A Tale of Two Tea Parties

Haven't heard a whole lot from the Tea Party lately, ever since they changed their name to the Freedom Caucus, and one of their higher profile members has taken a new job, delivering letters between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.  I haven't seen too many of their expropriated "Don't Tread On Me!" flags, either.  But then again, with all the air being sucked out of the atmosphere and spewed back as bloviated hate mongering or silent dog-whistles to the violent, racist fringe groups that our *President (asterisk intended) counts as his political base, it's no wonder that a quasi-respectable insurgent group like the Tea Party might want to lie low for a while.

And to my friends in the Tea Party, let me say that you have
Un-Be-Lievable Spec-Tac-U-Lar taste in friends, like ME!

This current low profile of the Tea Party got me to wondering: what about THAT OTHER Tea Party?

No no, the other, OTHER Tea Party -the one held in Boston, back when it was a fairly important trading port in the British Empire.  What was the perturbed state of mind of the good people of Boston that produced this touchstone of American resistance to imperial rule?  Why did the British overreact the way they did afterwards?  But the biggest question we all have: why did Sam Adams & Co. take out all their frustrations on tea?  Crumpets just wouldn't do?

Ah, what a pity that zis war is so..., so,... meaningless!

Faithful readers of this blog will be disappointed that the roots of the Boston Tea Party don't go all the way back to the Sumerians (the rest of you will be relieved).  We've only to go back a mere ten years to the end of the French and Indian War.  Besides being blamed on a colonel in the Virginia Colonial Militia named George Washington who was sent to support General Braddock in the Virginia back-country, the French and Indian War was not, in fact, a war between the French and Indians.  It was a war that pitted the French, their colonials and their Indian Allies, against the British, their colonials and their Indian allies against each other. My town of Methuen, Massachusetts produced one of the heroes of that conflict, a character named Richard Rodgers, who helped to teach colonial militia and British soldiers how to fight "Indian style" so they could whack the French, who insisted on fighting the French way by drinking wine, eating exquisitely prepared meals served in redolent sauces, and making ironic, existential comments on the futile condition of the world in general and their own armies in particular.  There isn't any monument to him because he picked the British side during the Revolution.  Oh well...

The war ended with the French kicked out of Canada and the Ohio Valley, the American colonies right where they were, and the British in possession of about 1/2 of North America.  Oh, and they were also broke.  You see, the world of the 18th Century hadn't yet figured out that the way to finance wars was to invent a Federal Reserve Banking System and have a floating currency, whose value would constantly fluctuate relative to other currencies based on investor confidence in the underlying macroeconomic soundness of a national economy.  Silly British! THEY thought the best way to pay off their war debt was to ratchet-up taxes on their subjects.  And WHO should pay these new taxes? Why, the colonial Americans, whose collective butts were just saved by the expense of British Blood and Treasure, that's who.

Jolly-good! Now: who fancies a spot of tea?

There was one small problem with this scheme, besides the economic mumbo-jumbo cited supra: colonial people just hated to pay taxes!  -and nowhere was this more the case than in the Province of New England (New England: more wild and barren and with nastier weather than Old England).  Those cheapskates insisted that the only valid taxes were those that their legislatures voted to impose on themselves.  They had this strange notion that tax money should be spent on stuff they could see and stuff that benefited people in the community, like fixing roads, caring for widows and insane people by -and I am SO not making this up! -auctioning them off to the LOWEST bidder, and building schools.  Colonial legislatures specifically DID NOT think spending money on maintaining a standing army to protect themselves against the beaten French and the vanished Indians was a good idea AT ALL.

But no matter, the British went ahead and instituted the Stamp Act, a revenue raising scheme where a bunch of goods like anything printed (calendars, almanacs, tide charts, newspapers, playing cards, porno-mags), glass, lead, and legal documents, all had to have a tax-stamp on them, showing that the manufacturer had paid the penny or so tax on it.  This cost was then passed onto the seller, who in inimitable capitalist fashion passed it onto the consumer.  

