"No taxation without representation", they told their elected representatives...

It's been a week of "...wait...what?" for me.

American politics has possibly never been stranger than it is right now, and never more full of interesting jargon and spelling mistakes.

Over the last weeks, the Tea Party movement has been in full swing. Republicans and conservatives have been peacefully protesting against everything from the Obama tax plan to legal abortion and illegal immigration. They have done so to a slightly sinister backdrop too. Here's the fun stuff:

At the tail end of last week the Department of Homeland Security (who, you will remember, were created following 9/11 and given lots of happy powers by the Patriot Act) released an intelligence document to law enforcement groups around the country. There is nothing unusual in this. There are a couple of things to be aware of, though. Firstly, these days the DHS is run by Janet Napolitano, former Guv of Arizona. She's a Democrat. Second, the paper asked Law Enforcement to be aware that assorted factors (amongst them the election of the President) that might lead to a resurgence of activity by right-wing extremist groups. The document is here. Be warned, it's a PDF. And dull.

The paragraph that caused a problem reads thus:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups),
and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

At around this time, we have had the Governor of Texas blathering about total support for States Rights and secession from the Union; however, since the Tea Party folks were supposed to be protesting about unfair taxation, which would make them a single issue protest, talk radio, KFYI in the Phoenix Metro area specifically), and most notably Bruce Jacobs have been referring to tea-party attendees as "fellow extremists", commenting that attendees are now likely to be on the government's "list".

The protests went off without a hitch, or a black-bag operation, or any signs of rendition. They were peaceful.

However. It's worth noting that more than a couple of people I work with told me they were nervous about going; they didn't want to be on a government watch list. They didn't want to be taken from their homes in a dawn raid.

Bit extreme, I thought. But then KFYI has genuinely been creating a lot of concern that the current government is really socialist. And not socialist in the slightly affable Tony Benn way, but socialist in the Joseph Stalin manner. These are, in fact, more scare tactics. But more than that, it's interesting to do the background research. KFYI is an affiliate of the Fox network, and Fox is owned by The News Corporation. The News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So, this apparently grass roots organisation is being supported and advertised by possibly the world's most successful capitalist and certainly the world's most successful owner of information. This has been enough to make a lot of left wing commentators in the USA call foul, claiming that the Tea Party movement isn't grass roots, but an Astroturf movement.

Assorted shenanigans aside, a couple of things have struck me.

One: the tea party people have started referring to themselves as Tea-Baggers and what they do as tea-bagging. Oh, dear lord, some people want to reach for their Urban Dictionary before they speak.

Two: As an immigrant, I'm the only person I know who has to pay tax but has absolutely no say in any political forum in this country. None. I'm not a citizen (not going to be one, now) and therefore I have no political representation other than whatever Civis Britannicus Sum gets me. Which ain't going to be much. So when a bunch of white Americans start on about not having any representation, I get a bad case of the "Wait...whut?"

It seems clear that the Right are attempting to make people forget that the elected representatives for a state or area or whatever are meant to represent every one in it. They don't, of course, because the minute they arrive in Washington they are immediately surrounded by Lobbyists who attach themselves to Congresscritters and Senators alike, in much the same manner that these tried to fasten themselves to Captain Kirk, resulting in mass insanity.

However, there are ways to motivate a congresscritter. It's a lot like motivating an MP. You can

- write letters;
- turn up in person for a meeting;
- send e-mails;
- threaten to report that their subsidised housing is being sublet to students/sex workers/asylum seekers;
- etc.

With a modicum of effort, it can be done. But what KFYI, and by extension the rest of the Right, would prefer, is to be back in power and to have conservatives believe that they simply can't be represented by anybody who isn't one of them.

They're trying the same schtick that got the Evangelical Fundies all crazy: a non-minority that insists it is being under-represented and repressed unless it's voice is the only one being heard.