressional candidate in Southeast Florida's 22nd CD, is intimately involved with a South Florida motorcycle gang called The Outlaws, considered a "criminal syndicate" by the FBI. His involvement includes the contribution of a column to the group's monthly magazine, "Wheels On The Road", a mix of biker news & views, and angry, derisive, ultra-conservative political rhetoric.
West has gotten millions of dollars in Tea Party member/sympathizer donations from all across the country, which has helped put him in a close race with the moderate Democratic incumbent, Ron Klein. Whether or not the already severely strained credibility of West as a man qualified to serve effectively in Congress will be shattered once and for all by this latest revelation remains to be seen.
Meanwhile in Alaska yesterday, nothing less than the smell of fascism swirled around an Anchorage campaign event for Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, who upset incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary. Here's what happens when political extremism is allowed to go unchecked, as reported by the highly reputable Alaska Dispatch:
"Alaska Dispatch founder and editor Tony Hopfinger was grabbed and handcuffed by a private security detail working for U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller on Sunday while trying to ask the Fairbanks Republican questions..."
Hopfinger was trying to do his job on public property, mind you, at a public campaign event. He was "detained" in handcuffs by Miller's private security force until the actual police department arrived and ordered his immediate release.
This story and the new one about West are but the latest, ugliest additions to a growing mountain of evidence about what the Tea Party has become, which isn't what many if not most of its followers, I believe, thought they were embracing in this crazy, critical election year.
Anyone out there who has seen the classic Frank Capra film, "Meet John Doe" will have a special feel for the kind of fire that far too many Americans have been playing with for far too long, a fire fanned by Fox News and the rest of the conservative media empire.
The way ahead of its time movie is all about how ruthless behind-the-scenes figures and forces exploit hard times in America, in pursuit of political power, and profit. It's about how they twist the truth to build a web of lies and deceit that sucks in frustrated, frightened people searching for quick, easy answers to complex questions. It's about how populist anger over what has gone wrong with the country and why it hasn't been fixed yet can be manipulated and used as a weapon aimed in the wrong direction.
Sound familiar?
The good news, at least on the movie screen, is that the Bad Guys finally overreach, they go too far. In the end, the inherent goodness and fairness of the American People as a whole triumphs over the whipped up fears and prejudices of an out of control minority propped up by other people money.
Two weeks until Election Day.
