The Tea Party (republican) movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires

[GreenTea]

(The only way to fight this Tea Party (republican) movement is to get everyone out to vote Democratic, certainly NOT Republican or Libertarian) to donate what we can ourselves in these closing days, to volunteer any amount of time one might have and watch closely where republicans are using their usual dirty tricks, misinformation, voting machine manipulations, voter purging, etc.)

By funding numerous right-wing organizations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business.

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyst and direct real mobilizations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organized by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".

Republicans Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms, and turns over roughly $100bn a year; the brothers are each worth $21bn. The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents. The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it's good for them.

In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: "I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me." But a fascinating new film – (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham – tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement's key organizing events, including the 2009 Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. "Five years ago," he explains, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organization."

Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m, but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organizing rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats' attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organizing tools that set the Tea Party running.

Oldham's film shows how AFP crafted the movement's messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers' funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants. "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded ," one of them explained. "It's like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud – and they're our candidates!" Another observed that the Kochs are smart. "This right-wing, republican redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves."

The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. "If we're going to give a lot of money," David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, "we'll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don't agree with, we withdraw funding."

Most of these bodies call themselves "free-market thinktanks", but their trick – as (Astro)Turf Wars points out – is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilize for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The republican thinktanks that the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.


(more)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers

[tularetom]

1. If so many good people weren't going to get screwed along with the teabaggers

It would be almost comical to watch.

Ironically many of them are so stupid they will continue to buy into this crap even as they go down the shitter.

[fascisthunter]

2. instead of dumping the tea, they are the ones selling it

[necso]

3. The myth of rugged individualism.

It seems there are those among us who feel that everything they've achieved is the result of their own self alone, and that other people (except, perhaps, for family) played (play) essentially no necessary role (that money can't fill, anyway).

To demonstrate the shallowness of this perspective, a thought experiment is in order; so let's strip the person down to the individual alone.

To start, let's strip away culture, both material and non-material: Away go planes, cars, boats, houses, tools, clothes, agriculture, domesticated animals, electricity, oil and natural gas, roads, railroads, bridges, medicines, technology, cooked food and fire -- and anything else beyond what raw nature itself offers. And away goes all of the knowledge and understandings achieved by others; away goes any holding (learning) that stems from others -- or where others' thoughts or actions form the basis of, the spark for, or otherwise contribute to this holding. And away go mathematics, science, religion, art, and most every learned method of mind; away goes language itself -- and almost all thought beyond the simplest, most basic perceptions.

Away goes essentially everything but the abandoned infant.

Now, take this stripped down individual and toss him into the world of rawest nature: He won't know what to eat or how to hunt. He won't know where to seek food, or how to identify poisons, or what are the most basic usable resources, much less how to use them (beyond stuffing them into his mouth...).

In short, the stripped down individual will be nearly helpless, hardly more capable than an infant -- and without the protections from his "pack" (society; unless adopted by another) that an infant generally requires, if he and his society and culture themselves are to survive.

But even if we give this poor benighted fool back the blessings of culture and society, it'd be childish to pretend that this society can be reduced to every-man-for-self, and yet still survive and prosper. Mankind (and this nation) only got to this position because of long years of practicing real teamwork (with everything this entails: real, necessary communication, cooperation and unselfishness, etc), together with the other natural values; and we'll only maintain our position if we continue to do so (to some necessary degree).

Seriously, if every person, if every transaction, if everything, is -- and needs be -- suspect, then this doesn't describe a society, it describes a crime-scene in progress. The average individual alone is simply in no position to defend himself against all the attacks that modern society makes possible. Moreover, this is no solid foundation for living and working together, much less making progress.

And those who think and act otherwise are essentially gaming the system that nurtured them, destroying the very foundations upon which the society they need (as prey, if no more) was built and operates. And once this gaming exceeds some survivability-threshold, the system itself must inevitably falter, decay and decline.

Selection is (can be) a harsh mistress (master).