The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Does anyone remember what happened at the Mad Hatter's tea party? The Hatter and March Hare tried to put the sleepy, drowsy dormouse in the teapot. I don't know if the tea was hot. And I wonder if it burned the dormouse or killed him entirely. The Hatter had a riddle though, which he confessed he didn't have the answer to himself.

The "tea parties" held across the US yesterday were somehow highly reminiscent of that story. It is a curious coincidence that a lot of the attenders were wearing hats very similar to the Hatter's hat. I wonder who March Hare is. But I think it is pretty clear to the rest of us who the dormouse is. Alas the dormice don't know who they are. And in their slumber they don't realize that the Hatter and the Hare are trying to drown them in that tea.

It is mostly funny, and partly pitiful, that the attendees of the mad tea party somehow got their own party confused with the Boston Tea Party. Now, the Boston Tea Party was in protest of taxation without representation. The mad tea party is in protest of electoral loss of representation. These same party-goers were probably sound asleep (like the dormouse) for the last eight years when government spending went up, surplus went down, deficit went up and the general economy went down and so on. They raise their voices against wealth redistribution but fail to see how the money goes from their wallets to the government coffers to failed bank executives and no-bid government contractors. Is that redistribution? Are the dormice against all redistribution or are they against redistribution in just one direction? The dormice cry and wail because they don't want undeserving fellow citizens to have health care but they do not speak a word when undeserving CEOs of failing companies get millions of the same tax dollars as bonuses. The dormice whine and complain when money is spent inside the country to rebuild its economy but they hardly raise their voices when money is spent outside the country to wage wars and then rebuild other countries. And when the majority of these same dormice get a tax cut, they rally in support of the hatter and the hare who have already received their cuts and are now trying to drown them in the teapot!

Oh the irony! Of mice and men...