Boston Tea Party Images Illustrate the Colonists's Dissatisfaction With King George's Rule. Americans Are Ready for Another Rebellion Against Our Oppressive Government.

The Boston Tea Party images that many people are familiar with are the woodcuts made at the time or soon after. They show the Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians on board the British ships as they throw the tea into the water in protest.

In this way they aimed to teach the British a lesson and to prevent the excesses of taxation or the financial ruin of other tea suppliers to the colonies.

In the same way that other images of past events are often stylized and do not bear much resemblance to what went on at the time, it is possible that the images of the Boston Tea Party were also inexact.

This was accepted during this period. Books containing accounts of voyages to distant lands often contained exactly the same woodcut to describe different animals for example.

Modern day records and photographs of the same animals show how far removed the latter-day illustrators were from the exact representations that we expect today. However, at the time, the important thing was to convey a sense of exotic and mysterious experiences, rather than to exactly depict the object concerned.

TAKING INTO ACCOUNT NEW THREATS

People were unlikely to be able to see the same sight with their own eyes. Woodcuts and engravings filled the gap in order to give pictorial life to the accompanying words.

Today, however, even if the US has moved on from woodcuts, there are still discrepancies between what is represented to its citizens and what is really going on. There is also a divergence between the sincerity of the artists showing the Boston Tea Party images and the duplicity practiced by various high-ranking government officials.

The artists of two hundred years ago did not seek to deliberately mislead the public. The artistic conventions of the time were understood and accepted by artists and the audience.

SEEKING NEW WAYS TO IDENTIFY THE TRUTH

However, nowadays, citizens expect the truth, above all from the government that they elected by a majority vote. It has however become extremely difficult to know whether or not the Government from the President on downwards is telling the truth.

Not telling the truth comes in different flavors. First of all there is the omission of the truth, in cases where ‘the truth and nothing but the truth’ is respected, but ‘all the truth’ gets waylaid.

Nixon and Reagan were examples of presidents that were overly economical with the truth in scandals such as Watergate and the Iran-Contras. Nixon clammed up and had to go to avoid impeachment. Reagan ‘forgot’ that the US had made arms sales that had been made illegal by its own laws.

THE NEED TO IDENTIFY AND JUDGE AS APPROPRIATE

Beyond such forgetfulness and in contrast with the clarity of Boston Tea Party images comes deliberate misrepresentation such as Clinton’s assertions that he never had sex with Monica Lewinsky.

His definition of what the word meant in that context diverged greatly from what the average US citizen expected it to mean. And finally comes outright lying when a President knowingly makes a false statement.

Two terms of the Bush administration this century set the scene for Presidential lies on a scale that may even surpass any other presidency, from terrorism to welfare to communist ‘enemies’ and to stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

It got so bad that Bush was booed by Congress in 2005 during his State of the Union speech. In keeping with Boston Tea Party images, it is to be hoped that Congress can be equally critical of the current administration and prevent any lapses into the apparently compulsive lying of the administration before.