The Tea Party...

How big is the movement? Who are its leaders? It is truely a challenge putting them in a context. Can we compare the Tea Party to the ultra conservative anti-immigration platform of for example right wing movements of western Europe ? The relationship the rest of the world has with the United States, the questions everybody asks and the assumptions one makes often reveal a desire to affirm ones prejudices towards America and its people, the presumed lack of sophistication, or the reflexive jingoism. The Tea Party, seems however to be the inevitable last sign of confirmation that Americans are really as hopeless and simple minded as presumed all along.

All these judgments are understandable and officially affirmed for eight years in the person of a President George W. Bush, and then relieved by President Barack Obama, who quickly became the object of international infatuation. Obama got in trouble with the Tea Party types for going to Europe as soon as elected “apologizing for America." Or his speech in Cairo Egypt, or the unforgettable and to some unforgivable bow to the Saudi King was considered a classic suck up (Like much of what the president said prior to election promising to change the culture of Washington)

A Swedish reporter once, described it best : "People want the U.S. to be like Obama: He's not overly patriotic, he's not talking about his Christian faith all the time, he talks about science." The Tea Party, on the other hand, "is the U.S. we don't want the U.S. to be," The rest of the world , inevitably observes the every day American grotesque, like the Delaware Senate candidate “Christine O'Donnell” known for dabbling in witchcraft and public statements against masturbation. Or we observe the "billionaires behind the Tea Party" -- an overly simplified view of the role of funders like the Koch brothers that suggests a wizard behind the curtain controlling the minds of Americans too stupid to think for themselves. Or the other candidate, Rich Iott, who has spent weekends of the last several years dressing up as a Nazi with his friends. Some European newspapers consider this Tea party phenomenon a cultural inferiority, further claiming the Americans of not having a real political culture and of being utterly unsophisticated.

However, 20% of Americans support and identify with the Tea party, no matter how trivial it might be. May be it’s the simplified reflection of a lazy social mind that has been given something very easy to digest and thus moved them into the camp, may be the cheerleading effect Sarah Palin left behind after the presidential run has a role or could it be a mass projection of some sort. This movement, had it been authentic would have had to start during the Bush era, a so called President that turned a surplus into a deficit, nor least for starting two wars, one of which was and is totally illegitimate. However, it may well be a calculated aligned to the front engineered by the "War Party" knowing the Democrats to blame the Republicans forever for the above reasons or better said the US decline . Whatever the case, they (The Tea Party) are here and they are here to stay.

The best explanation I have read about the Tea party is as follows; the Tea Party movement is best understood as a conservative insurgency in a country that produces them in regular rotating cycles. One should , however be careful in underestimating the Tea party, considering the unique Forrest Gump like entrance of Bush junior onto the political scenery of the USA and its catastrophic consequences, the world should be wary of the American surgency and its melodramatic, irrational and reactionary manner of voting.