Tea Party, Meet Prohibition: Why The Tea Party Will Fall Apart

Related: Fix Political Dysfunction

The Tea Party could benefit from understanding why Prohibition failed. The 18^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America wasn’t repealed because near beer is a terrible tasting product. It didn’t face plant due to the ever-escalating violence in our cities and wildly hypocritical disregard for the law. It didn’t even flop because, within the entire history of History, while political parties have succeeded at passing legislation imposing their morality upon the population, they Alone have never succeeded at enforcing it upon its citizens for any longer than a couple decades.

So what did it take for Prohibition to fail and become yet another blood-spilling, hip-swaying, law-breaking, immigrant-hating, mob-filled-farcical anecdote in American History?

It took the Prohibitionists.

It is widely accepted by those who study such things that those who fought for Prohibition and its enforcement played a keystone roll in it being ultimately repealed. That truth is an important point of reference that the overly-zealous inside the far right ought pay heed when considering the future of the Tea Party. Why? Because of their shared staunch refusal to compromise, coupled with converting what starts as a personal bias into a purity issue. Pocketed beliefs mutating into national purification jihads never play out well in America. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle. Moreover, as soon as such advocates reach that level of ideological zeal (for some, being anti-Obama might as well be a Crusade), compromise for goes out the window – when it’s compromise that is the very thing capable of achieving their goal. Those who seek to purify or “take back” have a witch hunt, Two Wrongs make a right sort of approach to political issues. Refusing to comprise means (to their inner-selves) that they are “more pure”, brave and strong. Therefore, they somehow possess more direction in this life than the Other factions throughout the country. They’re hooked on purity. *

To the Prohibitionists: add 40 repeal votes of Obamacare to the recipe (or 60+ depending on which measuring cup you use), stir in all the threats of shutting down the government if they don’t get what they want, and the Lump Sum is that a Tea Partier is nothing more than a Prohibitionist with a different protest sign.

Wait… “staunch” and “refusal to compromise” aren’t quite accurate. They lack the subtle and important visual of a temper tantrum of a 4-year old combined with a holier than thou, ideologically driven glorified ego of someone partaking a “Real America!” jihad against all that is Other. In the early 20th Century contemporary manners (and corsets) restricted the decibel level of the political temper tantrums, but nevertheless, the soul of the people and doomed outcome of the Cause are the same.

Tea Party Obstructionism = To Prohibitionist Inflexibility

Part of the increasing unyieldingness of the Extreme Ways of the right wing has been caused by – due to marketing and the massive need for campaign fundraising – the process of politics becoming a war metaphor that can be fought by the untrained, under-educated, and morally righteous. Knights don’t have to ride into certain death to defend the princess anymore – they just have to blog, bitch, bloat, and bombard anything and anyone they’re told are the evil enemies of The Cause. Back Down South they are warriors against the Black Knight.

What The Cause actually is doesn’t necessarily matter, nor is it an accurate forecaster of the intensity of those who fight for it. Moreover, the number of details a person possesses about The Cause in a modern day political jihad tends to be inversely proportional to that person’s willingness to throw themselves into the fray. Details either kill The Cause, or make people feel too overwhelmed to step beside Sisyphus and give that man a lunch break. That leaves the Wizards of Political Oz in the precarious position of inflating the importance of The Cause, while never actually giving any details about it. (Marco Rubio is very good at this: he can speak for 10 minutes yet not actually say anything of substance, If I Knew how he pulls that off every day I’d be in politics, too.) Wizards shout into every available portal, “Save our Kids from the Saloon” (or) “Democrats are Destroying the Country” – but the argument, the facts, the logic stop at the slogan, the sign, and the signed donation check. Then the followers all parrot-shout like the best Occupy Wall Street amplifier … but the have no idea why. They don’t have to know why, because they believe, and Ready or Not here they come with protest signs a blazin’.

… the more we know… “Wait… you mean when Prohibition passes that means I can’t drink either? I thought it would only apply to those immigrants in the big cities and the drunkard on the corner of my town.” … The more we know, also the less we believe. Sometimes because we don’t have to believe anymore – because now we know – and sometimes because we learn that what we believed hid a lot of flaws in its armor – flaws we couldn’t see when the spotlight was shining on it so brightly. The political-fund-raising-issue spotlight is usually so bright that the glare makes it impossible to see anything other than the shiny reflection designed to reminded us of honor and gold – and Demons wanting to steal them both every moment of every day.

The Wizards are clever.

The Tea Party Could Learn A Lot From How And Why Prohibition Failed

Had the prohibitionists been willing to compromise then their Cause might have survived: the 18^th Amendment might not have been repealed. But like the Tea Partiers of today, they suffered from two significant problems common among ideological groups working within larger communities: they refused to compromise, and the issue they were advocating went beyond protecting human morality (don’t kill, live and let live, etc.), and pushed itself into sociological morality (religion, ideologies, personal preferences).

The Tea Party and the extreme right-wing are doing the exact same thing, and as such, while it is very entertaining to watch and participate, it is destined to fail.

