Open Letter to Tea Party Protesters

Dear “proud Tea Party protester”:

You say you love freedom, but you never protested in 2006 when George W. Bush repealed habeas corpus and posse comitatus, rights first guaranteed by the Magna Carta in 1215.

You say you’re in favor of smaller government, but you never protested when George W. Bush expanded it. Or when George H.W. Bush expanded it. Or when Ronald Reagan expanded it. Or when Richard Nixon expanded it. Or when Dwight Eisenhower expanded it.

You say you’re in favor of democracy, but when Dubya was selected by the five members of the Supreme Court installed by Republican presidents, one of them Dick Cheney’s close personal friend, you never protested.

You say you’re in favor of openness in government, but you never protested when Dick Cheney set the nation’s energy policy in secret in collaboration with BP, Exxon/Mobil, Halliburton, and the nation’s wealthiest energy companies, or when Cheney and his friends engineered the energy crisis in California and profited hugely. You never protested when Dubya began governing by secret executive order, sidestepping YOUR lawfully elected representatives.

You say you’re patriots, but you never protested when Dick Cheney ordered the “outing” of a covert CIA agent during a time of war — which U.S. law considers treason. You never protested when the Bush administration tacitly admitted that George W. Bush was absent without leave during a time of war (Viet Nam), which U.S. law considers a felony; you only mocked CBS and Dan Rather for believing a forged document that supported true allegations.

You say you value your privacy, but you never protested when the PATRIOT Act took it away.

You never protested when Dubya let Osama escape (Dubya was already busy diverting resources for his long-planned invasion of Iraq), when the WMDs turned out to be nonexistent, when the link between Osama and Saddam turned out to be a lie, when the yellowcake uranium turned out to be a lie, or when it became obvious even to stupid people that Iraq was no threat to the United States and never had been.

You never protested when we spent more than $600 billion (2003-09) on that same illegal and unjustifiable war. You never protested when $10 billion just “disappeared” in Iraq. You never protested when competent U.S. soldiers were replaced by badly trained civilian employees of favored Republican donor corporations. You never protested when these civilians massacred innocent Iraqis. You never protested when these big-donor corporations inflated their bills to the U.S. government dramatically.

You say you believe in human dignity, but you never protested when you found out we were torturing people, some of whom were innocent of any crime.

You say you’re in favor of fiscal restraint, but you never protested when George W. Bush took a budget surplus and a national debt of $5.7 trillion to a gigantic deficit and a national debt of more than $12 trillion. You never protested when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were called “emergency spending” year after year so that the GOP could pretend its annual deficit was roughly one-third the size it was in reality. (Gotta defend those tax cuts for the wealthy, y’know!)

You say you share the values of the Founders, but you never protested when you found out the Republican government was illegally wiretapping American citizens.

You say you honor our military, but you never protested when the appalling conditions at Walter Reed were finally revealed. You have no problem with the families of many of our heroes needing food stamps to survive.

You never protested when you found out that on August 6, 2001, George W. Bush blew off an urgent warning about al Qaeda’s plans because he was on vacation. “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” he told the near-weeping-with-urgency briefer.

You never protested when we let a major American city drown because George W. Bush didn’t want preparing for an emergency to disturb his vacation. Frak New Orleans, he thought, they vote “Democrat.” Good work, you tea bigots; thanks to Republican deregulation and the coziness of two Republican Big Oil men with Big Oil, New Orleans has been well and truly frakked for all time, in 2005 and in 2010.

You never protested when the president of the United States took almost three years out of eight on vacation, or when he spent a large percentage of his working day biking, golfing, or indulging other pastimes. You thought he was cute, like drunken Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving.

You never protested when the GOP took $900 billion from the poor and the middle class — you and me — and gave it to their “have-more” donors. You never protested when YOUR income stayed flat or went down, while the income of the top 5 percent tripled.

No. None of this made you angry; none of this frightened you. You finally got angry when your lawfully elected representatives decided that all Americans deserve the right to see a doctor if they’re sick.

Illegal wars, lies, secrecy, corruption, lawlessness, cronyism, pork, torture, perverting the Constitution, stealing YOUR money to give to the rich — those are apparently all fine with you. But helping people less fortunate than you are? Oh, “HELL no!”

I need to get some of that health care you don’t want me to have: you make me sick.