This Week’s Cartoon: “Don’t Tread On Me”

I sort of feel like the tea party and progressives could almost find some common ground over the plight of ordinary people getting screwed six ways from Sunday in this economy. We share a disillusionment with Wall Street and, I would argue, concern with loss of community in the face of crushing bureaucracy. The general principle of localism seems like something we could agree on, to a point. But it all ends there, because the tea partiers, among their other philosophical shortcomings (and there are many), have a MASSIVE blind spot when it comes to understanding the way power works in this country. They refuse to see any abuses resulting from unfettered, predatory, market-fundamentalist-style capitalism. Everything is the government’s fault. It’s such a simplistic view, it would be quaint if it weren’t also so harmful.