The Stamp Act touched a raw nerve in the New England colonies, who were already struggling under a post-war economic recession.  Tax collectors were harassed, tar-and-feathered, had their housed broken into and in some cases burned down.  Tax offices were similarly attacked by mobs who styled themselves "Sons of Liberty" instead of "That Great Big Scary Bunch of Drunks with Crowbars and Torches."  Broadsheets and newspapers attacked the tax, boycotts were organized, and committees were formed to coordinate resistance in other colonies.  It was at this point that the King and his Ministers had the extremely good sense to repeal the hated Stamp Tax, and All Sang Hallelujah!

Suck it, Jim Koch, I'm a
Maltster, not a Brewer!

However, one Boston son-of-a-b... errr, Son of Liberty was not all that happy.  Samuel Adams was a leading figure in the Boston Town Meeting and a leader behind Boston's resistance to the Stamp Tax.  By the time the tax was repealed, Adams had run his father's malt business into the ground and had become a full-time political agitator.  Now that the King had repealed the hated tax, what was he going to do -work for a living? Not our Sam!  Here's what he did: he and his group of radical Whigs (High-top Fades? Beehives?) seized on the one puny, little tax that remained- a tax on the import of tea- and blew it up into a giant conspiracy theory aimed at the heart of colonial America.  Without the rhetorical invective, here's how his tinfoil-hat-wearing argument went: 

1) everybody liked tea 

2) tea only came from India and China 

3) the crown had granted the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade

4) NO COLONIAL MERCHANTS like Adams' friend John Hancock could legally ship tea, so they were forced to smuggle it 

5) this made everyone connected to the tea trade a de-facto criminal who might be arrested and thrown in prison at a moment's notice 

6) the tax on tea was part of an evil plan by George III's ministers to SET A PRECEDENT for taxing colonials WITHOUT CONSENT of their legislative assemblies, leading to 

7) eventual slavery of EVERYONE in colonial America, or 

8) their eventual sale to France or Spain, which would put them in the clutches of the dreaded Catholics and their Pope.

Again, I am not making this shit up.

In reality, the tax was a minuscule tax on middlemen merchants to help defray the cost of inspecting cargoes and policing thieves and smugglers (which was pretty much everybody in colonial Boston).  The average consumer would have to drink an entire gallon of tea every day to pay a $1 tax at the end of the year.

The rest of the story is familiar to grade school kids and even a few of my undergrads: a bunch of rowdies dressed themselves up as Mohawk Indians, broke into three tea laden ships in Boston Harbor, threw the tea into the sea, and took care to try and NOT do any harm to people or other property that night.  On a personal note, my wife's family counts as one of its ancestors a character named Boardman who was somehow identified through his Indian disguise and arrested afterwards.  He later jumped out of a second story window and ran for it, not stopping until he had reached Isleboro Island, Maine, where his direct descendants live to this very day.

For the LAST TIME, there is NO SUCH THING as ICED TEA! Just dump what's THERE!

What happened next was exactly what Sam Adams and his radical Whigs (French Braids? Beatles Bowl-cut?) knew would happen: the British took a complete nutty, closed the port of Boston, shut down the provincial legislature, moved Massachusetts' capital to Salem (yep, THAT Salem!), shut down courts of law, and sent a couple boatloads of red-coated Regular Army regiments to keep the peace.  This was all spun by Adams and his crew as a preposterous and tyrannical assaults on their English liberties, blah-blah-blah etc. and b.s.  You see, Adams knew that the English would go off their collective crumpets if the colonials made a deliberate attack on the PROPERTY INTERESTS of the British Empire, i.e. tea and the tea trade monopoly.  Remember that this was an era where most crimes against property carried the death penalty.  By provoking this arguably unreasonable reaction, Adams could then advance his Deep State Plan of replacing the British governing elite with a home-grown American governing elite.  

The Boston Tea Party was, therefore, Samuel Adams' last ditch effort to remain politically relevant in the Anglo-Colonial back-and-forth of the 1760-1770's, an effort that succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.  Once troops were quartered amidst a rebellious population, it would not be long before shots were fired, Continental Congresses were formed, armies raised, allies sought, and the Anglo-American Civil War (we call it the Revolutionary War -I wonder what it would have been called if we had lost it?) was raging up and down eastern North America.

