The Tea Party, Hobbits, Star Wars and Siths

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This week, U.S. Sen. John McCain derided the "Tea Party Hobbits" in Congress blocking debt ceiling legislation.

McCain should have said the Mad Hatter Tea Party belonged in Alice in Wonderland. McCain wronged the Hobbits. Hobbits are the opposite of the Tea Partiers. It is the "Tea Party Siths" that are the real face of our true enemy.

J. R. R. Tolkien said Hobbits' main virtue was that they had no interest whatsoever in political power. They were the only ones who could be entrusted with the one ring of power because they could not be corrupted, and they would destroy the ring. Hobbits, as opposed to Tea Partiers, loved tea and would never throw tea or food overboard. Hobbits loved comfort and the simple life and green forests and communed with nature and with ancient tree people. Hobbits would be naturals for the Green party, but otherwise they are homebodies.

Hobbits don't like to fight, and the Hobbit hero, Frodo, only joined to defeat evil because there was no other choice and no other way to protect their beloved homes in the Shire. Hobbits would never take to grandstanding or the politics of personal destruction. They would conciliate this debate, and they would throw the Tea Party into the fire of Mordor to end the existential threat that the Tea Party now poses to the honest, average middle class who live in places like the Shire.

The only possible reason to invoke Hobbits is that they lived 6,000 years ago. If we don't pass a debt ceiling increase, we are going back to the dark ages, let alone the Middle Ages. The Hobbits' shire would look like an advanced society if the Tea Party gets their way. That may be the Tea Party's ultimate goal – sending America back to a simpler, more religious time that stressed family values. The dark ages.

There they go again. The Tea Party has created yet another distraction to divide and destroy and to stop America from thinking seriously about real problems.

The debt crisis is not at all like Lord of the Rings. It's more like Platoon when Vietnam-era officers had to "burn the village in order to save it." Sarah Palin and her buddies seem to love to destroy things. They seem to like the smell of napalm burning in the morning. If the Viet Cong attacked America, she would defend their rights to bear arms. Palin is so artful that she concocted a fake version of the Paul Revere ride to distract America from real issues. Palin's other Tea Party buddies will twist any story so that Congress will never seriously debate any issue. Now the rest of the Tea Party has created the clown circus that Palin wanted all along. In her world, the government that never governs is best – so long as Palin's buddies get elected.

Yes, Tea Party leaders are a kind of kamikaze or suicide bombers. They love purity of ideology even more than national survival. They are willing to blow up our economy rather than sacrifice their anti-tax ideology.

I think McCain should have used the term "Tea Party Siths" to be accurate. The Sith Lord in Star Wars started the phony clone wars solely to get everyone in the galaxy foolishly destroying each other (and democracy itself) for no reason at all. Secretly, the Sith controlled both sides of the fight, then ordered the execution of all remaining Jedi. Then the Sith said piously and patriotically that he had brought "peace" to the galaxy – the peace of death.

Adopting the Sith plan, Republicans claim they are pious and patriotic, but secretly they have created a Trojan war to destroy our country. Republicans ran up trillions of dollars of deficit under former President George Bush. They ran up trillions more by insisting on extending the Bush tax cuts. Now they are shocked–shocked–there is a debt! Somehow they are blaming the other party for the Republican debt! This really is the brilliant move of a Sith. They created crisis, wars, doom, healthcare failure. They blame it on the other party and now they are going to ruin the country so that they can take over the rubble that the country will become. Well done – even the Sith, armed with a death star, could not have done better. Once again, Tea Party Siths have shown the Dark Side of the Force is strong indeed.

In fact, our current government disarray makes Alice in Wonderland look like a well-ordered society by comparison. I'd vote for the Red Queen over Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, Palin, Rep. Eric Cantor or Rep. John Boehner. As the Red Queen would say, "Off with their heads!"

Which makes more sense than the Tea Party shooting all of us with the debt fiasco.

The Tea Party has started a totally pointless fantasy debate and now are threatening to tank the entire economy. Hobbits would never do anything like this. But Sith would.

It seems that the "Tea Party Siths" plan is exactly on target.

So don't blame the Hobbits. Frodo for President! He is the one man who put the good of his country above all, and he shunned power. We need good-sense Hobbits to defend us from the Mad Hatter Tea Party Siths!

Dr. James Murtaugh
Cincinnati, Ohio

Murtaugh is a former Druid Hills resident and Emory University professor who also worked at the and Grady Hospital.