What "Populist Uprising?": Facts and Reflections on Race, Class, and the Tea Party "Movement" (Part 1) http://www.zcommunications.org/what-populist-uprising-pt-1-by-paul-street

The right wing Tea Party “movement” has recently and again grabbed attention in the dominant media. On Tax Day last April, it garnered headlines by rolling out its standard high-decibel complaints against “big government,” deficits, taxes, and the supposed “radical” agenda of “Obama, Pelosi, and Reid” and the rest of the Democratic Party.

As usual, the Tea Partyers exempted the $1 trillion-a-year Pentagon system (which accounts for nearly half of the world’s military spending and maintains more than 1000 military bases spread across more than 130 nations), global capitalism, and plutocratic tax cuts (for the rich) from their sense of what is undermining the nation’s economic prospects and saddling future generations with unsustainable debt.

Also par for the course, they absurdly charged the militantly state-capitalist and military imperialist Barack Obama administration and the corporate-captive Democratic Party with “socialism,” “Marxism,” environmentalist “tree hugging,” peacenik-ism, pro-immigrant sentiment and other alleged “radical leftist” apostasies denounced by such high priests of hard right anti-Obama backlash as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin.