Confessions of a former Tea Party guy

Dear Reader, Courtesy of friend and webmaster Jon Barnes, I read this powerful piece on the Democratic Underground site and wanted to share it with you. Jon asked the writer's permission and he provided it but declined attribution.

"Confessions of a former Tea Party guy," posted on the Democratic Underground by txaslftist on 11/5/10.

"I catch hell here because I talk about the Tea Party Patriots like they are human beings. The reason is because I have been one. When the Tea Party started, it wasn't the Tea Party, it was the money bombs for Ron Paul. Why did I support Ron Paul here, when everyone else thought he was a nut (and now they think he's a dangerous nut because he has been effective). Well, at the time, he was one of the few people who was anti-war. And I was, before I was a Democrat or a liberal or a libertarian or whatever you want to call me, I was anti-war. Ron Paul was anti-war, and it was a major part of his identity, and remains a major part of his identity. He was antiwar before it was cool to be antiwar. He voted against the AUMF in Iraq.

"War is the most destructive force a government can unleash. It is obviously destructive to its victims, the Afghan weddings interrupted by Predator drone strikes, the Iraqi babies with their heads blown off by indiscriminate American gunfire, the prisoners raped and tortured to death while our soldiers looked on and did nothing... These things accompany EVERY WAR. I said so in 2005, and everyone thought, well, Americans don't fight that way, but they do, and Wikileaks proved it recently to the sound of crickets.

"War destroys the soldiers, too. Not just the 4,000 plus who have died, and not just the 100,000 more who have been greviously wounded, but also probably half a million young men with PTSD and other psychological disorders that the military refuses to admit exist, and the thousands more exposed to toxic chemicals. War is an obscenity. It is a vile filth in the world.

"War destroys our economy. We print money and fake money to hide the true cost, so it looks like we pay nothing -our taxes, after all, don't go up. But the money comes from somewhere. It comes down the line as a bill to our kids and grandkids who don't get to see American moonbases and don't get to go to Mars and still have to face cancer and things that the money could have cured, but it's all gone because we spewed it out as liquid fire upon the children of other souls. So we are sliding into a massive economic depression, the same slide that accompanies all wars, and all the nice social programs we need to keep our seniors healthy and our poor housed all go on the altar of Mars. And we squabble about them now as if we can ever, ever afford them again.

"It destroys our moral compass. It destroys our moral compass in that generals become like kings. When war is going on they have the power of life and death in their dominions. Does it surprise us that they don't want to give this up? The profits from war are measured in the trillions to defense contractors and weapons makers and weapon system designers. Nobody is happy when a helicopter crashes except the seller of helicopters. He measures his profits in the millions, and the price is paid in blood, terror and death.

"The Tea Party started with Ron Paul. It started with people like me who were willing to put this principle, that war was the enemy, above party loyalty and above the so-called liberal/conservative divide, and we Tea Party founders desperately wanted to find a home and forge an alliance with the anti war liberals, thinking we could unite on this one principle, and put it above other principles. Oh, sure, economics was part of it. Constitutionalism was part of it. The assault on our freedoms was part of it. It was what united us in the beginning, our principled opposition to the welfare/warfare state. So the economics were "conservative" and the anti-war position was "liberal" in the parlance of the day, but in those days the Republicans were running everything, and it seemed like driving an antiwar splinter into the middle of them might end the wars.

"What happened when I talked about Ron Paul here? The threads got locked, that's what. And that's what happened to the energy of anti-war conservatives. We were told to fuck off at Free Republic, where every war is a good one. We were told to fuck off here at DU, where every Republican is a bad one. And at Kos, and basically everywhere major except for a few small, little read blogs.

"So we started to organize, and run candidates, and we paid a lot of money to get Ron Paul's message out there. 20 million bucks, back when that was a lot of money, and it wasn't corporate cash, it was $50 here, $10 there, paypal, mastercard, whatever it took, because we WANTED TO END THE WAR. Whose attention did we get? We got the damn attention of the damn Republicans, of course, who, licking their wounds after the well-deserved thrashing they got in 2008 saw the energy in the Ron Paul campaign, saw the energy in the Tea Party frustration, and they infiltrated it, co-opted it, took it over and ended it as an expression of anti-war libertarianism, and turned it into Sara Palin central.

"It's not the Tea Party anymore, it's the GOP Party now. So that's what happened to the anti-war libertarian right, following in Hayek's footsteps and Mises' footsteps into the wilderness once again.

"But seriously, though.

"What the fuck happened to the anti war left? Obama got elected and you just fucking disappeared.

"You know, the Tea Party energy could have been here. There could have been a bipartisan grass-roots movement that would have really shaken D.C. up, and we really would be bringing our soldiers home, and we really could have saved a lot of people from being blown to smithereens by our soldiers, who are our sons and brothers and fathers, who are coming home scarred for life.

"I come here and I post and I have been doing it for a long time. I have gone from hard left (when I started, hence the name) to a general disgust for all government when I saw how corrupt everyone in DC seemed to be, and when I saw how the corporations just OWN everyone. But I have always been against the murders that are being committed in our name in the Middle East. There has always been a strong anti war contingent here, but not anymore.

"It's all about us vs. them. "All Republicans eat babies". "All Teabaggers (I know that means sucking balls in a bar, but it's funny because they are all so stupid they don't get the joke, haw haw, but we are clever and we get it, nevermind that it insults every gay person we know, so long as we can insult THEM) are face stomping stupid trailer dwelling white trash who vote against their own interests because they are so dumb, haw haw!

"Well, okay, DU. You got Obama in office. Gratz.

"The killing goes on and on and on, but let's don't talk about it, let's remain FOCUSED on us versus those stupid ass redneck Tea Party guys.

"I'm so goddamn disappointed I have tears in my eyes writing this, you miserable, short-sighted accomplices."