It is always sad and pathetic when one beholds average citizens being manipulated like so many puppets by powerful, hidden puppeteers. They are oblivious to how they're being controlled, and deluded enough to think they're acting on their own free will and initiative- rather than at the business end of a series of strings.
In the same way, we have the tea partyers happily going about their business of dissing Obama and the direction the nation is going, ignorant of those manipulating them. And just who are they? Thanks to New York Times reporter Frank Rich, we know, from his New York Times article: ‘The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party’.
Three of them are: Rupert Murdoch (owner of FOX News, and The Wall Street Journal), and the two brothers David and Charles Koch- with a combined wealth exceeded only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. As Rich notes:
“Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News”
Well, the problem is the “spear carriers” – like those fawning over Palin and Beck at Saturday's pseudo-religious liberty rally (any time you behold lots of flag wavers, watch out!)and yelping about “going back to God” – are so bedazzled by their fervor and fictitious faith that they fail to see how they’re being used. But this is exactly what delights their Overclass Masters: Just babble the G-word and "restoring honor" and many average citizens leave their brains at home and do the Masters' bidding - no coercion needed at all! Like the Gruen Transfer in advertising, they're co-opted by their own brains!
Let's make no mistake here that these wealthy covert backers of far right agendas are nothing new. They hearken all the way back to the du Pont brothers who spawned “The American Liberty League” in 1934 to attempt to bring down FDR. They detested the fact he had created a form of social insurance to protect the elderly against penury and which could not be subject to the variable phantom money mechanisms of the stock market (where it could easily be stolen, pilfered in their rigged games)
As Rich observes:
“You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.
Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). “
Not mentioned by him is the Liberty Lobby, formed by a consortium of powerful corporations under the umbrella of the American Security Council. The most odious aspect of the group – apart from its attack on John F. Kennedy for his Medicare and other proposals, was it origins in Nazi-associated immigrant groups (see: ‘Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party’, by Russ Bellant, p. 38)
It also in many way complemented the John Birch Society of the time, which painted JFK as a “traitor and communist”. Frank P. Mintz, in his book ‘The Liberty Lobby and the American Right’ – noted it was an “unusual umbrella organization that catered to constituencies spanning the fringes of neo-Nazism, to the John Birch Society and the radical Right”
In many ways, the Lobby resembled the Tea Party of today, especially in respect of its obsession with “high taxes”, “deficits” and “entitlements” – all of which its big boy backers hated, so that its spear carrier puppets did as well. (Though like the Tea Party of today, they were unaware of carrying out the designs of the power backers- -believing stupidly they were doing it all on their own)
Interestingly, as Rich notes:
“The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
Of course, this swill could be heard at any Tea Party gathering today. Here thanks must go heartily to Jane Mayer for her expose piece on David Koch in a New Yorker article, ‘Covert Operations’:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Mayer’s article exposed for the first time that the rich guy who many New York libs believed was a generous donor of noble causes – was also a nefarious founder of The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which (as Mayer writes) “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception”
In the words of Frank Rich:
“To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”
But why be surprised? From the time of JFK we’ve known the most pernicious backers of renewing America for the wealthy have been rooted in Texas. Indeed, it was the five biggest billionaires (including H.L. Hunt) on the Texas Petroleum Club which supplied the cash to take Kennedy out on his visit to Big D in November, 1963. Kennedy had pissed them off with a series of moves, including: threatening their wealth with his proposed abolition of the Oil Depletion Tax Allowance, as well as his Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and moves to militarize state National Guards for integration. They likely also discovered (via military and intelligence connections) that JFK was conducting rapprochement talks with Rene Vallejo, an aide-de-camp to Fidel Castro.
Will the hoi polloi ever learn that they are merely ants carrying the offal for their overseers? Will they ever see that when they cry out “to take America back for God”– as at yesterday’s Beck rally – they merely make those overseers howl with laughter. And egg them on more with their false faith, that they may use it to help destroy their fellow Americans – and all so the fatcats backing their folly can grow richer. This is doubtful since the human delusion of authentic self-motivated action remains overwhelming even in those who are the willing chattel of those they'd spit on, if they knew their actual agenda. The Tea Party, like its Liberty Lobby and John Bircher predecessors, are today's willing chattel for the radical right billionaires - who likely wouldn't even allow them back door entry to use the servant bathrooms.
