Of the Rich, By the Rich, For the Rich: The Lie of the Tea Party

“The exact phrase 'separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they’re Nazis.” - Glen Urquhart, Tea Party Congressional Candidate from Delaware.

“He (Barack Obama) has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.” – Tea Party Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona

“Stupid is as stupid does.” - Forrest Gump




"Hey, who you callin' a Tea Bagger?!"









Why not call them Tea Baggers, even if some now find that phraseology offensive? At their genesis they proudly proclaimed themselves such, ludicrously yet lovingly, suspending Salada’s from their singularly silly chapeaus. Should others be regarded responsible for the fact that they lacked the worldliness and knowledge to be familiar with its more lascivious meaning? Although truly, what more accurately expresses lasciviousness - a sexual act performed by consenting adults or an organization whose ultimate goal is to pervert and transform the greatest republic the world has ever known into an immigrant, minority and working class oppressing plutocracy? Far be it from me to proffer counseling to Tea Baggers, but I say, why not embrace and empower the name? So what if doing so conjures up specific imagery of genitalia and genitalia based activities - genitalia have their place. You’re all God-fearers, believing him to be, much like Carnac, all-seeing, all-knowing, infallible – God created man, and man arrived replete with genitalia. So, indeed, embrace the genitalia, my friends (figuratively or literally, your choice.) Embrace the genitalia! (a possible powerful future party rallying cry?)

We now, unfortunately, find ourselves residing in a new post-Tea Party, Earth 2, Bizzaro World, where everything that was once considered positive is now considered negative – education, knowledge, diversity, open-mindedness, human-rights, charity, acceptance and tolerance – all now deemed dangerous, destructive and deleterious; and presently believed beneficial under the Rocket’s Red Glare - superstition, hatred, small-mindedness, corporate-rights, selfishness, bigotry and intolerance. The age of science and enlightenment appears over, as the Tea Party ushers in a neo-dark ages where “real Americans” no longer believe in science, evolution, climate change – truth or facts. We’ve entered an era of a new ruling class of the un-intelligentsia; a time when education is looked down upon as being “elitist” and ignorance is commended. Where we once embraced and encouraged the best and the brightest, we now support and celebrate the worst and the witless. And, in what may be the most sobering series of syllables strung together since the development of the written word, we’ve gone from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to Sarah Palin and Rick Perry; and we’ve allowed their like to lamely lead us from the Land of Opportunity to the Land of the Lost.

The Founding Fathers
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”- John Adams

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." - Thomas Jefferson

The Tea Party’s co-opting of the Founding Fathers, as political and social kindred spirits, is just a sad jest that they are very unlikely to get. The Founding Fathers represented everything that the Baggers abhor and consider elitist. They weren’t regular folks, they weren’t Joe the Plumber. Most were well-educated, men of science, men of arts, inventors, free thinkers, writers, world travelers (at a time when that was no easy task) they spoke multiple languages, were well-read and highly valued education, learning and knowledge. Some were well-heeled land-owners, the high-society of their day. Regarding the party's insistence that the intent of our founders was to establish a Christian nation based on Christian values, well, I fear that belief is merely a flight of fancy, as they were stalwartly against the intrusion of religion into government; and despite current au courant assertions from the Right, many were not even Christian - Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Washington – none were Christian, Deists, one and all.

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.” - John Adams

In light of the fact that Tea Party favorites and Presidential candidates, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have all signed marriage pacts that, among other absurdities, state that African American families were better off during slavery than they are now, perhaps the only thing the Baggers would have in common with the Founding Fathers would be their tolerance toward slavery. (If one could only make John Adams fantastically appear, Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall-like, at a Bachmann rally to hear him stoically state to the armed assembly, “you know nothing of my work.”)

