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So that's why the IRS went after them, instead of the Koch brothers? No, not even close. It was the first serious, spontaneous, "modern era?"; let's say, 21st Century grassroots reaction to the crimes of our ruling class, and was, as I noted, brutally suppressed (really, you think Koch brothers were paying all those people to rally, and to pick up their trash after they were finished???). Now the reaction is Trump. If he fails, the ruling class will like what comes next even less, and things will start to edge to existential for them, "history history is the graveyard of aristocracies" and all that. One reason their freak-outs are intensifying. And, yes, I'm now shifting a bit and focusing more on the wider ruling class than the political "establishment" per se, for that's really what we're fighting, much of what's wrong with today's America doesn't emit from the halls of the Congress, the decisions of the Supremes, etc. etc. For example, suppose the press had treated this actual IRS suppression like they treated Nixon's asking the IRS to attack his enemies, which they of course refused to do. (Note the wording of the articles of impeachment, that which he "endeavoured" to do, vs. actually did: http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment (this is something I followed in real time back then...), or e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List#Purpose Nixon was not popular or powerful enough to carry this off.) |
No, it was not. Occupy Wall Street was.
Unlike Occupy, the Tea Party was very easy to turn to serve the needs of the ruling class - just play up the 'no new taxes' and 'small government' bits, and downplay the 'find the people who broke the economy, and punish them' outrage.
The result was that outrage over 2008 turned into another spoke in the GOP tentpole.