Duplicity

The Tea Party, which is a group dedicated to small-corporate welfare and no personal entitlements, is trying to overturn Obamacare, the new national health care program in the U.S.. This group of unbelievable double-speakers screams about government intrusion into the private lives of citizens. At the same time, they decry government support of the corporate infrastructure of which they are the base. They are funded largely by the Koch brothers, oil and gas magnates from Texas. 

Ted Cruz, their newest star, is the son of workers in the oil industry. His father is now a Baptist minister in Texas. Perhaps that is the Tea Party ideal of a retirement plan. His parents are divorced. Oil and religion seem to take well to each other. Cruz represents the unquestioning, anti-scientific and religious Tea Party ideal.

So, why would someone who is indignantly moral and religious oppose providing health care for the masses? The reason is simple. Religion is a tool of opportunism in the Tea Party. It is a way of connecting with the old Moral Majority which brought us the hyped Reagan administration, from which our society is still recovering. Reagan, a demigod in shared Republican and Tea Party iconography, ran American infrastructure into the ground while handing over control of the government to private corporate interests. He is the grandfather of the socioeconomic mess the U.S. is now grappling to get out of. 

The Tea Party is a lie. It portrays itself as a populist front. It claims to be anti-government and anti-corporate. This is also a lie. The "small businesses" they claim to represent are businesses with less than 500 employees under tax law. These corporations represent 99% of all business in the U.S. as of 1995. In other words, the Tea Party is big business. It is looking to reshape the laws for corporate welfare at the expense of personal welfare for those at the bottom of the economic pyramid of capitalism.