The Only Hope for Democracy is for the People to Wake Up and Act In Their Own Interests

Update 17 April 2009: PJTV provides multimedia coverage from dozens of sites of Tea Party Celebratory Protests. Over 500,000 persons attended the celebrations in the US alone.
Update: Multiple links to Tea Party coverage w/ comments from multiple points of view. It seems the map below grossly underestimates the number of cities, towns, and communities that hosted Tea Party celebratory protests today.It has been a long time since regular working Americans could find a cause that would get them to pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, and have everyone go to the protest. Today's tax day Tea Party protests are likely to be atypically calm and peaceful, compared to your average left-wing moneybags organised angry spittle bussed in outing. Not that your clueless leftist agitproper is likely to let the opportunity go to waste:

The Left’s response to Tax Day Tea Party events has been pure Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals: Ridicule. But in the Chicago socialist’s day, the tool kit did not include embedding bogus newsie posers at opposition events. Beware such chicanery today. From DKos via MM:

“Tomorrow, my husband and I will be venturing into the wilds disguised as a news crew to do some in person interviewers with teabaggers here in Rhode Island (if we can find any) … We’re going to ask open ended questions that seem to have a slight conservative bent to (hopefully) get them to open up and just start ranting. Then, we take any examples of racism, hatred, ignorance, and stupidity that we catch on camera and make a little movie out of it. Probably a YouTube special. Here’s the list we have so far

* What are you celebrating (The Boston Tea Party), and can you explain its historical relevance? [We're hoping to get some hilarious flubs from this one]

* Do you approve of Michael Steele’s plan to expand the GOP through a “hip-hop urban-suburban marketing strategy”? [hoping to get some juicy racist stuff from this question]

* (as an intentional misunderstanding/follow up, presuming that someone complains about wasteful government spending) “So you disapprove of your tax dollars going to the Iraq War?” [should elicit some confusion]

Anyways, it’s a start… but I’d love to have some suggestions for questions that sound fine, but should prompt an outpouring of crazy.” _TaxDayTeaParty

Anything to get the old bags out of the house, I always say. There will no doubt be a lot of selective editing going on, but this time there will be plenty of unedited video from many cameras, so that we can all judge what really happened. Not like the political interviews by CBS or ABC news in the past election, where everything that didn't fit with the message was left on the cutting-room floor.

The Obama / Pelosi reich may very well be the Waterloo of the US news and entertainment media. They worked so hard to gain control of "the message." But just like Ceausescu or Mussolini, things eventually fall apart. This may be the age to see it happen.

Democracy is worthless unless the people have genuine choices and genuine options for redress of grievances. The modern US political system does not provide either.