By Derek Beres

The answer in one word: creativity.

Yet nothing is so easy to understand. If you watch and read enough media outlets, you get the sense that American politics are divided into two extremes, with a hearty middle wondering which way the ship will tip. On one side, the Tea Party, responsible for everything from reviving and extremifying the right wing to pulling the puppet strings on John Boehner’s tender scapulas with issues like the payroll tax cut. On the other, modern day hippies armed with iPhones and laptops, errant citizens without jobs who should just go get one, upset and angered masses that have somehow turned the national conversation into percentage points and corporate domination.

Media entities have done a great job at dividing these two camps, though some intelligent thinkers have connected the dots between them: lower taxes for individuals and families earning respectable and not outlandish wages, less governmental interference, more personal freedom. Comparisons must end there. One movement represents change with the other vehemently opposing it. A better way to put it is to say that one wants movement and the other wants to retreat.

The Tea Party is predominantly comprised of individuals imagining a political past that never existed to begin with, which is why this base emits strong religious fervor. At least a portion is comprised of single-issue voters, in which the religion a political candidate practices can sway their vote. For them, inventing a spirituality to suit their needs is acceptable; the same holds true with their politics. And so their American Eden: a supposedly historical moment when everyone paid enough taxes, worked enough hours, and received enough social benefits to make life worthwhile. Schools taught, politicians led and workers worked.

This may have been the case for a fraction of our nation, and indeed may still be so depending on what industry employs you. Yet the factual validity of such a utopian society is impossible to find. I was born just after the era of Civil and Women’s Rights, and these battles are still being waged, progressed as we may pretend to be. Never has America served the total public, and with the way our politics are heading, the chances of such a reality are slimming. To recognize that the Tea Party emerged shortly after we elected our first African-American President is only to scratch the surface of the backward-looking mentality that dominates what is today called the right wing.

The political mind and the religious mind are not divided. They inform one another. If you believe one thing and live another, the fracture between belief and reality is not going to be healthy for you on an individual level, nor for your contribution to an emerging global culture. In Tea Party America, the divide is great. Dreaming up an invented American Eden is indicative of someone who seeks heaven in the future and a savior of the past. The constant distraction of these past and future havens ensures that such a mind is never actually present.

Which is where the loosely knitted Occupy movement diverges. Everything about it serves this moment: unfair tax structures, women’s rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, and a host of other issues that are being addressed. There might be bad lip reading youtube clips to keep us entertained, but organizational meetings entertaining the possibility of a new economic system are helping us realize that other ways of living are possible. Innovation evolves the foundation of thinking—it forces us to think clearer, think smarter, think better, and ideally, think in terms of everyone.

What is being sought in the Occupy circles is the type of change that creates a better society in and for the future, not an idealistic dream of sometime past. This engagement with the present is an actual act of creation, its dreamers erecting a sturdy foundation out of the scattered parts of the collective national mind. It is inclusive of every type of being that yearns for unity, not one critical and judgmental of those who hold divergent opinions from our own, be they religious, political and so forth.

It is a movement that endures pepper spraying, winter chills, public camping grounds and Fox News. Most importantly, it is creative in its applications of resistance. The protestors march along K Street and peacefully disrupt lunches and press conferences to make their message heard. They lie on the sidewalk and unroll red carpets for millionaire politicians to walk over them. They make videos and songs and speeches and poetry. They turn their frustrations into something beneficial and beautiful, even if it’s as simple as making us laugh. The absurdity of our politics has become so great that laughter is all we can truly offer our elected sheep parading in wolves’ clothing.

One thing you have never seen come out of any Tea Party rally is art. You see complaining and, if it’s raining outside, an empty field. Occupy is not about going to a rally for three hours with cardboard and magic markers and returning home. It’s a mental state, a way of being, one seeking creative solutions to previously unaddressed problems.

Occupy is a movement in which the doing is in the hands of the people. We should not be surprised that Tea Party-elected officials refuse to cut payroll taxes yet want to drain organizations like NPR and various arts funds: the creative process is a dangerous one to people who want to live in the past, even when their history never occurred. That doesn’t stop them—they simply invent one. It’s up to the rest of us to invent, and create, things that are worthy of who we are as compassionate and caring human beings. This is a process that draws us together, so that we will not further be torn apart.

Image by flickr user Casey Fox.