Unplaced Boston Tea Party op-ed

Saturday 12/16/23

Compare with every single op-ed by anybody else.

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The 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party: Look into the past and learn a little something.

A time existed in America when everyone was supposed to know about the Boston Tea Party, which occurred 250 years ago on December 16, 1773.

A history-altering ruckus occurred when some fractious colonists, believing their freedoms were being curtailed, essentially told Merry Olde England what it could do with its policy of taxation without representation and Boston Harbor got mighty caffeinated on that most defiant of nights.

It’s a cool story and an important one which speaks to the power of not standing on ceremony and getting things done rather than grandstanding for meaningless social credit points.

I pass this spot where history—and tea—went down most days of my life, aware that many wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about if you referenced the event.

We have become a people who believe as if the world began to exist the moment we entered into it.

We’re alive for such a short span on the calendar, and yet there are all of these events—among other things—that unfolded before we came along, with all of the knowledge and wisdom—and warning signs—they hold.

People tend to have no idea how old I am because of the range of what I write on. I’ll do a piece on a current event, the French Revolution, and a baseball player from 1934, but obviously I wasn’t there for two out of the three.

It was the most normal thing for me when I was a kid to read about the fall of Rome, the pitching heroics of Sandy Koufax, the acting career of Boris Karloff.

So much knowledge existed from prior to my birth that could enrich my life and inform my present and future. It never occurred to me that it was odd to actually…know stuff.

What a concept, right?

Do you ever notice what happens when someone on Twitter says, “Name the ten best basketball players of all-time!”

You can tell everyone’s age from the players they pick. It’s like no one else—sorry, Wilt Chamberlain!—had ever been walked the earth, let alone been kind of good at this round ball thing.

I don’t believe it occurs to many people that their entry into this life didn’t signify anything other than that. And if you have such a small percentage of time in which to be alive, what sort of mistake would you be making to confine what you learn from that given time period? What’s more asinine? Self-defeating?

We see what is playing out right now with university presidents appearing in front of Congress and if you’re aware of how horrific periods in human history have gone, you might find yourself thinking, “Whoa, are we doing 1938 all over again?”

It’s terrifying and it should be.

What I love about the Boston Tea Party is just what a pack of scruffy ruffians Americans were. Punks.

Had these upstarts been concerned with checking boxes and playing not to lose and sticking to the safest path available, this country wouldn’t have gone on to be what it is—or was, if you prefer. There’s no doing what needed to be done in World War II had these colonists not first gotten after it.

You never want to stop yourself from knowing what you can easily know. Someone will make some comment to me that such and such was before my time, like that means anything. I get this a lot. Nothing bars you from knowledge. What I end up wishing to do—politely—is buttonhole these people and declare, “You’re allowed to know things!”

I feel like this shouldn’t be so strange a concept, but that’s what it is right now. There are all manner of inspiriting primers to get one started on what happened in this burgeoning country 250 years ago. The events are exciting. They’ll pump you up. Send you surging into your day.

And they’re likely to impact how you look at the world, what’s happening with it, and your place in that world. It’s not just the Boston Tea Party. Read Billie Holiday’s autobiography. A soldier’s letters home from the Civil War.

You have to step outside of your short stint on the calendar of existence. If you’re not aware, if you’re not taking the time and the care to know, you’re not really all that free.

Dump the proverbial tea, and represent yourself with as much knowledge as you can.