Texas Tea Party: When Ignorance Aligns With Power

By Carol Morgan

Who will read it? Who will care? For over a week, I’ve asked myself these questions as I sit down to write.

Each day the Texas Legislature convenes, everything Texans take for granted is in jeopardy; education, our environment, the way we govern our communities, even the sovereignty of a woman’s body is under threat by the mercurial whims of the Texas Tea Party. Each Friday, I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m immensely grateful that the confederacy of dunces in Austin is not in session.

If all Texans were required to watch the committee hearings and legislative sessions online, there is nothing that would prevent them from voting in the next election. Not only are the legislators at war with their own constituents, they’re at war amongst themselves. The noxious stench of contentiousness and battle for control is in the very air under the dome. Each of the branches of government, the House, the, Senate and the Executive branch jockey for power and attention.

Every piece of legislation is a mirror of their mortal combat philosophy; a contest to push the limits of cruelty, hatred, extremism and misogyny.

Senator Charles Perry has broken all the rules expected of a public servant. He’s voted for the horrible “opportunity scholarships” a.k.a. known as vouchers that will eventually kill public education. He’s authored a bill that will disrupt any good will built between law enforcement and minority communities.

How can these laws be beneficial for the South Plains? We already have school choice and we’ve had a law that covers illegal immigration since the early nineties.

His legislation serves only one selfish purpose; to garner notoriety and name recognition for a future shot at Randy Neugebauer’s spot in Congress. There’s no such thing as bad publicity in politics when you have your eye on another political office; a promotion in the hierarchy of grandiose political theater.

A local Democrat employed the Perry strategy to take the opposite stance. His hyperbolic letter to the Senator was nothing more than an attention-getting counterattack to pave the path to another future office. The Perry-Hernandez standoff was little more than two male dogs pissing on the same tree. I hate it when Democrats use the strategies of the GOP, because we’re better than that.

Realistically, there are legislators in Austin who are much more dangerous than Charles Perry and there are bills in Austin that are far more dangerous than #SB 185. It pales in comparison to the other bills streaming down the pike.

Public education is under direct attack by Tea Party. Even though Pre-K is one of the Governor’s priorities, Tea Party legislators seek to obliterate it. Our own District 83 Representative, Dustin Burrows voted against it and has aligned himself (on more than one occasion) with the most extreme and certifiably crazy legislators like Stickland, White, Riddle, and Krause.

Senator Donna Campbell insults our teachers and paints public education as an enemy combatant. Dan Patrick allows a handful of attention-seeking-name-dropping-politically-ambitious females and billionaires in his advisory groups to craft policy. This group is more Godless than Patrick’s disingenuous cheesy-dramatic description of kindergarten.

It gets worse. Let’s have a law that forces dead women to be a receptacle for a fetus whose viability at birth is in question, shall we? Conversely, let’s have a live woman forced to carry a dead fetus all the way to term because all life is valued and sometimes miracles happen, right? If it’s a hungry child that’s already born or an innocent person on death row; the rhetoric quickly changes to bootstraps and the angry justified vengeance of eye-for-eye.

The author of this particularly misogynistic piece of legislation (I call it the dead baby bill) liberty-lovin’ Matt Schaefer, justified it this way: Suffering is “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.”

I'll stop for a moment for your eyeroll.

I have to laugh when I hear Tea Party politicians assert that “government is bad” because I know they’ll prove it as soon as they’re elected. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a backyard chicken ordinance in Lubbock or Sid Miller’s fight (complete with white hat and massive belly) over putting deep fat fryers back in school cafeterias.

It seems nobody knows how to set priorities unless there's liberty or freedom in the subject line.

Almost fifty years ago, economist Garrett Hardin conjectured a theory called the “Tragedy of the Commons”. He contended that individuals in power will always act in a manner that benefits them personally, even though it is contrary to the best interests of the group. How perfectly this describes the twisted psychopathology of the collective of the Texas Tea Party.

There is nothing more dangerous than an elected official with a hungry ego demanding to be fed. They are willing to lie and cheat to get more, if only to prevent others from taking it away. Their judgement for public policy is severely clouded by their next media interview, a selfie, a photo op or the tasty anticipation of the next political office they hope to win.

Candidates with the simple desire to serve won’t be elected. If by some miracle, they win, they won’t stay uncontaminated for long. The tornado of power and ego sucks them into the vortex and they quickly discover it’s easier to join ‘em than to beat ‘em. Those unwilling to be ruthless will be defeated by those who are.

A politician’s betrayal of his or her constituency is nothing new. What’s different now is that citizens can witness the ugliness unfold in real time via a 24-7 news stream and social media. Unfortunately, some refuse to acknowledge it. To do so would force them to choose between speaking out or remaining in the spiral of silence with the pleasant camaraderie of their herd.

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, a freelance writer, and former Democratic candidate for the Texas House. She is the award-winning author of two books: Of Tapestry, Time and Tears and Liberal in Lubbock. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

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