But how do YOU know so much about what Samuel Adams was thinking and planning, Ex-Prof, I hear you all cry.  Simple: I read a lot.  That, plus I am a direct descendant on my mother's side to Sam and his cousin, John Adams.  Call it family insight.

No family insight is needed to explain the current day Tea Party.  What started out as a protest on April 15 highlighting government waste and fiscal irresponsibility, quickly took on a more socially conservative and libertarian cast as its organizers parlayed their popularity into elected seats in Congress.  Once there, the Tea Party members caucused with the Republicans, becoming an ultra-

conservative wing of that party.  Now calling itself the Freedom Caucus, they have used their influence to frustrate Democratic legislation like the Affordable (Health) Care Act, and, ironically, blocking Republican attempts to repeal and replace the ACA with a more watered-down version.  Like those behind the original Tea Party, the contemporary organization uses the press and that new terror, social media, in order to further its agenda.  Also like their predecessors, today's Tea Party manipulates patriotic symbols in order to lend political legitimacy to their cause.

I think that their fiscal frugality smacks more of Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicanism, but Monticello just isn't as cool a symbol as the Don't Tread On Me snake.  That, and there's also the problem of Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings on the d.l. that might not play to the more racially discriminative members of their caucus.  

But the real reason for the decline of the Tea Party's influence in today's political blood-splattered arena is this: it's being quietly absorbed by the Republican Party and will probably become a footnote to some boring historian's thesis on the influence of third parties on the American legislative agenda.  Which sounds like an awesome title for a thesis paper.  If I ever wanted to get a PhD. And go back to teaching bored undergrads for slave-wages.  Just sayin'.

So, one night in 1773, American colonials threw tea into Boston Harbor as a symbolic protest against taxation without representation.  And in the late 20th Century, American taxpayers threw copies of their 1040's W-2's, 1099's and 403-B's into bonfires to protest taxation with representation.  Patriots both? -or mere political opportunists struggling to retain their relevance?  I leave it to you, my wise and discerning reader, to decide.

Is he still, like, talking and junk?

Don't Mess With Pro Sports!

For the LAST TIME,  football players ARE NOT EXEMPT from exams!

Today's post is a cautionary one for any orange-tinged, extravagantly combed-over so-called political leaders that might --just might --try messing with professional sports in their country in an attempt to distract the citizens from the things that matter most: good government, competent leaders, pro sports, and drinking beer while watching pro sports.

Soooo, how long HAVE you been a Broncos fan, Mr. Incredible Hulk?

You see, people the world over are really attached to their professional sports teams.  They enjoy the social aspect of gathering together in a huge crowd, watching athletes play a kid's game and almost murder each other in the process.  Sports were big in ancient times, too.  Take the Ancient Romans for example.  They enjoyed horse racing, gladiator fights, public executions and animal-on-human fights to the death.

Public games were initially associated with funeral rites for important people but, over time, these public spectacles became an integral part of Rome's political life.  Rich people and powerful politicians would sponsor the games which also included free food for Rome's poorest citizens.  The games served an important social purpose, as they were used to distract the plebeians, Rome's working class, from their humdrum existence so that they wouldn't revolt (to read what happened when the plebeians DID revolt, click here).  On one memorable occasion, games were used to try and "spin" an assassination.  Brutus was one of Julius Caesar's assassins.  To get the people of Rome to forget that and just move on, he sponsored a lavish series of games.  Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, sponsored an EVEN MORE KICK-ASS series of games so that the Romans WOULDN'T  forget and forgive.  Since Octavian became Rome's first Emperor and Brutus did not, one is left to conclude that the games had a pivotal role in shaping public opinion.

  As Roman society began its long period of moral decline, writers like Juvenal had occasion to lament the popularity of the games at the expense of civic engagement: 

"...the public has long since cast off its cares;

 for the people that once bestowed commands,

 consulships, legions, and all else, now cares no 

more and longs eagerly for just two things:

 bread and circuses."

