How The Tea Partiers Are Like Jilted Lovers

“What has gripped everyone’s attention is the exorbitant character of the anger Tea Party members express. Where do such anger and such passionate attachment to wildly fantastic beliefs come from?” J.M. Bernstein suggests that the rage, and the consequent willingness to believe things that aren’t true, arise from the place where the American myth of rugged self-sufficiency meets the shock and fury of a lover suddenly rejected.