On Saturn and Tea Parties

Nom nom nom. Beef jerky.

Actually, that's Saturn. And he's eating one of his sons. According to the legend, Saturn ate each of his sons as they were born in order to prevent a prophecy that declared that one would one day grow up to succeed him. As luck would have it, his wife Ops hid Jupiter, her sixth son, who went on to complete the prophecy.

In this painting, Saturn is the stark naked ravages of old age, the violent manifestation of the quiet realization that you are no longer in control. Each bite that he takes is an act of fruitless defiance against the inevitable passing of time, an attempt to destroy the reality of tomorrow to preserve the dream of yesterday. In this sense, Saturn is the Tea Party Movement. I'm not saying that Tea Partiers are child-eating cannibals; I'll leave that segment to the folks at MSNBC, when the need to air something fun during sweeps. My point is that the fear of change consumes both Saturn and Tea Partiers.

But first, a little context. The Spanish painter Francisco Goya originally painted this work directly onto one of the dining room walls of his house outside of Madrid. This and the rest of the paintings on the interior walls of the house make up what are known as his Black Paintings. At that point in his life, Goya was by most accounts cynical and bitter in his old age. He feared the looming possibility of death, or worse yet, the obsolescence of the senility and insanity into which he was slipping. After his death, the painting was scraped of the wall and transferred to canvas. It now rests in a dimly lit room in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Back to our friends with the sachets. A recent demographic survey from CNN found that the Tea Party Movement is predominantly male, white, wealthier than working class, and college educated. In a less than brilliant insight, I believe that those who embrace the Tea Party Movement do so out of fear that they are being "marginalized" by the growing ranks and influence of those who are not "their people" - that is, Latinos, Blacks, and Asians, among others. Throughout American history, our presidents, senators, industry men, writers, and scientists have come almost exclusively from the same background as those who take part in the Tea Party Movement. This type of person has held a privileged place in American society, enjoying a much greater breadth of opportunities than any other group over the same period. To be confronted with a future (ie 2050) where half of the population is not white, the United States is potentially not the world's only superpower, and colleges continue to award to degrees to a diverse cross section of the population is a perfect nightmare for those conservative Tea Party Members who are already uneasy, if not livid, about their diminishing social cachet.

In response to this trend, the members of the Tea Party Movement are "hunkering down" to preserve the world in which they are most comfortable, powerful, and secure, that world being an imaginary past where every man was a self-sustaining dynamo who did everything by himself. In his paper “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”, sociologist Robert Putnam speaks to this short-term “hunkering down” against the perceived threat that racial and socio-economic diversity bring, set against the backdrop of an America where racial diversity is increasing at a rapid pace. It is an entirely natural reaction, if you think about it. One group is accustomed to having things their way, and when another group comes along to compete for resources, frustration, anger, and violence result. You need look no further than SB 1070 in Arizona, the present growth of right-wing militia groups all across America, or an older sibling that throws a tantrum because the younger sibling is receiving the attention that had once been lavished solely upon the first-born. Better yet, you could just look to Saturn, and watch him in his frenzied desire to destroy that which brings tidings of a future, a future that does not include him on center stage.

The sad part is that neither the Tea Party Movement nor Saturn read the rest of Putnam's article. Putnam demonstrates that in communities where racial integration was finally successful, greater economic robustness and levels of intra-community socialization were reported in future years. The force that was initially construed by the standing White community as being a threat over time became a boon, yielding positive results for the community as a whole.

So I say unto you, Tea Partiers, fret not about cultural dilution. If you decide to continue on your anti-big-government bent, then fret instead about out of control defense spending (28 % of ALL US tax revenue for 2010), politicians who avoid dealing with the vertiginous climb of the US national debt (up $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2009, and in total 87% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product), and bank lobbyists that seek to weaken legislation that would help diminish the grossly misaligned incentives currently in place in financial markets in our country. And to you, Saturn, I recommend that you come to Spain. Bring your kids, and you can all have some nice 1 Euro ham sandwiches at El Museo de Jamon. Not only will you save a lot on floss and Tums, but you'll also have the chance to enjoy an afternoon in a wonderful country.

Update: After re-reading this post, I realize that it does not apportion sufficient credit to the role of the 2007-2010 financial crisis in the development of the Tea Party Movement. As unlikely as the situation may be, if there is anyone who would like to read a more thorough take on the rise of the TPM, I would be more than willing to forward a sociology term paper that I wrote on said subject this March. This blog post as it stands only addresses one aspect of what I believe makes the TPM tick, and should not be understood as a catch-all analysis of the TPM as a whole.