Memo to members of the Tea Party who demand respect and to be taken seriously: If you want respect, give respect. If you want to be taken seriously, take those you disagree with seriously. If you want a place at the table, be willing to share space at the table with those who don’t look, think, or believe as you do. If you are going to hold protest rallies, as is your right in a free country, don’t make it personal. Engaging in insults and turning disagreements into something personal only makes you look ignorant, small, and intolerant. Racial epithets, gay slurs, and spitting on your opponents is no way to treat fellow Americans. How can you expect us to treat with anything resembling respect when y’all conduct yourself in such a hateful manner?
On a very personal level, I’m disgusted by your antics and your tactics…and I refuse to accord you any measure of respect until and unless you demonstrate that you’re willing to engage in a reasoned, rational, respectful debate with those with whom you disagree. We are not the enemy, and I refuse to countnenance or acknowledge those whose idea of debate involves red faces, forehead veins popping, and screaming incoherently. Rage and scorn are not a recipe for finding the sort of middle ground that allows this country to move forward in a positive manner. At this point in our collective history, y’all are nothing but a painful, ugly pimple on the butt of the body politic.
I’m disgusted by your signs, your chants, and your complete and total disrespect for our President and those who disagree with you. You’ve made a mockery of freedom of speech. Your movement is an embarrassment to good and decent Americans who believe that the way to move this country in a positive direction doesn’t involve spitting on your opponents or insulting them personally. Your movement has devolved into the political equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church. In short, your movement is intolerant, inflexible, ignorant, and rotten to the core. You deserve nothing but scorn and derision, because you’ve proven to be capable of according nothing but scorn and derision to those you disagree with. Your movement sickens me, because it runs counter to everything I love about this country. I will defend your right to express yourself, but as for everything else about your movement, y’all can go straight to Hell. Y’all deserve nothing less.
IF you believe that you can conduct yourself in a respectful and tolerant manner, then prove to Americans that you can discuss differences at something less than full volume. Demonstrate that you can tolerate disagreement without spitting on or verbally assaulting your adversary. If you refuse these simple steps, if you’re incapable of acting like reasonable human beings, you should fully expect to be marginalized, ridiculed, and treated as the laughing stocks you currently clearly are. Y’all disgust me, but unlike you, I’m willing to display some tolerance and acceptance…if y’all demonstrate that you’re worthy of it. Frankly, I don’t think y’all have it in you…but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
