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Published May 07, 2015
By Dan GainorVice President Business Media Institute
When the Republicans and Democrats spend too much and let you down, it's time to find a third party. Not a political party -- a tea party.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are planning their perfect tax day protest by the most modern of means -- online. No, we're not talking some e-mail list. This is a virtual revolution brought to the tech savvy via the essential tools of Twitter and Facebook. Three of the four groups organizing the Tax Day Tea Party don't even exist in the real world and tax protesters couldn't care less.
Those who said the revolution won't be televised were correct. The only thing is, no one cares. Traditional media is declaring its irrelevance through deliberate disinterest, but the republic still flourishes. This April 15, the revolution is happening whether the media like it or not.
They are pulling together more than 500 events using the best activist tools available. This is a Twitter revolution and it's not the first. Across the Atlantic, over there in Moldova (stand in the middle of Romania and take a right turn to find it), they are trying to foment a real revolution by use of high-tech tools and boy are the commissars scared.
Anti-government young people in Moldova sent out a message that reportedly said: "Come fight the Communists in the front of the government building. Pass this message on." Fifteen thousand people took it seriously. Protests and repression followed. One activist was even charged for forming "an anti-Communist flash mob" -- essentially a protest on the fly via new technology.
As the perennially out-of-touch New York Times described it, young Moldovans "used their generation's tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network."
Over in Europe they understand, you can't have a revolution using pitchforks. Today you need an iPod or two at least. And that's what this tea party movement is, too, a revolution. Not the scary, messy, dangerous kind. It's the quiet earthquake.
It's obvious the left understands. They recognize that the citizens involved in the tea party movement are using the very same tools that got Obama elected and helped Democrats take over Congress. To see a grassroots movement rise up against Democrats' crazy spending just a couple months into their mis-administration terrifies them.
Libs are going positively apoplectic. They'll make supposedly funny off-color jokes about the protest or even try to run counter-ops against this voice of the people.
Let them. Our situation is less dire than the Moldovans face. But it is no less important. We aren't fighting the Communists -- yet. Right now, it's just wrong-headed socialism. But it's wrong-headed to the tune of trillions of dollars.
Meanwhile, this rebellion is showing itself a true grassroots movement. It is flourishing despite complete disinterest from much of the national media.
Those who said the revolution won't be televised were correct. The only thing is, no one cares. Traditional media is declaring its irrelevance through deliberate disinterest, but the republic still flourishes. This April 15, the revolution is happening whether the media like it or not.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and Vice President of the Media Research Center's Business Media Institute. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum and he can be seen each Thursday on Foxnews.com's "Strategy Room."
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-tea-party-revolution-brought-to-you-by-twitter