-Juvenal, Satire #10

Rome also had a very robust tradition of professional equestrian sports, including individual horse racing, chariot racing, and one combined event that started out as a horse race, but halfway through, the jockey dismounted and finished the race on foot.  Chariot racing was a hybrid of individual and team effort.   The chariot itself had only one driver, but was supported by chariot wrights, wheelwrights, stable owners, horse trainers and such.  As a sport, it was  really exciting to watch --more so than today's NASCAR races -- and each racing team had its own fan base, or demes, which were identified by the color uniform the charioteer wore.  In Rome, the demes were the Blues, Greens, Reds, and Whites.  By the time of Rome's successor empire, the Byzantines, only the Blues and Greens had any real influence on the sport or on Byzantine society.  And it is with the sport of chariot racing at the Constantinople Hippodrome that I turn to next in this cautionary political tale.  

"Swan boinked my baby!"

In A.D. 532, Byzantium's Emperor was Justinian I.  To say he was an unpopular political figure was putting it mildly.  The empire struggled under taxes that were so high because of Justinian's foreign wars against the Persians; Byzantine nobles hated Justinian because of his hostility towards them and his supposed love for the common people; the commoners hated him because he had married a woman whose father was a circus animal trainer, and who herself was a prostitute/exotic dancer whose act was so raunchy that even I won't describe it here.  Suffice it to say that she presented an artistic and anatomically correct interpretation of Leda and the Swan, a story from Greek mythology where Zeus changes into a swan so he can boink the lovely and mortal Leda on the down-low.  Not being judgey or anything, but the Byzantine Empire was supposed to be officially Christian, and if immortal-on-mortal bestiality was okay with Justinian, maybe there was a problem at the top.  

On January 13, 532 a large, pissed-off crowd assembled at the Hippodrome to watch the races --yeah right, they were there to cause trouble.  By the 14th race, the crowd had given up all pretense of cheering and had instead taken up the cry of "Nika! Nika!"--Greek for Victory! or Conquer! --hurling insults at the Royal Box, then hurling rocks and small children.  They then set a bunch of fires, killed a bunch of soldiers, and attacked the palace.

"Yay team! Good race!  Now: who wants to riot in the streets?"

At about this point in the narrative, you might be asking yourself, "Why was the crowd so pissed-off in the first place --I mean besides the fact that Justinian was such a dick?" Well, during a small, regular, normal riot earlier that month, a bunch of Green and Blue demes had murdered each other and the survivors got arrested.  One of the arrested Greens and one of the Blues escaped on January 10, ran to a church and claimed sanctuary.  In an attempt to kiss Green and Blue ass, Justinian commuted the escapees' punishment to life in prison instead of death, which only further enraged both factions, because they wanted charges dropped entirely.  Add this to the high taxes and the trampy Empress, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

By now, with his palace under siege, his army defecting and his Senate backing a replacement emperor, Justinian quite sensibly grabbed a bunch of gold and jewels, loaded up a boat with anything valuable that wasn't bolted down, and was just about ready to sail when Theodora barged in and delivered the performance of her life:

"Oh, and did I mention that I look
bitchin' in purple?

"In my opinion, flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person, having been born into this world, not to die; but for one who has reigned it is intolerable to be a fugitive. May I never be deprived of this purple robe, and may I never see the day when those who meet me do not call me empress. If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty. We are rich; over there is the sea, and yonder are the ships. Yet reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the adage that the royal purple is the noblest shroud."

Thus fired-up, Justinian gathered his remaining loyal troops and slaughtered about 30,000 people, but none of that would have been necessary if Justinian didn't mess with sports fans in the first place.

We live in a world today where the President of the United States picks fights with the entire National Football League, with winning basketball and baseball teams, with college teams, with individual star players --hey, I'm waiting for him to tweet some smack about my nephew's middle school soccer team next. He'd better cut it out now --not just for the good of the game or for the good of the nation, but for his own good too. Because if he doesn't, Trump could be chased from the Oval Office by a bunch of pissed-off fans. And I don't see Melania doing anything about it a la Theodora.

"I'm outta here, losers!"