Recent "tea parties," organized by those opposed to taxation, exposed deep-seated feelings of bitterness and fearful suspicion of progressive change held by many in our country. This bitterness and suspicion exhibit a nagging pain often unrecognized by those holding it within themselves as they sometimes employ it to enhance a sense of personal identity and meaning. In contrast, some critical reactions to the taxday demonstrations minimize the significance of pervasive bitterness and fear held by those who demonstrated.
The Great Falls tea party took place on the steps of City Hall, spilling out across the sidewalk and just over the curb edge at the intersection of Central Avenue and First Street. I could hear the sounds of microphoned speech as my dog guide and I approached, and when we stopped at the crowd edge I asked someone who was obviously smoking to explain to me exactly what was going on. Grudgingly, it seemed, he offered a description to someone he may have perceived as different, either because of my obvious blindness or because of my professed ignorance of this planned occurrence. Gradually I winkled out of him some description of what the signs were like that he and others were feeling. "We're against any taxes and against the federal government!"
Clearly the crowd would not part to allow passage to my accustomed crosswalk. The guy said he would help me cross the street right there. Unwisely, I accepted and we stepped out to the curb edge where he looked and finally said, OK! Reggie and I stepped out right into the path of an oncoming car. There was a loud honk, and fortunately the driver was able to stop in time. Still, I remain unsure whether the horn blast was totally for me or whether it was given partially in support of the assembled group, as many other drivers were honking in apparent support as they drove by. The good thing is that the driver was able to stop, and Reggie and I then proceeded safely across the street.
American people are not supposed to be bitter, yet I sense bitterness embedded deeply in the hearts of many in northern Montana. I sense it in the way some people drive, deliberately pulling in front of pedestrians into a cross walk when individuals are already crossing a street, or accelerating so they can make that turn just before a pedestrian reaches the point where they might be hit. My particular concern is more for my dog guide when our speed and distance from a turning car may be more difficult for the driver to judge.
Fortunately, most drivers are courteous rather than thoughtless, but there are enough individuals showing apparent concern only for their own welfare to cause me to think that something in their minds convinces them to act in apparent disregard for pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities whom they may view as social liabilities. Having to work long hours, or sometimes being limited to insufficient hours, in jobs they may dislike, many individuals may consider those with disabilities who are sometimes unable to work to be a major cause for the despised taxes they feel unwilling to pay.
I suspect there are two strands of emotion in Montana that would lead to individuals feeling hostile toward others around them, particularly those with disabilities. One is the arrogant cowboy attitude exemplified during the recent Bush administration and seen in the previous Bush and Reagan administrations as well. Even those who are in no way cowboys admire and emulate a macho attitude stating that everyone should look after their own interests with no regard for community responsibility. They see no need for social structures if everyone simply looks after their own interests. Many people in this group want to own and carry guns without requirements for license or background check simply because they value their own sense of personal liberty above any concern for social responsibility.
Though some in this group actually own or work on ranches, most drive dilapidated pickups and try to scratch a living in a Montana economy that has remained consistently depressed in contrast to the prevailing US economy, even in the best of times. Though Great Falls and the Montana Highline are not unaffected by the recent economic downturn, the region is also not so severely affected as much of the nation. This area has always been on the bottom economic rung anyway. Without much gain during the past twenty years there has been less to lose during the past nine months.
Others carry bitterness and suspicion in their hearts even without the emulated cowboy model. Bitterness comes out through constant complaining about any topic, whether social or domestic. It manifests itself in fibromyalgia-like symptoms, especially among women, eventually leading to needless gallbladder removal and hysterectomies as doctors attempt to relieve unexplained pain symptoms or attempt to gain Medicaid reimbursement for ceaseless office or emergency room visits for pain complaints. Though fibromyalgia is a real issue for many regardless of economic and political persuasion, and gallbladder removal and hysterectomies are usually genuinely needed when performed, these apparently unnecessary procedures to relieve unexplained pain symptoms have little or no benefit for many of those receiving treatment.
Men within this group generally escape bitterness through excessive drinking or spousal abuse, usually manifested in the form of continuous quarrelsomeness, openly played out in endless complaining in social and work settings. Hunting provides an annual legal outlet for those who can afford guns, ammunition and the vehicle and gas to reach a good location. TV sports provide another escape. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, abundant casinos offer ample opportunity for cheap drinks and promised winnings as they continue to provide Montana's effective tax on the poor. Of course, many who enjoy hunting do not hunt as a way of finding meaning in a life otherwise defined by bitterness, nor do those who enjoy sports necessarily do so to escape the bitterness of a life perceived as meaningless and hopeless.
Whether or not these observations are totally correct, it seems evident that bitterness lies well seated in the hearts and minds of many Montanans who perceive their lives as being without hope or purpose. The only hope for the American dream in the minds and hearts of many lies in reacting against the interests of others. "Why admit immigrants when I don't have a job?" "Why pay taxes to support local schools when I don't have kids in school?" "Why support those on public assistance when I'm struggling to make a living in a low paying job?" These questions express a last, desperate attempt at meaning though denying something to others.
Perhaps the most regrettable thing in the recent tea party experience is that members of a supposedly national political party and members of a supposedly objective cable broadcasting network espouse an attitude of exclusive self-interest over shared community responsibility as an admirable quality, rallying around such attitudes in an attempt to find identity for a political movement that has lost its way and proven itself morally bankrupt. Members of the Republican Party now seem enamored with Governor Perry's call for secession. With no coherent counter proposals to Obama's calls for effective change, dropping out seems their only hope for survival. They become like the truck driver willing to feint running down any pedestrian in his path just to show bitterness and frustration.
Doubtless it will take time before those used to being left behind by a society built on the principle of limitless reward for the wealthy begin to realize that proposed changes will bring real benefit to their lives as well as to the lives of everyone in American society. There is little wonder that those raised in bitterness might be slow to find hope in this new beginning; after all, no other promised hope has brought them relief, why should this one? Our task ahead is to somehow pass through this period of change without sedition, insurrection and other forms of social violence. For this reason, any political party that espouses calls for secession deserves only criticism for an attitude that can only be described as soundly un-American in its opposition to the positive quality that most American citizens perceive in this new climate of social and political change.
America now has an opportunity to be reborn into the ideal it was intended to be. Now more than ever, it is important that we all unite to bring individual perspectives together to realize this ideal as closely as we possibly can in this new society.
