The Tea Party Support for Hugo Chavez
Of course, members of the Tea Party movement throughout America could never connect their views and desires to the support of Venezuela’s own Hugo Chavez. To reach that conclusion it takes thinking through a short series of steps and the utilization of common sense.
The anti-Democratic crowd of Tea Partiers share in common the anti-government regulation, pro free-market sentiment that has spread throughout this nation like an infestation of Kudzu. They believe that anything the government touches dissolves into corruption, and though they will never cease to vote for “new” government officials – as if the new breed of politicians who hold a disdain for all things Washington will make Washington disappear by disbanding the house and senate, before heading home to collect unemployment… or something. They hold the “right to free operation” for corporations very dear to their heart. Essentially, they give full support to foreign corporations running our country – British Petroleum, Spanish owned highways and tolls, Chinese owned ports, Chavez’s Citgo….
Though Wall Street banks were mostly responsible for crashing our economy, and sending it into the toilet-flush like a bunch of Scrubbing Bubbles, Tea Partiers believe the same bankers should be free to operate as they choose to, and mostly rail against the recently passed regulations set for our financial institutions. They protest the regulation of the healthcare industry who charge so high a fee for their services that people are literally left homeless in order to afford to stay alive. Likewise, the Tea Party members believe in leaving the oil industry alone to operate as freely as they want to. The Tea Party hero of Kentucky, Rand Paul, stated that President Obama is un-American because he chastised BP for causing a global crisis. They essentially believe in allowing the free-market to operate away from the prying eyes of the Federal Government, thinking that once the Feds move in all will go awry.
Tea Party supporters seem to be blind to the reality in front of their eyes – the true workings of the unregulated free market as their own shorelines become drenched in BP’s product. Of course, it isn’t BP’s fault because BP executives told us it wasn’t. They blamed it on Transocean – the rig’s operators. Transocean blamed it on Halliburton for installing faulty parts, who blamed it on BP, and just when we thought the round-robin of fingerpointing was over, we come to find out that BP flatly lied to the public with their original estimation of 5,000 barrels flowing from the Gulf of Mexico daily by over 8 times the amount. America is left with a saturated shoreline – decimated wetlands, and tributaries, and a hope that “…maybe by August,” BP will have the leak capped. They’re unregulated free-market giants who are without enough integrity to accept responsibility. Since they have the ability to push blame elsewhere, even the individuals at fault will never be held accountable for their actions, as that would indicate an admittance to internal failure. Why would they want to hold anyone accountable anyway? Why should they? They’re backed by a large body of politicians and their tea-bag adorned constituents.
One of these giants in the American oil industry is Citgo. The oil company that could be likened to being the Wal-Mart of gas stations is owned by the Venezuelan government, namely Hugo Chavez. Being the dictator that he is, Chavez is despised by the portion of the American poplulation who thinks we have a right in telling other nations how to operate. If a nation’s people are content enough to live beneath the rule of a monarch, Tea Partiers freely speak out against it – whether or not the people there are happy. If a person’s religious rites require they wear a garment that is alien to us, and we find that there are laws in their nation that enforce those religious rules, the right wing portion of America feels they have a right to condemn it. Just last year we watched the upheaval of the Iranian citizens finally take to the streets to speak out against what they deemed as a fraudulent election. The right-wing of America – the “let them take care of themselves” crowd – thought it would’ve been better if Barack Obama joined in, and voiced his opinion in support of the people.
With Hugo Chavez, it isn’t difficult to spur a fight with a member of the Tea Party, simply by mentioning the dictators name with even a hint of favorable tonality. They’ll tell you in a breath that they’d never stop to refuel at a Citgo, yet they rail against President Obama for even mentioning a word about any free-market operation such as Citgo. They see it as the Feds inching toward the thought of free-market regulations. In the way many liberals wanted to see every one of Bush Jr.’s policies fail, so too would the Tea Party members back a corporation’s right to free operation over any federal decision if for only to see the president fail in his endeavors. Unwittingly, this brings them to directly support the Venezuelan dictator and his wholly owned Citgo.
I wonder, if Obama decided that Citgo was no longer allowed to operate in the United States, would the Tea Partiers cry out against forced removal of free enterprise? In the way that we’ve seen the conservatives try and guard the financial industries that drove our economy into the sewer, we could only guess they would.
