The
Tea Party Express stopped in Wichita today, luckily my old lady and I got some pictures and met some interesting people, here's my official essay about it.
If you don't know about the Tea Party Express you're either not an American or you're one of the luckiest people on Earth. Imagine far-right people coming out of the woodwork to protest things they've imagined and to fight against "socialist" things such as complete health coverage for all citizens and "excessive spending" by Washington (DC). They also kept referring to their protest as the "countdown to judgement day", which I guess is a reference to voting democrats out of state office, but it sure is fucking creepy.
Almost all, that is all except two, of the female Tea Party organizers tried their best to look like Sarah Palin, it was hilarious and sad at the same time.
While I was standing by the road at the beginning of the rally, I was talking to an older woman, she was telling me about the Copenhagen Agreement, basically a new conspiracy theorist load of steamy horse shit about how environmentalists are going to take away US sovereignty. I was explaining to her how the UN and agreements actually work and that it was a draft, and it did no such thing, when a man drove by in a van and yelled "OBAMA IS LYING TO YOU!" She asked me what he said, I was going to say "I don't know", just because I didn't want to bring up a whole new topic with her, but she beat me to it by saying "Must have been something crazy, it's always the liberals who yell out of cars at people." Whoops!
First of all, most people were really old, I imagine out of the
1,000 people there, at least 900 of them were over 60. While we were there an old lady even fainted and they called the
socialist fire department and ambulance service to come help her. Oh the retiriony.
Pictures of the socialist incidient:
I'd say there were 1,000 people there, even though a nice old lady I talked to thought there were 2,000. Even the news announced that there were about 1,000 people. That news channel wasn't Fox News so it was probably a lie anyway, right? However there were counter-protesters, about 10 or so, maybe a little more, but I can't imagine more than 20.
There weren't many clashes between protesters and counter protesters, except when we were taking pictures of counter-protesters, some asshole cam over and said "You people are naïve." I guess believing a big business sponsored astroturf movement and putting rich people before yourself, then ironically blaming everyone else but them when they lay you off, is not naïveté.
Some guy came up and started arguing with these two lesbians about health care, he used some kind of weird strawman argument about someone holding a gun to your head to help a dying man on the street and that all taxes are like that - and he kept "just asking" if "it's okay to hold a gun to someone's head to make them do something". I pointed out that the constitution which he loves to dearly provides the State with the ability to tax him, so yes, the state constantly does have a gun against his head; I guess he thought all taxes were voluntary.
Let's get to the pictures, shall we?
