Of course, the above article is flawed in that it just lumps up distaste with government on all sides of the political divide and calls it "Tea Party-like," which is a poor descriptor. The Tea Party in the United States is about a particular kind of distaste with government. It's the sort of distaste that advocates for government getting out of health care (except for Medicare, of course, because that doesn't count for some reason.) They're the sort of people whose distaste in government leads them to call for ever-lower taxes, and the dismantling of public transportation programs paid in part by tax dollars, but then yell, whine, and kvetch when there aren't enough buses to get them all to one of their rallies. The sort that wants to privatize everything because government can't do anything right, except maybe kill brown-skinned people overseas and keep those gays from getting married.
However, by the data presented in the article, a significant portion of those in Canada fed up with "government and elites" are of the conservative bent, which suggests that crazy ol' Stevie isn't crazy or reactionary enough for them. I do not consider this a good thing for reasons that should be obvious.
Just in case it isn't, though, let me present a case study of the sort of mentality the typical Tea Partier has.
Here's an example where an essential service is neglected out of greed. Really, it's hard to get more essential than firefighting, but the people in Obion County didn't feel like setting something up for themselves - likely because of the costs involved in doing so. The nearby city of South Fulton, in what I can only imagine was a fit of charity, offered to provide fire department coverage for Obion County. As this was out of city limits, this was not something they could force on them; furthermore, it was not something they could simply do for free, because this sort of thing costs money.
The simplest solution is the socialized one - roll the fee into property taxes and ensure everyone's taken care of. Obion County decided to make it an opt-in system - if a homeowner wanted the Fire Department to service his or her property, then that homeowner would pay the nominal fee of $75 a year.
You may have heard of this story already, as it's made a lot of distance over the blogging parts of the internet. Anyway, the end result is that a guy named Cranick decided not to pay, his house caught fire, and when he called the Fire Department to come save it, they refused. They eventually did come out, but only to save his neighbour's house when the fire spread. Even when they were there, though, they still didn't help the guy out because he hadn't paid and by the time they got there it was too late for him to change his mind.
It's easy, for someone like me who lives in a country with universal access to health care, to get all morally indignant at the firefighters. The U.S. doesn't have our health care system, though (because SOCIALISM!), and firefighters' work insurance coverage south of the border tends to be laser-precise. There's a good chance that if they'd tried to help the guy, and one of them got injured, they'd be footing the bill themselves because their insurance simply doesn't cover them fighting fires outside of their jurisdiction. That's outside of potentially losing there jobs due to disobeying orders from their superiors who are worried about the free rider problem inherent in the situation.
And it's not like Cranick couldn't have paid. This wasn't some poor subsistence farmer scraping to get buy. The home that burnt down is a 34-acre farm with three houses on it. It's a beef cattle farm, and he likely still owns a second farm in Kentucky. If he'd just applied a third of his USDA subsidy from last year to pay for this service fee, he'd still have his house.
He didn't, because
[quote]"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.[/quote]
The guy tried to game the system (a system he probably had a hand in setting up, by voting not to have a county fire department) and he lost. And that's the Tea Party mentality for you, in a nutshell.
A mentality that's simply unsustainable for a culture such as ours - one that decries the taxes needed to ensure the health of our most cherished institutions, yet refuses to give up those institutions. One that looks for loopholes that benefits oneself at the expense of one's neighbours, all the while bragging about bootstraps and free markets, and screaming about vague, barely-concealed racist fears of "the other."A mentality that, sadly, we may be seeing the first glimpses of in our own Great White North.
The irony here is that, despite the contempt in which I hold the Tea Party and likeminded individuals... I still think they should be able to get make their voice heard democratically through proportionate representation. I'll just do my best to shame them at every opportunity if a Canadian Tea Party ever does form.
No comments:
Post a Comment