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A Moment of Pure Astonishment, Again

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Tea Party Nation activists calls for small business to “stop hiring,” to protest Obama, Democrats.

It is no easy thing to astonish me. The deep, dark mineshaft of the 21st century has produced some of the most gruesome, appalling, horrifying acts and behaviors ever seen on the skin of the Earth, and it has been my job to report on them, to chronicle them, and to try and make sense of them. The dangerous thing about this job, if you do it long enough, is the callus that builds up over your heart and head. It's a necessary thing; you can endure only so much for so long before the urge to run screaming through the streets tries to take hold, and if that happens, you're no good to anyone except your bail bondsman.

I reported on October 4, 2001 about George W. Bush looking into a brace of news cameras to shill for tax cuts – he smiled as he did it – not even a month after the Towers collapsed, even as we were shaking the ashes of friends and co-workers out of our hair. I reported on Karl Rove telling GOP congressional hopefuls to “run on the war,” meaning Iraq, months before the war had actually been unleashed.

Later, after the war was unmistakably underway, I filed dozens of reports, taking special notice of the names of the dead. As time and battle drew out, certain truths came to plague the living: try as they might to stand by the justifications for the war, there were no weapons of mass destruction for Bush administration officials to point to…a fact that did not stop press secretary Ari Fleischer from saying, “I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.”

I reported on George W. Bush strutting across the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln beneath a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” seven full years and tens of thousands of casualties before his splendid little war actually came to an end. I reported on the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a crime committed by the Bush administration to punish her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for speaking against the war in the public prints. I reported on Dick Cheney's claim that the Vice President's office is not part of the Executive Branch, because he did not want to turn his official papers over to the National Archives.

I reported on John McCain suspending his presidential campaign because, somehow, he thought that would save the crumbling economy. I reported on Barack Obama's crabwise approach to health care reform, on his failure to close the prison at Guantanamo, and on the deranged three-ring circus of the debt limit crisis, when the president was backed into a corner by congressional Republicans, who threatened to crash the economy because they wanted to rip the guts out of the social safety net.

After all that and so much more besides, my capacity for shock has been severely diminished…or so I thought.

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Because there is this, written by Tea Party activist Melissa Brookstone and published last week on the Tea Party Nation website:

Call For A Strike of American Small Businesses Against The Movement for Global Socialism

“I'm on strike!” – Ellis Wyatt, from the end of the movie “Atlas Shrugged, Part 1”, based on the novel by Ayn Rand

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

Resolved that: These same factions expect that, by carrying out a radical anti-business agenda, which includes the passage and inflicting of Obama”Care” on our nation, class warfare and redistribution of wealth, and expanding the government, while killing businesses in this country with an environment hostile to business, including excessive regulations (the average business must now spend about $11,700 per year per employee to comply with government regulations!), and by borrowing and wasting more money than has been spent in the entire previous existence of our republic, that they will “create jobs”, when in fact all they have “created” have been government jobs that consume wealth, and don't “create” it.

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported “Occupy” demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

I hereby declare that my job creation potential is now ceased.

“I'm on strike!”

“Despicable” is not a muscular enough word to describe this sad catastrophe of a document. Leaving aside all the gibberish about global socialist conspiracies and Obama's dictatorial tyranny – truly, all that is simply too stupid to reckon with – what we have here is a far-right activist group demanding that millions of unemployed people be denied gainful employment for no other reason than the Tea Party does not like the president.

No jobs for anyone until Obama is gone. Got it? The suffering being endured by so many Americans in the aftermath of the very economic policies championed in this declaration have no bearing on the present. Screw you, screw me, screw everyone, until these people have their way. If even one person in America heeds this call and refuses to hire anyone in need of a job, that will be a disaster of enormous proportions, for it will stand as the clearest indication yet that we are not our brother's keeper, that we are a cruel and selfish people, that we are hopeless possibly beyond all redemption.

This declaration is fishwrap, and I devoutly hope it is treated as such by anyone unfortunate enough to be confronted with it. It is the strongest signal yet that people like this Melissa Brookstone and her Tea Party friends – indeed, anyone who thinks the above declaration is a good idea – must be kept as far out of political power as can be managed within the boundaries of the law.

Astonishing indeed.

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