Bobert, "big government" is the presumed enemy of the kind of people who rally to something like the Tea Party, is it not?

And big government is in fact admirably serving the purposes OF the large banks and the biggest corporations who loooooove Big Government, because they control it with their money, and it allows them to make a lot more money.

The ordinary people who are attracted to a protest movement like the Tea Party imagine themselves to be taking on Washington, don't they?

And Washington is a city dominated by corporate lobbyists and Wall Street.

I think the ordinary people who are attracted to the Tea Party are indeed dupes and pawns for a corporate agenda, but they have no idea that they are. They think they're fighting for the old traditional America of small towns, Ozzie and Harriet, Little House on the Prairie, the local church, etc., but they're simply being used to help divide the public along ever more extreme lines of partisan rhetoric.

Many idealistic people on the Left are being used the same way by turning their anger against people like the Tea Party or Sarah Palin or some other easily visible "enemy". Two sets of easily manipulated and very emotional and righteous dupes on the Right and the Left thus turn their anger on each other while the banks and corporations (who are really apolitical as well as completely ammoral) cash in on the gridlock and confusion that follows, the government passes the regressive legislation they want, and their money-making agenda goes forward.

The way the crooks at the top win is, they divide the public against each other, they push hot emotional trigger issues like "gay marriage", "right to life", etc., they play the race card, the gay card, the patriotism card, the gender card, the terrorism card, the ethnic card, whatever gets people REALLY scared, divided, and upset with one another, they send the public out to fight with each other over all that stuff, and they win by default while people are screaming in each other's faces and ridiculing each other. One part of the public then blames the other part for what happened, and the game goes on, and on, and on. The rich elite wins. Everyone else loses.

This happens in Canada too, but in a much more muted fashion, and more gradually, because things are less volatile here.