In the same way, we have the tea partyers happily going about their business of dissing Obama and the direction the nation is going, ignorant of those manipulating them. And just who are they? Thanks to New York Times reporter Frank Rich, we know, from his New York Times article: ‘The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party’.
Three of them are: Rupert Murdoch (owner of FOX News, and The Wall Street Journal), and the two brothers David and Charles Koch- with a combined wealth exceeded only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. As Rich notes:
“Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News”
Well, the problem is the “spear carriers” – like those fawning over Palin and Beck at Saturday's pseudo-religious liberty rally (any time you behold lots of flag wavers, watch out!)and yelping about “going back to God” – are so bedazzled by their fervor and fictitious faith that they fail to see how they’re being used. But this is exactly what delights their Overclass Masters: Just babble the G-word and "restoring honor" and many average citizens leave their brains at home and do the Masters' bidding - no coercion needed at all! Like the Gruen Transfer in advertising, they're co-opted by their own brains!
Let's make no mistake here that these wealthy covert backers of far right agendas are nothing new. They hearken all the way back to the du Pont brothers who spawned “The American Liberty League” in 1934 to attempt to bring down FDR. They detested the fact he had created a form of social insurance to protect the elderly against penury and which could not be subject to the variable phantom money mechanisms of the stock market (where it could easily be stolen, pilfered in their rigged games)
As Rich observes:
“You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.
Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). “
Not mentioned by him is the Liberty Lobby, formed by a consortium of powerful corporations under the umbrella of the American Security Council. The most odious aspect of the group – apart from its attack on John F. Kennedy for his Medicare and other proposals, was it origins in Nazi-associated immigrant groups (see: ‘Old Nazis, The New Right and the Republican Party’, by Russ Bellant, p. 38)
It also in many way complemented the John Birch Society of the time, which painted JFK as a “traitor and communist”. Frank P. Mintz, in his book ‘The Liberty Lobby and the American Right’ – noted it was an “unusual umbrella organization that catered to constituencies spanning the fringes of neo-Nazism, to the John Birch Society and the radical Right”
In many ways, the Lobby resembled the Tea Party of today, especially in respect of its obsession with “high taxes”, “deficits” and “entitlements” – all of which its big boy backers hated, so that its spear carrier puppets did as well. (Though like the Tea Party of today, they were unaware of carrying out the designs of the power backers- -believing stupidly they were doing it all on their own)
Interestingly, as Rich notes:
“The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
Of course, this swill could be heard at any Tea Party gathering today. Here thanks must go heartily to Jane Mayer for her expose piece on David Koch in a New Yorker article, ‘Covert Operations’:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Mayer’s article exposed for the first time that the rich guy who many New York libs believed was a generous donor of noble causes – was also a nefarious founder of The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which (as Mayer writes) “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception”
In the words of Frank Rich:
“To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”
But why be surprised? From the time of JFK we’ve known the most pernicious backers of renewing America for the wealthy have been rooted in Texas. Indeed, it was the five biggest billionaires (including H.L. Hunt) on the Texas Petroleum Club which supplied the cash to take Kennedy out on his visit to Big D in November, 1963. Kennedy had pissed them off with a series of moves, including: threatening their wealth with his proposed abolition of the Oil Depletion Tax Allowance, as well as his Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and moves to militarize state National Guards for integration. They likely also discovered (via military and intelligence connections) that JFK was conducting rapprochement talks with Rene Vallejo, an aide-de-camp to Fidel Castro.
Will the hoi polloi ever learn that they are merely ants carrying the offal for their overseers? Will they ever see that when they cry out “to take America back for God”– as at yesterday’s Beck rally – they merely make those overseers howl with laughter. And egg them on more with their false faith, that they may use it to help destroy their fellow Americans – and all so the fatcats backing their folly can grow richer. This is doubtful since the human delusion of authentic self-motivated action remains overwhelming even in those who are the willing chattel of those they'd spit on, if they knew their actual agenda. The Tea Party, like its Liberty Lobby and John Bircher predecessors, are today's willing chattel for the radical right billionaires - who likely wouldn't even allow them back door entry to use the servant bathrooms.
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