The Corporate Crusader and his Cadre of Fools

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) is not a popular figure at the moment, at least among the media and his Republican colleagues. And yet his latest filibuster attempt is certainly the talk of the town. As a Tea Party hero, Cruz has more recently been labeled as a self-serving megalomaniac who is undermining his own party and making himself look like a fool in the process. He is derided across the political spectrum but is still a champion to many in America, who have been bamboozled into supporting interests that rarely support their own. It is the great sleight of hand that conservatives have been playing on average Americans for at least 30 years, getting them to believe that government is the problem and markets and corporations the solution. Where has it left these dupes? With lower real wages, higher unemployment, worse benefits and retirement funds, a more poverty and hunger (and crime in the future) and a declining quality of life for the majority. It is a corporate utopia and average Jane and Joe nightmare all wrapped into one skewed, but compelling fictional narrative. The plutocracy in America continues to grow, the rest of us suffer and yet our consternation is misaligned with reality. Gays, affirmative action, feminism and, of course, paranoid visions of a government that is out to get us all serve as scapegoats for the real criminals in America – corporations and their many witting and unwitting acolytes. Cruz is among them, maybe actually believing the BS that he spews, but serving the corporate agenda nonetheless. Not only indirectly but based on the reality that he is part of a movement bought, sponsored and funded by those party animals of the right-wing corporate set – the Koch brothers. Hollywood could not tell this story any better; it’s just too bad that so many people can’t tell the difference between a well-constructed lie and the truth.