Tea Party Test

Steve Rose, Co-Publisher of The Johnson County Sun and editorialist par excellence, in his Memo column on Wednesday, April 14, 2010, set forth a ten question test to determine whether you are or should be a "Tea Partier." His test boils down to liking conservative media shows; doubting evidence of outrageous conservative attacks on liberals; getting it when you hear code words like "take back our country" or "smaller government, lower taxes"; being angry in general about current affairs; denying racial overtones in virtually all-white protests; believing Obama is a foreign-born socialist; and wanting to influence elections, but being clueless as to whom to elect to represent your political views.

It's a pretty good test. Steve suggests a 70 percent score is enough to spur one to join the movement. Given the lack of focus of the Tea Partiers, I'd venture that answering only one of the above in the affirmative is qualification enough to enroll in the vague tea party cause. The mental states that underpin positive answers of tea party joiners are more indicative of the qualifying factors. Liking conservative media implies uncritical acceptance of its output as valid, when critical analysis easily debunks it. Doubting that attacks on liberals have occurred is a cognitive disconnect, a recognized mental defect. Accepting the veiled sympathies of code words indicates thought-skewing biases that becloud reason. Anger implies frustration, and frustration implies failure, which in turn implies lack of reflection as to the cause of failure, instead scape-goating a distant bogey-man like "big" government. In other words, if your 401(K) investment account tanked and your risk tolerance was exceeded; don't hold for a long-term recovery, but sell on the down slope and act out your frustration by assailing "government bail-out". Denying that race plays a role in selection of tea party participants is an egregious self-defensive behavior. Name-calling directed at President Obama is simply juvenile thinking, lacking maturity and civility. Denigrating incumbents as culpable for all the country's ills and voting them out in favor of candidates whose qualifications are denigrating incumbents is a recipe for disaster whose only cure will be to vote out the replacement incumbents. Do those attracted to the Tea Party understand such concepts as democracy, political platforms, or majority rule, to name a few?

I would suggest that a standard psychological test (or tests) that measures critical thinking, cognitive disconnection, paranoia, schizophrenia and maturity would reveal tea party tendencies. Probably unmeasurable by a psychological test is a big dose of naiveity that I have sensed while observing television interviews of several erstwhile, simplistic participants in this new political phenomenon. One can only speculate as to the effects on these naive souls from the disenchantment that will inevitably occur when the impact of this fringe movement fizzles out in the November elections. I, for one, will never vote for a far-right crazy politician. And, I seriously doubt that few people, except those so-called Tea Partiers, will.