The reason for their hatred

The outrage of the Tea Party has suddenly become accessible to me. Went to a film that was part of the Italian Film Festival. I already have a little trouble with the film festival, because in a manner characteristic of this society into which I have been exiled, the organizer, a cheap faux culture nouveau riche swindler, charges way too much for things that if he charged less he would actually make a profit on. It’s a serious failing of this culture – they can’t get anything right, but in business they are especially boneheaded. For example, he used to have an opening lecture on one of the films, which is a great idea in this university city, but he greedily charged $25. Nobody is going to pay that much to hear a lecture on an Italian film, whereas they would have gone in great numbers had the lecture been thrown in for free. So the attendance was so low that he dropped the idea – never occurred to him to offer the lecture for free as a way of drawing crowds. Believe me, there are plenty of university lecturers who would have given the lecture happily as a public service, a way of creating ties between town and gown.

Anyway, back to the outrage and the eventual link to the Tea Party. So this buffoon who runs the film festival charges way too much for his films. In a normal festival you can buy packets of tickets as a discount. Not here. Not only that – I went to see a film on Tuesday, especially because Tuesday at the theatre has a discount. But NOT it turns out for the festival films.

The helpless fury I felt gave me access to the Tea Party anger. It comes from the deep sense of injustice at a system – a system that you can’t really fathom but to which you can attach a dopey face, in this case the foolish festival organizer.

I knew then that if there existed a group of disgruntled people similarly stuck in this benighted country who wanted to throw a manifestation, carry signs, shriek against the cheats, hoodlums, and scoundrels running the film festival that I would be out there with them, screaming my hatred. Throw in the university and there is nothing that I wouldn’t say about this place, no lie so absurd that I wouldn’t believe it if it were to its discredit; there is NOTHING that I would not say about the people in charge and the mindless idiocy with which they bungle their jobs. Nothing can adequately express my loathing of this place – all I could do if asked what I think about things here is bellow like an enraged bull.

This is the emotion that motivates the Tea Party. I get dizzy with delight imagining how I would love to pile on a bus to be barfed out on the Mall and shriek my hatred of the Italian film festival, the university here, along with similarly irate people. The Tea Partiers, pissed off that they have lost their jobs and that a system to which they have no access seems not to be paying them any heed, want to howl at the world. I would howl along with them if my agenda matched theirs.