Why Do Tea Baggers Deny Darwin?

The biggest and most unexposed contradiction of the Tea Bag movement is its resistance to natural selection.

Okay, let me re-phrase that. I don’t mean to imply that tea baggers are unevolved. I mean, most of them walk upright. And heavy, Neanderthal-like brow ridges are becoming more and more uncommon.

What I’m referring to is their refusal to acknowledge Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species and his theory that organisms evolved in response to their environment.

It’s ironic because tea baggers are a group whose policies scream ‘survival of the fittest’. I can’t understand how the party that cherishes a big business, small government ideal can dismiss Darwin.

Tea baggers have declared that the federally-mandated minimum wage, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security all must be eliminated. That health care reform be repealed. That reproductive rights be diminished.

I won’t even mention the seething contempt they hold for the formation of a consumer protection agency. I mean, do these policies not paint a giant ‘Fuck you. You’re on your own.’ in big, red capital letters?

The political sitcom that has taken the most exclusionary and socially-hostile elements of Republican policy and squared them to the power of four instead continues to cling to creationism; the belief that some munificent dude with an I Dream of Jeannie fetish blinked and created the heavens and the Earth.

And people wonder why I call creationists unevolved.

To be fair, there are a few groups tea baggers deem worthy of protection. The wealthy. The powerful. And fetuses—at least until they leave the uterus. But for the rest of us, it’s Survivor: United States.

Try as I might, I can’t slip a piece of paper between Tea Bag policy and the notion of survival of the fittest. But what do I know?

How Tea Baggers Inspired Me to Bridge the Enthusiasm Gap

I just didn’t have the stomach for it. I was going to sit this election out. Such was my disgust with the party that rendered a congressional supermajority into a meek, sniveling, ninety-eight pound weakling.

That is, until I realized what the alternative was.

I realized what the alternative was when I heard people named Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul and Meg Whitman talk about “re-thinking” the minimum wage.

For those not familiar with teabag-speak, that’s code for eliminating it. Because the extravagance that is the minimum wage is stealing food from the table of America’s wealthy.

That’s right. You’re making too much money. Never mind the unpunished folk on Wall Street. Or our similarly unchastised ginormous corporate banks. Or even the unregulated businesses allowed to comport themselves like Bonobo monkeys under sanction from an addled presidential administration.

They’re not the problem. You are. Your indulgent lifestyle and skyrocketing wages are driving this country to the brink of ruin. And you must be stopped.

Taking a deep breath, I will admit this is unlikely to happen—even in the undeclared class war happening beneath our noses. But the fact the cast of Tea Baggers can say this in the midst of the worst economic climate in eighty-years sends up a giant red flare.

They have no fear of reprisal. No concern that the former office manager working as a part-time cashier at Wal-Mart or the ex-machinist working as a security guard or the downsized accountant applying at the local 7-11 will take exception to this outrage.

None.

The same folk who have the temerity to suggest that victims of incest turn lemons into lemonade are now calling for sacrifices from the working poor, the hardest-hit victims of Republican economic policies. And I can't help but wonder who's next.

Like you, the thought of CEOs forced to drive last year’s S-class Mercedes keeps me up at night. As does bankers having to scale-back their annual visits to the Amalfi Coast to just three weeks.

But will someone please tell me what can be culled from a lifestyle that often does not even provide food, clothing and shelter?

Republicans are the Viaga which keeps the diseased dick of wealth and power ready, willing and able to rape anything within its reach. And without unified and strident opposition, we become the pharmacists writing the prescription.

If I can’t support Democrats, I can oppose Republicans. Vehemently. Passionately. And with extreme prejudice.

Consider the enthusiasm gap bridged.

Small Government? Or Bigger Business?

Item number-one on the conservative agenda is to make small government a campaign issue. Republican candidates dutifully include it in their recitations of party talking points, and deluded tea-baggers shout themselves hoarse in their frothing, wild-eyed mania for it.

But who does small government really benefit?

Not surprisingly, small government’s most-ardent admirers are wealthy businessmen. The reasons are simple. Observing government guidelines and conforming to government regulations costs money. And the more a business spends on fulfilling government requirements, the less there is for the guy in the corner office.

There’s also the issue of ego. Business is forever a child attempting to convince mom and dad it doesn’t need a babysitter. That it’s old-enough to stay home alone. Government regulation is the wagging finger that says it isn’t.

The small government ideal proposed by conservatives removes the speed bumps from the marketplace, while it diminishes the quality of life for just about everyone else. It lets business do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants. And make no mistake—conservatives are all about the business. First, last and always. The rest is just marketing.

But there’s a problem. Most of us don’t give a damn how much CEOs make. We’re not terribly concerned about the welfare of the wealthy. How can their problem be made our problem? How can government regulation be marketed as an issue constraining our personal liberty, and not one set to clear the runway for business unbound?

