By the time the Stamp Act was due to take effect, all stamp officers in the colonies had resigned, and with no stamps available, the Act was irrelevant except as a symbolic affront. Americans nevertheless greeted November 1 as a day of mourning, with bells tolling throughout the day. The Sons of Liberty--[Samuel] Adams, [Benjamin] Edes, and the others--gathered at the Liberty Tree to hang effigies of [Prime Minister George] Grenville and another member of parliament. That evening, they put the effigies in a cart, and as thousands marched behind, they wheeled it past the Town House and on to the gallows on Boston Neck to be hung. The courts and customs houses had no choice but to close. Business came to a standstill.
--Harlow Giles Unger, American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution
A group of agitators lead a mob through the streets, interfere with government business, and publicly hang government officials in effigy in protest against a toothless and symbolic tax law, as part of an escalating campaign against the government that leads ultimately to calculated acts of political vandalism, and then to a mass shootout with government personnel over an attempt to confiscate civilian-held military weapons. That violent episode, as you may know, ended up spreading somewhat before reaching a mutually acceptable resolution.
So excuse the hell out of me if I don't get all butthurt over the "inflammatory rhetoric" the poor dears in Washington have to endure today.
You want to try to govern Americans? Grow a thicker damn skin. The founding fathers would have eaten these milksops alive.
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