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teapartyThe shutdown is over, the fiscal cliff averted, and we can all sigh with relief and go back to Packer football, raking leaves, and worrying about whether Uncle Henry’s flatulence will ruin the Thanksgiving dinner once again this year.

Ted Cruz and Tea Party soundly defeated. Dust off the hands. Job well done.

Not so fast my dears. Not so fast.

When nearly everyone with a brain that can think of a good answer to 2 + 2 (tea baggers excluded since whatever is in their skulls doesn’t qualify as a brain anyway), says that this was a no brainer from day one in that it had a SNOWBALLS CHANCE IN HELL OF WORKING, well, methinks I smell a rat. This had nothing to do with winning on the issue of dismantling Obamacare. NEVER. It was the ruse used to light the fire under the rank and file.

Ted Cruz is not an idiot. He may be crazy and narcissistic to a fault, but stupid he is not. He got out of this exactly what he wanted: a bigger national name, money pouring into his coffers, and a brand spanking new donor list to use. If I had to guess, I’d be really really sure that Cruz has read at least one book on how Adolph Hitler (a not stupid person) managed through sheer force of charisma to incite a small group of rabble (Brown Shirts) to catapult him into the Chancellery and ultimately to the dictatorship of the German people. Ted has a plan, I can assure you of that, ill-conceived and product of a meglamaniacal mind as it may be.

While Sarah, the grinning Barbie doll,  paraded around the WWII memorial with 200 elderly veterans,  and spouted how Obama was abusing them for political gain, as she abused them for political gain, veterans across America suffered from the loss of Meals on Wheels. Oh yeah, they couldn’t quite see the photo-op there did they?

Did the teabaggers learn a lesson? Sure they did.

They learned that a rather tiny group of very angry people can wreak big havoc with government, and cause millions of people real pain. And when you are a destructionist rather than a constructionist, well, that’s a valuable lesson.

Will they do it again?

Yes. We will go through all this again in January and February because disrupting things works. They have no care whatsoever that the fortunes of the GOP are falling faster than a meteor streaking across the sky. They only care that they can disrupt and bring government to a screeching halt.

If you have any question about that read Eric Erickson, founder of Red State, and his call for making all those “RINOS” pay in the 2014 elections. “A vote to end the crisis, is a vote for Obamacare!” If you don’t believe me still, compare the votes against ending the shutdown to those who are running for re-election in 2014.

This is not to say that the Tea Creatures are only about destruction. Like just about anybody, once in actual power, they will enjoy it all too well, and will merrily go about the business of enlarging government to suit their predilections. All that talk about “getting government out of our lives” is true. They mean that, but they missed a few words that always are in their head when they say it. It’s more like getting government out of OUR lives and into the lives of all those who don’t live the RIGHT way.”

Surely women will no longer get abortions except illegally, and once the nice white people have picked all the kids they want to adopt from the foundling homes set up to deal with the influx, the rest will be raised by the states. There will be no such thing as health care for the poor, no such thing as Medicaid surely. No such things as food stamps or any of that stuff. The poor will not be left to die, but rather, work houses will be set up in every county where they will live.

Work? Oh there will be plenty of that to go around for the foundling kids and poor-house inhabitants. Streets and bridges to repair and build, lettuce to pick, trash to collect. All the stuff that white people don’t like to do, well they will do for a bed and three squares a day.

While the monied interests will pay these workhouse overseers well, letting them have a few more dribbles of cash to live in the best part of town, not quite in the elite section reserved for monied business interests, but the next best thing. For you see the rich shall be very busy once again. With no restrictions upon them at all, they will be busy building businesses that no longer have to care about working conditions, product safety and all that.

Rockefeller you may recall had no interest in fairness. He wanted to destroy the competition. When you have so much money you can’t begin to spend it, you have to do something. So winning the game is all that matters. And once they have locked up control of America they will expand the game to the rest of the planet. And then, well, there is the moon, and Mars, and from there on read whatever version of science fiction “galaxy wars” excites you, but it surely won’t be a “federation of planets” ala Star Trek.

This all works so damn beautifully. As Theda Skocpol informs us, it’s a pincer effect. The grass-roots crazy ignorant frightened white people do the dirty work and the money pays the tab. The grassroots never knows it’s being used until it’s too late. Like I said, enough of them are paid off handsomely to forget that they are nothing more than enforcers for the “man” now. No freedom for you! TeaNazi.

You remember that some weeks ago we had a conversation about physical discipline of children. I lamented that a segment of my high school classmates thought today’s youth was “disrespectful” and not as they should be, and that mostly that was due to not being beaten as they had been. Course, they don’t call it being “beaten” they call nostalgically call it, “being whooped on”. Another classmate was always telling us how her relative was “scamming” the food stamp system, and she used that example as “proof” that the system was rife with people who were “just too lazy to work”.

Skocpol says this too is normal, for these grass-roots angry white people don’t like their own kids and grandkids, finding them all too willing to take government student loans for granted, and certainly not thinking as they do on social issues.

The monied interests, on the other hand adore their fundamentalist social straight-laced attitudes, for they fit right in with their agenda. While nobody suggests that the monied interests share tea party social values, it’s convenient to them when their work force is mired in simple-minded beliefs that are focused on them versus us in so many guises. So they give lip service to ending abortion and marriage amendments to keep the ignorant teabibbers lasered in on their own neighbors and co-workers rather than of course where they should be–the uber rich who pull the strings and continue to garner all the assets.

Can we stop this?

Well, as in most things, that depends.

When most people are rightly focused on how to make ends meet as a full-time occupation, it’s hard to find time to become involved in our civic responsibilities. When monied interests are all too happy to ply us with toys of every kind (how much bigger can that big screen get and how more pixilly perfect?), we are dutifully lost in our pleasure palaces that are controlled by the flick of thumbs on buttons. So we have to move ourselves off of that to be an effective counterpoint.

I have utter faith in the instinctive goodness of most people and in their can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-why-it’s-wrong-but-know-it-is ability to separate the goats from the sheep. I believe that the American public at large see through the smooth talk of Ted Cruz and knows him for what he is, a demagogic wannabe, much as the public saw through sista-Sarah and her grifting scheme to be a celebrity Vice President, and prance around in designer clothes and nifty heels.

But that means we have to go further than simply voting for a Democrat come 2014. It means a whole lot more since these old angry white people are infested in our state legislatures and school boards, and city councils.

Whether we are up to the task remains to be seen.

cruz3 This guy is so cynical, he thinks that YOU are no more his match than the tea party minions who are following him as their new god.

I’m betting you are more than his match.

What do you think?

 

 

 

I would highly suggest you read this post from Salon, which I read after composing this post in my head, and suggested to me, that I’m not too far off the mark here. And you might want to pick up the book by Theda Skocpol as well.

 

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