They say we’re a consumer driven society. We’re a nation of consumers. We’re being sold things every time we turn on the TV, pick up a magazine, or listen to the radio. They sell us desire. They sell us need. They sell us love.
They also sell us hate. And some of us are more prone to buying it than others.
“The most radical President ever to occupy the Oval Office.â€
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That’s the sound of an anti-government movement of hate funded by billionaires being sold to “average Americans.” Sort of a Tea Party madrassa, if you will.
The Tea Party’s funders are serving up their manufactured narratives and the public is eating it up. “The people are concerned about the insensitive of building a mosque on hallowed ground†is one such false narrative. And how about “The people are very anti-government, very mistrustful of government right now.â€
Gee, we were mistrustful after a Republican lied us into a war, yes…and stole our freedoms in the name of freedom…yes….but we were not mistrustful when Obama took office and began keeping his many promises…no, we weren’t mistrustful until this manufactured narrative sank in nice and deep, permeating the fabric of our national dialogue until even liberals were suggesting that the government sucks, both sides do it, and who cares.
These manufactured narratives serve a certain elite segment of the population. A segment that has been funding the Tea Parties; the radial anti-government movements multiplying around the country, taking firm root in places like Texas and Alaska, where they put on a big show of shunning big government and yet can’t live without it.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker uncovered the billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama and in her stunning expose, she reveals that the Koch brothers are behind the Tea Party. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products.
“The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,†fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.†With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.†The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.â€
And the Koch brothers know better than to get dirty themselves. A former Koch adviser said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.â€
Yes, indeedy. There’s the admission that your average Tea Partier will never quite grasp. Oh, and in what can only be a rather predictable denouement, the Koch brothers owe part of their fortune to Joseph Stalin. So those Tea Partiers holding up signs calling Obama Hitler? Yeah. Tools of the highest order. These are the people who will claim they didn’t know any better if anyone gets seriously hurt due to their endless hate speech. This is almost as disturbing as finding out that a Saudi owns majority stock in Fox News, who’s busy selling these same people the notion that to be a Muslim is bad and by the way, your President is a Muslim.
It would be sad if they hadn’t been spitting on this country for the past year and half.
Fred Koch was one of the original members of the John Birch society, so here’s where we start our connection to Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party racism in general.
The Koch brothers’ fortune goes into “educating†Tea Partiers, sort of like the Taliban’s madrassas. Is it any wonder they are racists? It is any wonder they see “Commie Marxist libertards” lurking in every non-neo-conservative? Is it any wonder these folks are NUTS? Sadly, the Tea Party movement and the modern day Republican Party are endangering the lives of our soldiers on our own soil, by their efforts to stir up anti-Muslim feelings over Park51. This is, of course, a common GOP get out the vote tactic, but it is being taken to dangerous lows now.
A clever person would think twice before dedicating their life to such paranoid and racist fears. But, no one ever accused a Tea Partier of being clever.
By framing it their accusations in fear and racism regarding Muslims and our President the Right jacks up the stakes that no real debate ever takes place. And furthermore, doing so consistently begins to automatically delegitimize their movement.
I fear for my country. I fear for our troops, whose lives are dependent upon Muslims in Afghanistan. I fear that a political party so bereft of morality is willing to do anything to regain power, including destroying the very foundation of this country. But most of all, I fear that Americans will do nothing to stop them.
Because we did nothing when they lied to us about WMD. We did nothing as Bush invaded a sovereign nation. We did nothing when Sarah Palin tossed around her “pallin’ around with terrorists†jihad.
Exactly when will we do something? When will it be enough?
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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