by Michael Cook

Created on: April 28, 2010   Last Updated: May 19, 2010

It is a mistake to describe the Tea Party movement as either all "good" or all "bad" because that immediately polarizes the discussion, depending upon how one perceives a movement that is both an expression of some legitimate voter frustration and an awful lot of misplaced anger based on right wing propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies.

But, on balance, given the often xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and what I've come to call "Christian Nationalist", tone that permeates much of the rhetoric at overwhelmingly white Tea Party events, the impact this movement could have on our nation is,by and large, quite negative.

The movement is based on as much fiction is it is fact, and it is the many fictions that get told, particularly by right wing politicians and media pundits like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, that are dividing and polarizing this nation to a degree  not seen since the nation was torn asunder by the issue of slavery in the 19th century.

For example, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, more than anyone else, bear responsibility for the lie that took on a life of its own among many Tea Partiers who came to believe that health care reform would bring about the euthanizing of Nana, Grandpa, and people with disabilities like Mrs. Palin's Down Syndrome child, Trig.

That lie resulted in Tea Party protesters at the Capitol last September using actual photographs of the victims of Hitler's Holocaust to bolster bogus claims that the passage of health care reform would result in another Holocaust - albeit an American one.

Beyond the blatant dishonesty of the "death panels" lie, the use of actual photographs of the victims of Hitler's horrors at the US Capitol to score cheap political points against health care reform was perhaps one of the most disgustingly disrespectful manipulations of the memory of Hitler's victims anyone has ever employed.

Yet no Republican politician or right wing pundit, with the exception of Congressman Eric Kantor, the only Jew in the GOP caucus, denounced such Tea Party tactics. But even Congressman Kantor's denunciations was, for lack of a better word, tepid. He called the disrespectful photo display "inappropriate". An understatement, to say the least.

Another lie involving the Tea Party is that it is a genuine "grassroots" movement. If the truth be told, the movement is as much a product of right wing  GOP politicians like former

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