It was a drizzly evening. I had just gotten back from an entire day session at the Economic Justice Forum sponsored by the Houston Peace and Justice Center and the University of Houston Student Government Council. The Kingwood Festival was in full swing with most patrons waiting for the last event, “The Beetles”.
It was my time to man the Kingwood Area Democrats booth, so I got there about half hour early to peruse the grounds. One of our members pointed to an adjacent booth and told me that this vendor had moved from his assigned location smack in front of a fire hydrant and close to our booth. It was a radical Tea Party guy. She told the organizers and the cops about his infraction, however nothing was done. The most vocal citizens in this town are Tea Party sympathizers. The was to be expected.
Our member stated that the guy was rather radical with provocative merchandise. When I looked over I saw a Black man manning the booth. The booth was some distance from the Tea Party booth (some of the Tea Party folks here in town are ‘friends’ of mine) so I was not sure who he represented. It was a great opportunity for an interview. After all, a black Tea Party person is an anomaly given the fact that the racist element (here, here,& here) in the Tea Party is rather pronounced.
Mr. Aaron Johnson was the Tea Party Patriot manning the booth. He acceded to the interview and gave permission to use it at will. Mr. Johnson is passionate and I had the feeling he believes everything that he is saying. In speaking to him before the interview I found him to be a family man who loves his family and the fact that he was out there manning the booth alone, a hard worker.
That said, Mr. Johnson showed a level of delusion I have not even seen in the rank and file Tea Party leaders here in Kingwood, Texas. He believes the mere fact the President’s middle name is Hussein that he is Muslim. (I should have asked him if given his name Aaron Johnson if his first name made him Hebrew and his last name made him Anglo Saxon). Inasmuch as he believes in the superiority and mercy of the Christian religions, he says America should not intervene in Syria because one should allow the enemy to kill each other.
Off camera he told me the president should be impeached. When I asked him why, he gave a dubious list of things the president did including the appointment of czars that his folks deemed unconstitutional. Suffice it to say when asked for specifics he had no answers other than scripture.
The interview is quite entertaining. As I asked the questions, I had to fight internally to maintain my composure. It was an immense sense of pity for him at the same time with anger for him being so weak minded that he allowed his complete brainwashing. I invited him to lunch but his brain may be permanently and irreversibly rewired. At this point it has become an illness. That is the danger of the Tea Party. The leaders know better. The followers are just pawns in the game to allow a few to maintain the status quo, the American Plutocracy.