Teetotallers

I was watching the news last night when a story about “Teabaggers” came on.   As much as I agree with many of their issues, such as big government and the federal budget deficit, I was shocked at some of the statements being made.   Too many racist statements were being made, and sometimes shouted, openly in the demonstration.   Then on CNN, “Tea Party” leader Mark Williams calls the President “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.” 

Whenever somebody argues against something using racist comments it always makes me wonder whether they are against the issue or the person/people. This makes me wonder how many “Teabaggers” are there for the issues and how many are there to protest again the President.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that some people and organizations are either turning a blind eye to or, even worse, encouraging the racist component of the “Teabaggers”.  In a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press report, http://people-press.org/report/543/, a recent poll indicated that only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. 

Even if the overall percentage of racist protesters is small, it has a broad, and often detrimental, effect on public opinion, politics, and our economy.  When a commentator on a cable news channel says that 1.7 million people (really only about 65,000) “Teabaggers” protested, some people will be swayed to go along with the crowd.   Politicians, whose job is to pander to their bases, will get a distorted view of what the populous wants.  The two political sides will get more polarized in their views, and the chances for the two sides working together to produce real change diminishes.  This hurts our economy in the long run since it reduces the effectiveness of an already slow moving process. 

Take healthcare reform.  Everyone, from a majority of individuals to most business groups, agree something should be done, but no real collaboration is being done.  In the end, something that is critical to our economy, and specifically our manufacturers, will either be left alone or changed in a trivial way.  More manufacturing, and other, jobs will leave our shores never to come back.  It should not be so hard to find a solution to a problem that everyone agrees exists.