How to Tell If You May Be a Tea Party Whacko

Lately I’ve been troubled about how to define the Tea Party people.  They seem to come from all over the map. It is claimed some are Democrats (Polls show 5%).  A very many are conservative Republicans, and Libertarians to be sure, and many seem to come from radicalized fringe groups like militias and white supremacists.

From the hodgepodge of misspelled and mis-punctuated signs they like to wave about, it is fairly obvious many Tea Partiers are borderline illiterates.  Some seem to be way over the border in fact. And, many Tea Partiers seem to be otherwise normal people who have been mobilized from the complacent, self-satisfied comfort of their sofas and arm chairs to attend the meetings.   There they worship their intellectually challenged heros like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin who are the ones who mobilized them in the first place.

After a good bit of though I have discerned many commonalities which help describe the disparate group of people who call themselves Tea Partiers.   It was simply a matter of sitting down and giving the issue sufficient thought.  I am sharing my conclusions with everyone in the hopes it will help those who may suspect they may be whackos themselves to draw their own conclusions.  Shown below is my ‘calculator’ which will help you decide.  Simply enter an ‘X’ or checkmark in the boxes for the characteristics which describe you, then total the number of marks you make.  A convenient scoring index at the bottom will help you decide for sure:

(Double-click on the chart below to expand)