The teapot crackpots in the State of Virginia want a new license plate to hang on their vehicles. Said license plate would bear the slogan, "Don't Tread on Me!"
This would be funny or merely silly if, in fact, the teapot crackpots were not a real and present danger to our democratic form of government and its Constitutional underpinnings.
The person responsible for this bit of stupidity is, of course, a Repugnican, a delegate by name of John O'Bannon. But, says O'Bannon, he's not trying to make a political statement.
Why do so many teapot crackpots speak Orwellian?
To be a teapot crackpot, you've got to be, first of all, ignorant. You have to be one of those folks who drifted off during your American history class, and political science class, and civics class. You really never learned much of anything about anything and graduated from high school with the good fortune of barely knowing how to read (at the 8th-grade level) or write.
To be a teapot crackpot, you've also got to be easily conned. The teapot movement is not a grass-roots thing at all. It didn't start because a bunch of knowledgeable folks got together to try to change the government to make it function better to serve their needs. Many, if not all, teapot dreamers thinks that's the way it went, but they are sadly mistaken, for they have been taken.
The teapot crackpot movement, better known as the Tea Party movement, is the birthchild of the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch brothers and their many affiliated front groups, along with other monied sources such as Rupert Murdoch. It was organized by lobbyists for huge right-wing corporate entities who give not a damn for our country or the people of the country but only for their bottom line.
FAUX News, of course, played a huge role, publicizing and sponsoring tea party rallies around the country, and providing teapot crackpots a national pulpit to spew their nonsense amongst the rabble who ate it up.
And the irony is, the teapot crackpots have grown from a pesky gnat on the backside of an elephant to a huge canker sore the size of Alaska on the nose of the Republic. All because millions of people were completely duped into voting against their own interests in favor of the corporations who will swindle them out of what little they have left and destroy the environment which gives them life.
Now a teapot asshat in Virginia wants his state to offer a license plate with the teapot crackpot motto, "Don't Tread on Me." The meaning here, to a teapot crackpot, is clear: Big, bad government, don't put me down any more!"
The common people, the middle-classes, have been subjected to so much moronic rhetoric for so long they've come to believe it. Teapot crackpots supposedly believe in limited government, fiscal austerity, and less taxation.
That may have made some sense 230 years ago when the population hovered around 4 million people. At 300 million, it makes no sense at all. And actually, the teapot crackpots don't believe in any of this. Limited government means many different things. Some of the Religious Right kooks, the Reconstructionists (of whom we have several now in Congress), want the government to be reconstructed according to their interpretation of God's law. Democracy is a no-no! Old Testament law is in. But most teapot crackpots want a government limited to doing what they want it to do, that is to say, give bigger tax breaks to the rich, deregulate corporations so they can do whatever they wish, ban all gun restrictions, ban all abortions, allow prayer in public schools, or better yet, get rid of all public schools, etc. They most definitely don't want the government to help the unfortunate, the sick, the elderly.
Fiscal austerity means nothing more than the process of redistributing the wealth upward. In recent days several right-wingers have appeared on television bemoaning the fact that the poor rich people need more tax breaks. Everyone should be treated the same; we're all in this together; the rich are just like everyone else; they need their tax breaks, even if said tax breaks increase the budget deficit.
Less taxation is another phony issue. Because teapot crackpots are ignorant and get their "news" from FAUX News or Limbaarger or other crackpot sources, they are unaware that they paid less taxes last year under the Obama administration than they did the year before under Georgi W. Buski.
But the real kicker in all of this is that the teapot crackpots with "Don't Tread on Me" license plates have absolutely no solid proposals to make relative to their notions of limited government, fiscal austerity, or less taxation other than to give more to the rich and less to the middle and lower classes. Thus we find proposals to privatize Social Security appearing once again (in spite of the fact that Social Security is NOT in trouble and would have been devastated if Bush had had his way a few years ago!) The teapot mantra is enrich the rich and take away from the poor.
When asked what government programs should be cut, most teapot crackpots go into a kind of daze and their eyes glaze over.
In other words, the Tea Party teapot crackpots are empty shells. The Tea Party functions as an arm of very rich corporate honchos, serving their needs. They have nothing to offer the country other than slogans devoid of meaning. "Don't Tread on Me" is profoundly stupid. The government is not "treading on them," their corporate masters are, and they are too ignorant to know the difference! They need the government. The government provides them with the services the NEED to survive. And taxes are not evil, but that which makes government services available. What is evil is when the very rich do not pay their fair share or when, due to their buying of Congress people, they are exempted from paying anything, as is the case with many large corporations today!
Don't tread on me. And in Virginia, as the teapot crackpots line up to buy these sloganized license plates one cannot help but be reminded of how the lemmings gather together to march off the cliff to their collective demise in the sea!
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