Tea Party 2.0

Columbus coronavirus protests at the Ohio Statehouse, 2020-04-18. Via Wikipedia

Over the weekend we saw the first attempts at establishing Tea Party 2.0.

The coronavirus protests that took place across the nation are part of a coordinated effort to restart the economy and bring some normalcy back to life.

The protesters, armed with signs that ranged from ironic to idiotic, were called from their homes by a President who needs the economy humming again.

This President was helped by a network of organizers who serve as foot soldiers for the Koch political network, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ “Michigan Freedom Fund” (though the family denies it) and pro-gun groups.

This President’s cause was also boosted by a web guy in Florida who didn’t cover his tracks. A reddit user found the sock puppet websites he set up were registered within literal minutes of each other. In true idiot fashion, many of the web pages have copied and pasted text.

It’s all part of a pattern these ultra-rich mega donor groups.

It worked for them once in 2009. Why not try it again? Tea Party 2.0 it is!

But behind the spectacle, the political urgency, the moneyed interests, and the botched federal response, there’s real fear lurking. People are scared this will be another economic debacle that will leave hundreds of thousands of Americans worse off than they were 12 years ago.

The fear is so real I feel it

I work an hourly wage job in the live events industry. I make pretty good money for someone who doesn’t have a degree.

But the past 12 years have been a financial struggle for me and my family.

So many ups and downs.

Just when you think you’re ahead, another shoe drops.

I’ll be honest, its been real fucking stressful.

I have no idea what’s about to happen to my career, my ability to make a living, or anything else.

People are scared. 22 million people have filed for unemployment in the past four weeks. Millions more aren’t sure how long their employers can keep them on.

Despite the $2 trillion dollar CARES Act, there have been problems getting money to small businesses, additional unemployment dollars to people, and who knows how long it will take the President to sign those fucking checks.

Its the uncertainty stupid

All that uncertainty is toxic. People need certainty. They need to know a paycheck is coming.

Some believe this isn’t all that bad of a pandemic. Many of those same people are also are freaking out because everything they’ve built is slipping away. They naturally see re-opening the economy as a solution to their problems.

The folks who are worried weren’t the folks on the capitol steps this weekend. For the most part, they don’t do stuff like that. But they saw those Tea Party 2.0 folks. It reminded them how badly they want things to be normal again.

This victory of normalcy…of getting back to work and getting checks back in the pockets of Americans is a pyrrhic victory at best. But for a lot of people it seems like a good deal since Congress seems to have forgotten about them again.

Tea Party 2.0 is a fairy tale

This grass-tops, protests “movement”, this Tea Party 2.0 is nothing but a fairy tale selling a fairy tale. But the movement is a fairy tale trying REALLY HARD to be real…just like the original Tea Party.

If there’s one thing big money people like Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos know how to do, its make economic insecurity real through the policies they prefer, then use the insecurity they helped create to motivate a well funded “popular” movement…to get the rest of what they want.

That’s what they got the first time around. They’re pretty sure they can do it again.

If they get their way, they’ll wreck the economy and get people killed. Lots of them.

As of this writing there are over 40,000 dead so far in the US. We could see 30+ times that many deaths in just a few months by ending social distancing now.

If we try to restart now, and infections go up, the economy won’t recover. And the jobs we so desperately want to get back to won’t be there for long.

We’ll be right back where we are now by the end of the summer.

Rural areas, already suffering from a lack of development, opportunity, and healthcare, will be decimated.

Urban hospitals will get overwhelmed.

We’ll end up like Italy, deciding who lives and dies by who gets treated.

Folks don’t see the urgency because it hasn’t seemed that bad. They’re not in the hospitals trying to save the lives of people struggling to draw a breath. But it will get that bad if we do what Italy did, and ignore calls for isolation.

Give Americans what they need to live

I think the protests are dumb grass tops bullshit with way too many Nazi’s to warrant much coverage. I also understand the fear that leads some people think re-opening now is the answer.

There’s another way. One the Charles Koch’s of the world hates.

There’s going to be another funding bill, and I’m not talking about the CARES II funding extension they’re working on now.

One idea floating around D.C. is a $2000 check every month for everyone until this crisis is over. It’s called the Emergency Money for the People Act. Two Democrats are sponsoring it in the House. GOP Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has expressed interest in something similar.

The Trump administration is hell bent on showing how bad government can be. But if Congress could manage to do this, it would change everything.

Two grand a month will help keep families afloat until an effective treatment, or vaccine is found.

A DeVos/Koch funded Tea Party 2.0 is going to get us killed.

Tell your Representative and Senators direct payments to Americans, not a premature reopening of the economy, is what needs to happen to keep our country from becoming a morgue.

We’ve had enough unnecessary deaths already.

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