The Koch Brothers Facade

When the racist juggernaut of the American mind rears its ugly head in the form of the Tea Party, it is easy for those who are ignorant enough to regard the ideas of justice and liberty as genetic  traits  to find some grounds for explaining this phenomenon. In the Koch brothers, a couple of billionaires who are dedicated capitalists and politically savvy, the deflating “left” we call the Democrats have found their scapegoats. It’s oh so easy to paint a target on a couple of foaming-at-the-mouth conservatives and say “It’s YOUR fault”, not only because you can hold up glossy pictures of these guys labeled “The Enemy”, but also because you can continue to hold to your schizophrenic dichotomy of “America” as you define it  and ignore that hideous beast in the mirror that is every deed and word and idea committed in the name of these ideals that are spun like thread into body bags and money purses for all those suckered constituents who think you really believe what you believe when you talk all of that "change” talk. One thing can be said for that rabid mob of pitchfork wielding flat-earthers we call the grassroots Movement, at least they know who ties their shoes.

Of course the Tea Party is racist rabble. There was no Tea Party when Bush was in office. In those glory days of shock and awe there was no balking at federal expenditures for carpet bombing, fingernail yanking, or the occasional stay over in a sponsor state that featured deep lacerations, electrocution, and simulated drowning as intelligence gathering techniques. Hell no! Look, if your skin is brown, you’re screwed, End of story. But when you get a wave of popular discontent  that ushers in a Black President, all bets are off!

“We want our country back!” was the early cry out of the far right. What the hell does that mean? Are you Native American? Indigenous Mexican? Hawaiian?

No, you’re a milky white middle class voter whose grand-dad hung guys like Barack Obama from tree limbs as a testament to God’s love for the racial purity of the United States. No kidding. Of course these folks don’t want a health care reform bill—whatever it says(and this is no endorsement for the Healthcare Reform Act, either—it is crap). Of course, they don’t know what it says, likely because they dropped out of the sixth grade after getting their cousin pregnant. Nonetheless, the xenophobic kneejerk out of the Dixie-dims and the Bible-belt promise breakers is no real surprise. White makes right as every straight thinking birther knows. And there’s another one, eh? The President has no birth certificate. He’s a plant. This goes way back to that night in Kenya when Obama’s parents plotted global supremacy via inebriation and spirit smoke, knowing that in forty short years their dreams of a unified planet under the strong arms of business capital and global finance would come to fruition!

But the Koch brothers? Yeah, that’s a typical Main Stream Media spin right there, conjured up by New York Times Magazine, then roundly devoured, digested, and smeared all over the television and internet for popular consumption. Why? Because it’s easier to think that two billionaires are responsible for getting the redneck barbeque bunch into the streets than an obviously collective consternation and unease at the prospects for future American economic growth.  After all, it’s not like the Contract From America has anything to say about the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the illegal spying on Americans, or the increased militarization of the United States. People, these are NOT issues. In fact, reading the “demands” from the Tea Party, one would be surprised to learn there are over 160 military bases outside the United States, or that our country does trade with other nations. In fact, one would wonder of the guys who pasted these points together into a Contract even understand how politics works in this country. It is a completely naïve set of planks, powered by the backwoods notion that good white folks can be taken at their word.

“Sure, I’ll sign your contract. Yeah, these here are some good ideas, sir! End runaway spending, stop the tax hikes, and get rid of that healthcare bill! Sure thing!”

Yeah, the healthcare bill that we mentioned earlier is certainly an affront to the good conscience of the American people, isn’t it? This “socialist” legislation was crafted by the most capitalist bunch of pro-market, feed us our customers and screw the formalities corporatists this side of Wall Street. If these knit-wits in the backwoods actually read the bill, they would know it is basically a hand-out for the healthcare insurance industry, a well-written scheme by which the pharmaceuticals, the HMO’s, and the good doctors are better able to strong arm the sick, the poor, and the elderly.  The only glaringly “socialist” feature is that it requires people BY LAW to carry health insurance, which means that health insurance costs, like automobile insurance costs in those states that make it a legal requirement, will become astronomical. When you have the law behind you, you can charge anything. If that isn’t capitalist, I don’t know what is.

But what gurgles under the pot lid in this festering stew of Caucasian malcontent above all is the color of the president’s skin. It is only casually acknowledged, seldom said outright, but whispered in the night like the murmurs of witchcraft that spiraled up out of smoking chimneys in the pilgrim invader foothold at Salem, Massachusetts. Whispers that he’s Black, he’s a Muslim, he’s not even a “real” American! To think this has anything to do with other than race is a grave oversight. To ponder whether such charges were ever levied against any former president is an enlightening exercise, because it lays bare the very soul of our nation. Isn’t it ironic that as Americans attempted to prematurely turn the page on race and equality, the Tea Party sprouts up out of the self-righteous indignation of a proud and bloodthirsty race that hasn’t anymore forgotten their victories than the victims have ever forgotten their crimes, and says “No way, man. Aint no Negro bein’ pres-dint on mah watch!”

Yet it says all that needs to be said--and so appropriately, so clearly, so plainly--that we are a horde of deformed, uneducated, Neanderthal psychotics who can hold only to our race and our pride and wield all the most powerful forces mankind has ever fashioned to keep our chains on all of these lesser races the world over, be they Asian, Latino, African, or Middle-Eastern.

What a wake-up call to the hundreds of ethnic minorities in the United States to know this. What a shock to all of those liberal lawyers and think-tankers to have to stare this in the face. What a loop for the millions of church-goers who keep claiming, ever so spuriously and with no evidence whatever, that this is a “Christian Nation”, a “Godly Nation”, that the United States is somehow this New Israel called upon to wipe the heathen from the globe and initiate the return of Jesus Christ to Earth. Really? This country? This haven of celebrated mass-murderers, rapists, thugs, gangsters, and thieves?  It is “us” that the Messiah is interested in?

The Tea Party is this, also, this corrupt contradiction of thought and deed whereby the religion that tells you to love one another is the same one that says “Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!” These same folks who marched on Washington to simultaneously wash away the stains of Martin Luther King, Jr and Barack Obama are the very ones whose Holy Book makes NO reference whatever to COLOR except in the case of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose hair is black like sheep’s wool, and whose skin is like bronze.  They stare us in the face, these Tea Partiers, because they are everything we never want to remember that WE are. We want to pretend, we want to play politics, we want to forget about all of those nasty little things we do to other people and chug along as helpless victims of global misunderstanding who simply yearn to have enough to satisfy ourselves. Is it our fault that oil is under Arabian sands or that the choicest fruits are growing where Latinos happen to live? Can you blame us for the tricks of coercion, manipulation, exploitation, and subversion when it’s SO DARN EASY? It’s not that we are a racist nation, really, it’s just that we’re “opportunistic”. So white people have a way of being more overtly opportunistic than other races, is that OUR fault? And so we grasp at anything that will shatter that mirror, block that reflection, and somehow “change” the image it evokes. And then suddenly, with minimal evidence, little journalistic integrity, and fingers doing the walking, we find Charles and David Koch. Praise God! For our prayers are answered! Take away this cup of mine own abomination and hide it amongst the skeletal remains of the multitudes we did sacrifice to the righteous will of our creator!

It’s good to have the Koch brothers. To paraphrase a popular saying, “Two billionaire campaign contributors can cover over a multitude of sins.”

Indeed.