View from Washington: Occupy and The Tea Party – Not Two Sides of the Same Coin [Opinion]

Every day, I hear some member of our crack mainstream press corps say that the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement are two sides of the same coin.

This could be because they are suffering from collective brain damage, but, no, we’re not that lucky. Nope, our problem is that, of all the institutions that have let us down so hard we have a society-wide concussion,  the media is among the worst.

They missed the dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, played cheerleader for the financial bubble, supported tax cuts, and rode shotgun on two illegal wars.

To call our media inept, lazy and biased is an understatement of biblical proportions. So the fact that they can’t tell the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is not surprising; that President Obama can’t is just plain sad.

“I understand the frustrations expressed by those protests. In some ways, they’re not that different from the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party,” Obama said. “Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

No, the difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement is the dividing line between hope and fear. The Tea Party is a predominantly Christian, white, working and middle class movement that is as much a reaction to Barack Obama’s election as it was an intense fear of the massive economic displacement we’re all experiencing.

It was born on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange out of a monstrous lie told by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli.

It was nurtured with millions, from billionaires like the Koch brothers and Dick Armey. The Occupy Movement is not a collection of college kids; it is America–every color, creed and orientation is a part of it.

The Occupy movement was born from the frustration of watching the President we elected opt on saving the financial criminals still preying on all of us, instead of saving our houses or investing in jobs and infrastructure.

It is a principled opponent to the very forces that gave the Tea Party birth. It is not the other side of some political coin, it is a challenge to not only how they wield their power but the fact that they have it.

The Occupy Movement is who we will be after we survive this–but the Tea Party is what we will become, if the forces of fear devour the harbingers of hope.

Read the rest on Don’s blog