English Breakfast

I like tea. Teabags are my companions from noon to midnight, mostly Lipton. My teacup is stained blacker than my teeth from so much tea. At dawn, I have this clever spoon with its own lid that I tuck about ½ full of loose English Breakfast (with the tail ends of some other high falutin' Tea Republic stuff that I dump into the E.B. tin). Tea keeps me going. Tea is Bodhidharma's eyelids, according to legend. One of my daughter's friends thinks I'm a black magician because I like loose tea and own a real, goldurned whissling teapot.

Now, I realize I'm slipping into Know-Nothing dialect here, but I'm winding up to make a point. I have to admit, those teapartiers who aren't advocating the second civil war (hard for an old Jayhawker like me to put up with, you understand) or flaunting pipsqueak personal artillery, the ones who can string two coherent thoughts together without spraining their brain cell... they get a lissen from me. Not that it matters. These days all I do is vote if I feel like it.

But pay attention, yahoos. The tea party movement, as incoherent and angry as it may be, is your archetypal Apathetic Voter — the ones you can't drag to the polls — enraged and bumptious. You don't have to fear them, because by definition, these are the ones Nixon folded into the Silent Majority with a felicitous turn of phrase. Tablebangers who shun actual policy or governing.

Except for the guns. The stupid, futile guns. We can revisit Waco or Ruby Ridge or the freaking goddam Civil War anytime you feel crazy enough. It won't be Sherman on your doorstep, or even Patton. It'll be David Petreaus, and he'll be pissed because he had to come home and wipe your snotty noses, along with his platoon of GameBoy kids in some other part of the world with a boatload of predator drones. So, puh-leeze. Guns? Pull the other one.

Sorry, but that really drops the Slinky™ down my escalator. Get outa my teacup.