Speaking of the Tea Party. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with at least one eye, one ear, and half a brain, but the astroturf roots of teabaggerism are becoming ever more evident. And guess what: it started with big tobacco. Knock me over with a pack of Zig-Zag.
Conventional wisdom holds that the Tea Party movement emerged as a result of grassroots anger against the government in 2009. We've known for some time that the real story is more complicated. An awful lot of big money, including from the infamous Koch Industries and other corporate sources, helped fund and direct the movement. But that's not all. A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Tobacco Control and funded by the National Cancer Institute, found that the Tea Party's origin story involves another extremely troubling major character: Big Tobacco...Well, gee whiz. It's been apparent from the beginning that behind the gullible and credulous tricorner teabaggers were people with money and another agenda entirely. You'd think they'd be embarrassed to find out how successfully they've been hoodwinked and used. If, that is, they'd ever showed capacity for reflection or depth of thought.
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The lead-in to the Tea Party was correct. We can all get together and hold hands over the idea that Big Government is too big! In NYS, it's a given! Dysfunctional! At the time, I thought it could be a movement a friend and I, with conflicting parties and beliefs, could agree on. Union tradesman Husband did, too. "There are serious problems that need to be addressed!" we thought, collectively. What a crock of S**t that became. Once the grass-roots accepted big donors the day was done. Now, Occupy Wall Street was another grass-roots movement. It would not accept outside money, even though unions were begging to help them. Where did they go? Into the past. But I think the tea party is heading there, too, MONEY be damned. At least, I hope so. REALITY may be hurting them.
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