The recent “decision” by the Koch Brothers’ conglomerate to support candidates based on their support for deregulation etc., rather than purely on party affiliation, is disingenuous at best, and at worst deeply hypocritical.  These are the same funders who brought us the tea party in the first place, an astro-turf movement purporting, after Obama’s initial election, to spring forth as spontaneous revolt against government bailouts and deficit spending.  This supposed rebellion may well have included some individuals sincere in their ire at government largesse spilled out to coffers other than their own.  It would never, however, have spawned the national scale of impact that it did without serious financial backing and equally serious infrastructure planning.  Here lay the role of the Kochs.  Fueling and funneling citizens feeling angry about the election of Obama (remember, there was no such dramatic “uprising” when the bailouts began under George W. Bush), the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity chose winners and losers within Republican primaries.  These financiers conveniently ignored that many of the angry citizens they alleged to represent were not Libertarians like themselves, were not fiscal conservatives seeking a smaller role for the federal government in public life, but were instead Americans living on a spectrum that runs from blatant klan-ish racism to malignant discomfort with the shift toward a minority role for the Caucasians among us.  Make no mistake, the distance between these two groups is only from one end of a spectrum scale to another – there is an inescapable alliance among the points at every single point along that line.  Organizational support provided by the Kochs’ funding mechanisms catapulted some candidates who were traditional conservatives, some that were boisterous newcomers to politics, and others that were “new voices” in the so-called Republican coalition – never mind that in these last two groups were individuals committed not to reduction of the size of government, but instead to literal destruction of federal governance.  Sprinkled, let us never forget, with white nationalism at every step of the way.

The tea party brought the feckless disintegration of Republican ideology into our first glances of political Black-lash against the election of Barack Obama by more than a 9-million vote margin in the popular vote.  By 2010, voices to obstruct Obama silenced any trying to articulate a minority viewpoint and work within a shared governance collaboration; battle lines were drawn against the individual in the White House – cast as an African-born Islamic Socialist.  John Boehner heaved his last sigh of leadership under the weight of “populist” hate speech gathering at this time under the banner of conservatism.  The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth placed time bombs into government across state legislatures and into the Congress.  These ticking legislators were sold as adherents to traditional conservative values.  They were a malignant breed of nihilists planted to dismantle regulation, disregard climate change, and protect the wealthiest donors, with neither regard for the esteemed history of their ostensible party, nor respect for our nation’s system of checks and balances.  Bureaucrats are necessarily a part of a bureaucracy, and the complexity of our government requires a bureaucracy – which requires career staff who pull for the interests of our shared country, regardless of the party in power.  These new Republicans opposed all career staff.  All established experts.  Deficit spending?  They’re for it.  Trade barriers?  That’s just what we need.  Freedom of the press?  Fake.  Freedom of religion?  Only for me, not for you.  American politics began tilting on its axis, leading inexorably to this upside down world in which Republicans argue vociferously to defend our current president’s cozy bromance with the Russian leader, and Democrats defend the rule of law in our nation.

Fast forward to today, and we have to observe that the Koch Brothers doth protest too much.  Shocked, shocked to find that there is racism among the new right-wing activists.  Shocked, shocked to find that modern Republicans approve a $12 billion payout to industrial agribusiness as a corrective maneuver in response to astonishingly poor trade policy choices by the White House, met by outrageously anemic Congressional response.  Your winnings, Charles.

Keep the faith and keep in touch.