Taxes and healthcare are issues that are part of a complex Social Contract debate. The huge… HUGE… Tea-Party-ending mistake was to willingly change those important social policy matters into a singular purity issue of “Being a Real American” – morals, and virtues, and “Us versus Them, the Other, and the Graceless” As such, all they can do now is shout and roadblock until the energy is exhausted and the movement dies. That’s how these things work. That they mutated a Social Contract debate into a Real American, “Take America Back!!!” Purity Cause is the corner turned that doomed the movement.

No group is any better, or any more deserving the title of American than any other citizen. To claim otherwise is to be a cultural segregationist who claims Group A “deserves” more rights than Group B because their beliefs are somehow better… that doesn’t work in this country. I know it doesn’t work because of how pissed off Group A appears to be right now thinking that their rights are being restricted. **

Restricting rights (most importantly, equality) by any means doesn’t work for us on the Left just as much as it doesn’t work for those of you on the Right. Don’t mess with my rights, and I won’t mess with yours. We let you keep your guns, and you let women keep control over their own hoo-hahs. Let’s start there. Let us seek momentum.

Why the unwillingness to compromise? It is primarily a twisted interpretation of what it means to be wise and powerful. It’s just as common among young countries and young political groups as it is among adolescents in junior high. But the unbendable always break. Always. It happened with Prohibition, and it will with the Tea Party. If, however, the uncompromising factions start to work with the rest of the country – which would be a true demonstration of wisdom and power – then the core of their Cause can survive. (They might also discover that what they believe isn’t really all that different than the rest of us they’ve molded into the dark enemy… but that discovery is increasingly difficult for someone to make when they’re yelling at everyone all the time.)

Personally… I don’t see the Tea Party actually surviving or working as a cohesive unit with the rest of society. Blame my belief on the nature of the Universe if you have to, but here’s where we talk about how the Tea Party character leads to the “Fall Apart” piece of this post: the larger a society gets, the more niched and removed from one another each niche becomes; removed to the point of a cold and dead, isolated-culture-clumps of a Social Universe. 

If you think I’m wrong about never-ending culture separation, ponder on these: How and why did the first nation states form? Why was the USA established? How similar is majority belief in Alabama to New York? Buffalo to NYC? The Upper East Side to the Village? We are social animals – but there’s a limit to our sociability breadth and ability to learn anything significantly life-shaping after 25. As numbers grow: energy and ideas solidify and clump, they explode due to too much compressing mass, and consequently separate into countless other communities. Idea density ultimately shows the same results as matter density… people just make it more explosive. It’s cynical and I’m not happy about it… but I’ve seen dumpster truck loads more proof of global warming than I have of sustainable pluralism in a human world.

What Will Happen To The Tea Party?

The movement will fizzle out just as did the Tea Party caucus in Congress. Die-hard believers will remain Staring At The Stars in cell groups (thanks to the Internet, their information bubble and virtual realities will stay alive and well). What does that leave us, then? The end result is the smaller, “purer” faction of the Tea Party will have broken off and isolated itself; likely never to return, yet never truly pass on. The rest of the original Tea Party structure fractures and spreads itself out into other Causes – more Causes. More Causes means more factions and more ideologues… and then the cycle continues – exponentially – as human cycles always do. ***

The human cycle passes go and collects $100; continually producing more and more isolated groups who preach to one another about The Cause: the one shared belief they have left (whatever that may be). People do this because in a world occupied billions by of people, all living on a rock that’s statistically meaningless and will ultimately be enveloped and vaporized by the very star that gives it life – a star lost among billions of galaxies – ( … ) they simply become overwhelmed by the mass, vacuum, and wonder-what-the-f-meaning of it all. So we desperately… desperately… seek something familiar, uncomplicated, and concrete in its unwavering (or immaculate) conception to grant us a moment of peace and purpose.

… sometimes that means ducking into a pub, putting your foot on the rail, and having a couple beers at the end of a trying day. Sometimes it means projecting all the wound-up insecurity and anger-from-fear onto whoever is in charge at the time. Sometimes it means Hooverville… Occupy Wall Street. Sometimes it means releasing that anger upon whoever looks the weakest. Being a bully or getting an easy win. Sometimes it means buying a new TV… sometimes charity. Sometimes it means a purge of people with whom you disagree. Sometimes it means escaping to the suburbs. Starting over in a new city, or heading West. Sometimes it means being born again and sometimes it means an REM song. And sometimes… …these times… it means a group of highly-emboldened, yet ever-more frightened people believing Glenn Beck is a prophet who can show them the way home to the fireplace paintings of their childhood – rather than a clown with a large microphone who is entertaining the ticket-paid desires of the right ring of the Two Ring Circus that is American Politics.

Can’t blame us, really, for desiring to create a safe place Somewhere Only We Know inside of which everything we hear, everything we see, and everything we learn is everything we already believe. Such lives live easily.

People like easy (and shiny).

Tea Party Movement, meet Prohibition. Both of you say hello to Cyclical Human History and the frailty of what it means to be human. One of these days (during a backyard beer summit, I hope), one of you might just learn something about how to stop creating more factions, and start building coalitions.

The one thing I do know about all this? It’s far too complicated to be solved with a tax cut and burning fake Obamacare cards. Yeah… I’m pretty darn certain about that.