The Koch brothers are actually succeeding in manipulating public opinion in America. I’m happy to finally learn this truth, because I’ve been wondering in writing and aloud what we in America can be thinking about when we embrace self-destructive policies. For example, why would we vote against health care or extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of us though the rest are in dire straights? Why wouldn’t we want to avoid the serious consequences of global climate change? Why wouldn’t we want to enact and enforce laws that keep industry from polluting our ground, water and air, to protect ourselves from greedy corporate self-interest, or prevent the selling out of Main Street by Wall Street?
Yesterday, I finally read the article in the August 2010 issue of the New Yorker, about the billionaire Koch’s Brother’s war on Obama, and it turns out, on our very way of life. I had to force myself to keep reading when I just wanted to shut my eyes and shriek, the way I do when I watch horror movies.
The Koch brothers are Libertarian. That means they think that private and corporate wealth should not be taxed, and that government should neither provide services for its citizens, nor interfere in corporate business practices. For example, the brothers find that our silly environmental concerns cost them money. What do they do? Create and/or fund whole institutes to discredit science. They’ve succeeded to an alarming extent in convincing the voting public that health care is wrong, that members of unions are the enemy of the public, that workers have no rights, that the wealthiest of us want to give to the rest of us, but don’t want to be forced via taxation.
The Koch brothers are scary. They have more money than everyone else in America except Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, and they know how to use their money to protect and propagate their own interests. According to Jane Mayer, who investigated the brothers for the New Yorker article, they’ve poured resources into the Tea Party, who’s members have infiltrated the Republican Party, like the Cylons, of Battlestar Galactica. The Cylons were androids, creatures created by us, and indistinguishable from us. They wanted to destroy us, in the same way that the Tea Party members and other puppets of the Koch brothers want destroy all of the protections provided by our government.
What I’m wondering is, what will happen to those of us who are not millionaires when the government stops protecting us, when corporations are free to pollute and plunder unfettered, as in the Koch brother’s dream. Corporations have no conscience. Do we want them, and those who serve them calling the shots?
