The Tea Party diversion

Instead their rage is aimed at government regulators and efforts to give them real power to bring the corruption under control. They have been oh-so-cleverly manipulated by organizers (the Tea Party branches claim to be spontaneous, but that just isn’t so) who are financed by some of the very Big Money interests who have gotten us into our mess.

They have been successful in deflecting the Tea Partiers’ rage away from the bad guys and onto those who might help put a stop to their cheating, meaning the regulators. It’s similar to the way the wealthy keep the lawmakers at bay by using a tiny part of their riches in the form of campaign contributions to coerce them and/or sweet talk them away from creating sensible rules of conduct for playing with other people’s money.

The agents of the status quo succeed in turning those with different ideas for effective change against each other. They use buzzwords of distortion, superstition and fear to create mindless uprisings that paradoxically tamp down any chance of meaningful reform. It’s classic “divide and conquer.”

But beyond that, the irresponsible use of careless language by ambitious politicians and their cynical enablers raises the danger of causing those who are borderline-unhinged to cross that line. Timothy McVeigh and the anniversary of the ghastly terrorism in Oklahoma City should give those who casually incite pause to think about the danger before they spew their hateful, incendiary sound bites. They should know they’re creating new monsters. But they don’t seem to care.

What they do is stifle constructive protest by turning it into destructive mindlessness. The Tea Party and similar protest efforts become movements against movement, instruments against change played by those who know just how to whip up the kind of frenzy that can consume those who doesn’t take a little time to look past fear and prejudice and realize they’re being had.

Visit Mr. Franken’s website at www.bobfranken.tv.