Well, it was bound to happen. The Tea Party movement has attracted the attention of the assholes, and they intend to bring the full brunt of their assholery on to the Tea Partiers two weeks hence.
This could get ugly. As someone who generally favors the Tea Party movement and has attended one such event, I’d like to offer my advice to the Tea Partiers some advice on how to deal with potential problems on April 15.
DO print out the plans and rants of these idiots and supply them to local police and press.
DO watch carefully for “infiltrators.”
DO talk with others who will be attending and make plans for dealing with these assholes.
DO have plenty of cell phone cameras and other video recording devices recording everything you can.
DO NOT bring weapons to the rallies.
DO NOT openly confront them.
DO NOT be provoked by them.
The best ideas I’ve seen so far has been to identify and then isolate the assholes, in a non-confrontational way. One notion was to surround them with people loudly praying, singing, or chanting folks who will not let themselves be provoked. Were I able to get the day off from The Day Job, I would be ideal for this task — I am fairly large, very difficult to provoke to physical violence, and I have a very loud and very bad singing voice. If anyone remembers the time Drew Carey sang “God Bless America,” that would be my role model.
What must be remembered is that these assholes are vandals. They are destroyers. They lack the capability to create anything beyond chaos. They deserve absolutely no respect.
What does deserve respect is their ability to create that chaos. They are masters of disruption and provocation and disturbances.
My biggest fear is that these assholes love violence, and they’re going up against people who have among them people who truly understand and have mastered real violence. Those people, generally, don’t love violence, but are supremely competent in its application. People with military, police, or martial arts training are, generally speaking, very reluctant to engage in violence — but once they do, it’s never pretty.
On the other hand, the assholes who love violence are usually very bad at it when confronted with people with skills and no formal restraints on their behavior. They’re used to clashing with the helpless, or the police who have legal restrictions on how they can use their skills. The Tea Partiers don’t. Some assholes, if they push hard enough, are going to get their asses stomped into the dirt.
These assholes are going to the Tea Parties looking for trouble. And most people who go looking for trouble usually end up finding it.
And while the thought of these assholes getting their asses kicked warms my heart a little, the repercussions do trouble me. Because I know that, no matter the circumstances, it’ll be spun to make the Tea Parties look bad.
Which is precisely what the assholes want.