Grass Roots Movement?
Alas, despite popular mythology, the only thing grass roots about the Tea Party would be their 45rpm recording of “Midnight Confessions.” The party was founded and funded by the billionaire, oil-magnate Koch brothers - the pair behind the Tea Party Express - and their corporate cronies, as well as by former Representative Dick Armey (insert juvenile name jibe here) and his pro-big business, anti-freedom organization, Freedom Works. The naïve, uninformed Baggers are being used as pawns by the powerful and wealthy to help further their commercial and capital agenda at the great expense of the poor and middle class. Historically, this has been a country of the haves versus the have-nots, where the haves have traditionally stifled the have-nots so as to retain power and influence among their own ranks. The unique and wonderful thing about our nation is that eventually the downtrodden, through hard work and some minor government intervention, have been able to rise up through the system and socially and financially better themselves. The working class has always fought for their rights and their right to advance. That’s how it was, now welcome the Tea Party as, inexplicably, for the very first time in American history, we are involved in a situation where the workers have aligned themselves with their oppressors - against government intervention and the labor unions and their own betterment, and have gleefully and voluntarily, hastened their own decline. It’s quite remarkable and to be brutally honest, quite imbecilic. And why would they do that? Although Paul Simon says in Kodachrome, “my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none,” the reality has proven to be the contrary. Where once laborers organized, protested, struck, formed unions and guilds (all considered anti-American, socialist tactics now), wrote books and essays and articles and expressed themselves; they now rally against unions, against change, against self-expression, against advancement – in many ways against freedom itself. This is the Tea Party - fighting, and fighting hard, to keep themselves under the thumb of the modern robber barons. How do the privileged and powerful so successfully foster this societal self-immolation? – fly the flag of Jesus and patriotism, add in some minor mistrust of gays, foreigners, immigrants and women’s rights, and the Baggers will follow you like a Kardashian following an NBA team bus.
The corporate slave-masters are hankering to “return with us to the thrilling days of yesteryear” (hi-ho Silver, away) to a falsely idyllic, pre-Union period - no overtime, no breaks, no minimum or live-able wage, no healthcare or paid sick days, no limit on hours required to work, no concern for safety conditions, no insurance, no vacation time, no child labor laws - and the Tea Baggers are just toothlessly grinning up at them and blissfully begging, “please sir, may I have some more.”

Taxed Enough Already – founded on a falsehood
The very foundation of the Tea Party, the very acronym for which it stands, is perhaps the largest lie of all. Stop Baggers on the street (they’ll be the ones toting their King James, their AK47s, and their misspelled signs, while sporting oh-so fashionable, tri-corner hats) and they’ll be more than thrilled to school you on the treachery and treason of the insane tax levels levied on the American public and their precious corporate overlords by vile, Marxist Barack Hussein – except that’s a complete and utter prevarication very easily disproved. What they steadfastly refuse to accept as fact, is fact - we are currently experiencing the lowest tax rates in 60 years. Obama has lowered taxes five times through numerous programs and for 95% of the American population – oooh, I shake my fist angrily at you cursed Kenyan!! Yes, in other words the Taxed Enough Already group has no true reason to even exist but to promote the corporate socialism for which it actually toils.

Epilogue (Just like a Quinn Martin Production)
A CBS/NY Times Polls shows that while 21% of the population has expressed support for the Tea Party Movement, only 4% actually consider themselves party members. So, miniscule minority, I beseech you, deter yourselves from attempting to make the other 96% of us as intolerant, ignorant and ignominious as you. Like the similarly hateful Know Nothing Party of the 1850’s, these haters too shall pass into history and be as forgotten to future generations as science, history and facts are to them. There’s nothing real, there’s nothing genuine, there’s nothing honest, there’s nothing patriotic about the Tea Party. It’s time we stop deferring to them, and it’s time we stop referring to them, as a grassroots movement of real Americans; believers and defenders of truth, justice and the American way. The Tea Party is considerably composed of two groups - unenlightened, uneducated, uninformed, racist, newly-anarchist, working class; and the big business billionaires who pull their strings and, to a sizeable extent, control their every word, deed and thought.

Embrace the genitalia!

Now, with a twinge of hopeful optimism, the great Nat King Cole performs, “The Party’s Over.”