Our local paper [Bitterroot Star] published my piece on the Tea Party yesterday. I thought Kossacks might enjoy learning what is happening on the fringes of the known world.
For those of you who don't know, the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, where I live, is crawling with rabid anti-environmentalists, UN conspiracy theorists, Limbaugh wingnuts, wolf haters, and assorted right wing crazies of similar ilk. They consistently, in spite of my regular votes to the contrary, elect ultra conservative Republicans to office. The Bitterroot Star called my opinion piece, "Time for Tea Party to face reality." Here it is:
"There’s lots of anger from the right wing these days, especially here in Montana. From Libertarians and Constitutionalists to Tea Party Republicans themselves, conservatives are mad. They’re mad at establishment Republicans and Democrats; they’re mad at the government; they’re mad at politicians top to bottom. They want a revolution. Trouble is, they don’t know which way to point their guns.
There is, of course, plenty to be angry about. With real unemployment rates pushing 20%, jobs permanently gone to other countries, massive oil spills, house prices collapsing, financial turmoil, and perpetual war bleeding us dry, who wouldn’t be mad? To someone like me who has spent years trying to raise awareness of these problems, the right wing anger is, in a way, encouraging. What is disturbing and rather bizarre, however, are the targets of this anger. The scapegoats of right wing anger - environmentalists, immigrants, "regulations," and government itself – are easy targets, but going after them is the rough equivalent of going after your pond beaver after the fox has raided your chicken coop - not only pointless, but cruel.
The foxes that have raided our chicken coop are the most powerful corporations in the world – financial and industrial titans that dominate the economic life of our planet. For giants like Goldman-Sachs, Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, General Electric, Monsanto, and ADM, theft and plunder are easy, because they have made them legal through control of what should be our government. When their theft and plunder became open during the bailout in 2008 (remember TARP?), I thought everyone would catch on. After telling us for decades that there was no money for education, healthcare, or jobs, or anything else we might need, the government came up with $700 billion - in one week - to bail out the "too big to fail" bankrupt corporations. Most of the big corporations pay very little in taxes (General Electric – one of the primary beneficiaries of government war spending – not only paid zero taxes in 2009, but got a refund!). Of course, I thought people would catch on when establishment darling Enron went criminal, and then went bust taking pensions, savings, and most of the economy with them. Yes folks, the foxes have been in charge of the henhouse for quite some time now.
If the Tea Party were to actually get its way – environmentalists gone, government gutted, and laissez-faire restored - what tiny restraint that exists on corporate abuse and dominance would be removed, and the ironic result would be a tragic worsening of the all the problems we face. Foxes would then not only be in charge of the henhouse, they would own it. There would nothing we could do about it – short of a genuine revolution, I suppose. We would be right back where the Massachusetts colonists were when they threw that tea in Boston harbor during the original Tea Party. Largely forgotten today is that the tea thrown into the harbor belonged to the East India Company, a colossal private company with a government sanctioned monopoly on trade.
The Tax Act of 1773, which the colonists were protesting, was actually a subsidy granted to the East India Company to save it from bankruptcy in an economic downturn which the company itself had caused. Sound familiar? The East India Company was Goldman-Sachs, General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, and Monsanto all rolled into one. It controlled the British government and made enormous profits from this control. The profits went to a tiny elite, a minuscule fraction of the British population, leaving the rest to struggle in poverty. This too should sound quite familiar.
So get back to your roots, Tea Partiers! Go after the corporations. Expose their dealings and make them accountable. Make them release their stranglehold on government. Work for justice and peace. We’ll be right behind you. And hey, we just might make a difference. Otherwise, Tea Party believers are going to go down as gullible victims of another bout of propaganda induced delusional hysteria – not very bright victims either, and possibly a bit loony."
PS The [Bitterroot Star] is one of our few bright spots - an independent weekly run by Michael and Victoria Howell. They help me and others hold on to sanity here.