Anyway, back to the Tea Party"
The big guy, unsurprisingly, looked surprised, and then seemed immediately flattered that I, an obviously deranged leftist, should have such residual respect for a guy wearing a yellow "Don't Tread On Me" scarf that I would seek his wisdom, and he immediately settled into the role of my confidant. I secretly de-activated my ahimsa light saber, sheathed that valuable weapon for its next use, and started listening to the meeting.
There were about thirty people in the room, sitting facing a guy standing at a podium, who used this bipedal stance to dominate the meeting. The older couple who had invited me to this meeting at the Hampshire County Independent Network's "Gasland" screening a few weeks ago, were sitting front row center, cute as a couple of apple dolls (the male, of course, a rather manly and vigorous apple doll), and they turned around and smiled sweetly at me.
They couldn't have placed themselves better to suit my strategy, because everyone saw their smiles, and at whom they were aimed. I knew that there were a number of melted hearts in the room besides mine, which would make anything I did--I didn't know what--easier.
The podium guy, who several times mentioned to the audience that the rumors that he had started this local Tea Party to further his own political ambitions were entirely unfounded, was talking about how the self-identified non-partisan Tea Party could elect a Republican in this year's special election for governor.
As the back-and-forth went on, I began to realize that, beyond the walls of cognitive dissonance that are the hallmark of the archetypal political right in any age, there was an astonishing correspondence between the cluelessness of this audience about the true anti-democratic nature of the present American government--the enforcement arm of the New World Order that has been consolidating its power for the last fifty years--and the cluelessness of most of my fellow progressives.
This was an audience of people flailing at their own powerlessness. In empathy, I decided to help the Tea Party get organized.
I carry around in my vastly overcrowded head an unusual image of the contemporary world political system--what George H.W. Bush used to call the "New World Order--that so oversimplifies things that I think it must stem from my days as an editorial cartoonist on my high school newspaper--a state of mind influenced thematically by Jim Henson's muppets (as a kid in DC, I used to watch the early muppets in a quarter-hour local TV show, "Sam and Friends").
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