Okay, look. I’m going to show you just how stupid I can be sometimes.

I always thought that the term “grassroots organization” referred to groups of people who were out to right wrongs because they were driven to do so by something deep in their souls. I always thought those organizations were begun spontaneously by righteous folks who were following their consciences.  I never knew that the germinations of these organizations were actually carefully orchestrated by shadowy folks who had personal agendas, and that they bamboozled others to bring these agenda items to fruition while they themselves remained invisible and anonymous.  

Turns out, I was wrong. Turns out, “grassroots organization” REALLY means a group of naïve lemmings who have been duped into doing the dirty work for a bunch of rich bastards. These folks are being used by the wealthy, and they will blindly run off a cliff and fall to their deaths while their leaders secretly cheer them on. 

What am I talking about? The Tea Party, of course.

You see, Tea Partiers that I know claim that The Tea Party is a grassroots organization that wants to get back to the fundamental Constitution and live strictly by the tenants set down there. The problem is, most of these folks have never read The Constitution, and they are simply relying on other people’s interpretations of the document.

Got a minute? I’d like to tell you how The Tea Party started, and then you tell me just how grassrootsy the damned thing is.

There’s these two brothers named David and Charles Koch. Now, David and Charles are celebrated Libertarians who espouse a doctrine of drastically lowering personal and corporate taxes, almost abolishing social services for the needy, and reducing government oversight of industry to a tiny fraction of what it is today.

David and Charles have a combined net worth of over $34,000,000,000.  (Yup. NINE zeroes! Billionaires.) They own almost all of the company called Koch Industries, which was handed down to them by their old man and which has a annual net income of over $100,000,000,000 (ELEVEN zeroes!).  Koch Industries runs oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota and Texas.  It owns over 4,000 miles of pipelines. It owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra and Stainmaster carpets.

Back in 2004, David started an organization called The Americans for Prosperity Foundation to help spread his libertarian views that benefit his pocketbook. 

Over the July 4^th weekend this year, this foundation put together a summit in Austin, Texas called Texas Defending The American Dream.  During this summit, the five hundred attendees listened to a whole bunch of speakers who did nothing but denounce President Obama and his government. When the indoctrination was over, the five hundred were sent forth to preach The Koch Gospel from the mountain tops, and the new disciples became known as The Tea Party.  And David and Charles saw that it was good, and then they rested.

By the way, the names “Koch” and “Americans for Prosperity Foundation” appeared nowhere on any of the advertizing for this summit, nor were they ever mentioned at the summit.

(The facts above were all gleaned from an article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker Magazine titled Covert Operations.)

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Now, just for the hell of it, let’s take a look at the basic tenants of The Tea Party, for no other reason except to show you how ridiculously off-base my thinking is as far as politics is concerned.

The Tea Party is decrying the trillion dollar deficit that the country now realizes. However, they fail to realize that MOST of this debt came from financing unjustified, knee-jerk wars started by a Republican president. The costs of these wars were and are astronomical. (According to The National Priorities Project, since 2001, the Iraq War has cost $736,493,579,000 and the Afghanistan War has cost $354,323,648,000. . . So far.) And, what did the Republican President do to help offset the cost of these wars that he started? He freaking cut taxes!

Now, again, just to show you how stupid my thinking can be sometimes, I would consider the intentional reduction of income at a time when output is astronomically increased to be a grossly irresponsible financial act. But what do I know? I just run a fairly successful manufacturing business.

The Tarp payouts to Wall Street and the car manufacturers that the Tea Partiers scream about were also begun under the same Republican president.

And yet, 81 per cent of Tea Partiers, when polled, say that they support Republican candidates during the upcoming election.

I don’t get it.

They are opposed to Obamacare, claiming that it will raise our premiums by 17% in four years time.  Well, I stupid enough to think that that would be a bargain. Last year alone, Blue Cross/Blue Shield raised my medical insurance rates by over 25%!

Again, I don’t get it.

And, even though The Tea Party has America’s best interests at heart, only 22% of the voting public is in favor of their ideas and actions.

Now, Sara Palin seems to think that the only true patriots in America today are in The Tea Party. Does that mean the 78% that is the rest of us are unpatriotic?

Yet again, I don’t get it. I stand up, take off my hat, and get a lump in my throat when the play The Star-Spangled Banner. (I even know all of the words, which is more that 50% of Americans.). I pay my taxes. I vote in every election. I like Obama. I supported Bush because he was the President, even though I disagreed with him strongly on almost every single one of his actions. I have friends of mine who fought in Afghanistan, Iraq and Viet Nam, and they are not Tea Partiers.

Are we ALL unpatriotic? REALLY???? Wow!

After listening to The Tea Party issues and points, I am seriously considering not voting in the upcoming elections.  It’s becoming apparent to me that I really don’t understand what is going on in the world today, and I certainly wouldn’t want to vote when I obviously don’t have a grasp of the major issues.