Taking Tea with the Lizards (Joe Bageant)

[Tace]

Joe Bageant -- World News Trust

Jan. 10, 2010 -- Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico -- The Republican Party will beat the living piss out of anybody for a buck. The Democrats will fly the flag of FDR, even as they pirate the public coffers on behalf of Wall Street. Don't think the American people have not noticed these things. After thirty years of pistol whipping and emptying of their wallets, they've started to figure out there just may be a public robbery underway, with both parties as accomplices.

And so Americans at both ends of the political spectrum are finally wising up to the need for a third party. Even if it is a third party within their own party, which is no third party at all, of course. However, for Americans it's all about branding, what you call a thing, that's important. Call a six-ounce block of corn sugar with sunflower seeds and raisins stuck on the outside an "Organic Energy Bar" and by god, you have natural food right there on the 7-Eleven shelf. What a thing is called is how a nation a people carefully bred for consumption will see it, thanks to that advertising arm of American capitalism called the news media

Presently surfacing from the frothing drek we call our political system is a thing called the Tea Party. Whether advertised as such or not, the Tea Party is viewed by millions as an emerging third party, or the functional equivalent of one. In some dark recess of the American consciousness -- hard to tell which one because it's all darkness and recession -- millions have figured out that nobody is getting what they want or need from Congress, except the corporations that own Congress. Actually, dedicated voters on the far right are getting exactly what they have voted for -- a police state -- but do not recognize it yet. No matter. Millions are unhappy and one way or another, think a third party, or the threat of one at least, offers a solution. And how could you go wrong with a brand evoking hallowed images from Ms. Jenkins fourth grade history class of the Boston Tea Party?

The Tea Party is the latest neoconservative end run around the possibility of a real third party emerging to threaten the status quo. To be honest, it's a brilliant political move, absorbing any energies that might have propelled a real third party. And, in true neocon fashion, it capitalizes on the working class' inchoate anger at the ongoing screwjob they've been getting from both parties for thirty years. The one escalated by Clinton's NAFTA, institutionalized as corporate theft by G.W. Bush, and polished to a high sheen by Obama's bailouts, as he brings home the bacon for those Wall Street syndicates running the economy.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&id=7474:taking-tea-with-the-lizards-joe-bageant

[varelse]

1. I love this guy

(can you tell? hehe)

K&R

[nashville_brook]

2. me too -- i'm a Bageant fangirl!

[burning rain]

3. K & R for the truth, however depressing.

.

[bertman]

4. Joe hits his target every time like a laser-guided hilarity missile. Wit and wisdom in

one package. Got to love it.

Thanks for posting, Tace.

Rec.

[tom_paine]

5. K & R for the sad truth

[eridani]

6. So, can we afford busses and free lunches?

Do wee need them?