Pull out the time-honored tricks. Exaggeration. Lies. Misinformation. Find the lowest common denominator of your constituent’s anger and exploit, exploit, exploit. Push that hot button until your fingers hurt. You remember last summer’s death panels, don’t you?

While challenged by leading anything more than a parade, conservatives are master manipulators and brilliant marketers. They are experts at misdirection: You’re not pissed-off at British Petroleum’s incompetence and lack of accountability! You’re pissed-off at the Obama administration’s response!

In tea-bag land, Wall Street, Massey Energy and BP aren’t proof of what happens when mom and dad decide to forego the babysitter for an evening. They’re proof of how government meddling muddies the waters of commerce.

Do you see the delusion here? The naked self-interest in corporate America’s backing of this idea? Tell me how this differs from ghetto thugs advising their neighbors-slash-victims “No snitching”.

You can’t because it doesn’t.

Business is a one-celled organism. It has one instinct, and one instinct only. And that is to make as much money as possible. Left unregulated, it is a virus which invariably destroys its host. Left unregulated, business runs amuck with the numbing regularity that children choose Happy Meals over six-course, sit-down dinners.

I have a request to make of the hypnotized. Those of you who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge this agenda. Those for whom Lord of the Flies represents a societal ideal:

Keep your six-thousand pound SUV off publicly-funded roads. Bank and invest where there is no FDIC and SEC. Treat your own sewage. Find your own water. Process your own garbage. Buy your kids’ toys from China. Kindly purchase your meat, produce and pharmaceuticals at flea markets. Or better yet, an open air stall in Tijuana. And care for your developmentally-disabled offspring by yourself.

Fish near BP oil rigs. Work in Massey Energy coal mines. Develop your retirement plan with Bernie Madoff. Fly on planes, drive on bridges and ride in elevators with only a businessman’s promises for protection.

Ride your snowmobile to the furthest reaches of Yellowstone National Park, and dial anyone except 911 when you crash through the ice some winter afternoon. And as the hypothermia sets in, remember you got to keep everything you made.

And should your home catch fire, or a family member be fatally assaulted, we the sighted promise to do our damndest to ensure that municipal, county, state and federal governments don’t intrude and compromise your principles. And may I assume you’ve already bid adieu to Medicare and Social Security?

Thank you.

For the rest of us, small government is wealthcare dressed as populist outrage.

To be sure, government has abused taxpayers. Too often acted in the interests of a monied minority at the expense of the greater good. But to fall for the sucker punch offered by conservatives who demand its dismantling is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This is a problem with a solution. And that solution is better government, not less.

Health Care Reform Made EZ

It’s simple. It’s not going to happen.

Look at it this way: say you’ve been making tons of money for a very long time. And on top of that you’re receiving an annual raise of thirty percent. Pretty sweet, isn’t it? Then someone comes along who says this isn’t working and that it needs to change.

You’re not going to be very happy, are you? You’re probably going to be pissed-off. Indignant. Even furious. You’re going to do whatever you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen. And if you can flash the kind of bank that health care can, that is quite a bit, indeed.

In a rare display of honesty, our elected representation is showing you where their priorities lie. And it’s not enacting the will of the people. Our fine and noble representation are protecting the interests of those who underwrite their campaigns.

And what of the will of the people you ask? Well, it sounds good in campaign speeches, doesn’t it?

But don’t our representatives and senators have to worry about re-election? Sure. Re-election financing. You’ll have long forgiven or forgotten this sordid episode by the time the next election rolls around, and they know it.

It is this knowledge that emboldens senators like Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to tell her constituency (which happens to be one of the poorest in the United States) that gosh, she just can’t support a public option on this thing. Sorry.

How many millions of dollars have you accepted from the health care lobby, Mary?

Ron Wyden (D-OR) is another. So is Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). And Kent Conrad (D-ND). And Max Baucus (D-MT). When they don’t have health care’s penis in their mouths, they’ll be happy to tell you why they just can’t get behind health care reform. They all have their reasons.

None of them will tell you it’s because their corporate sponsors told them not to.

Put it this way: I stand a better chance of landing the lead in a Broadway musical than the citizenry of the United States does of seeing a meaningful overhaul of our health care system, if only because very wealthy and very powerful businessmen see it as a pay cut. They’re not going to let this happen. Not in 1993. Not in 2009.

In December of 1773, American colonists boarded English ships under cover of night, and in an act that ignited the Revolutionary War, cast the ship’s tea into Boston harbor. The colonists were outraged at having to pay taxes to a monarchy where they had no representation.

Nearly two-hundred thirty-six years later, only the name of the entity collecting the taxes has changed.