By Primo Encarnación

Growing up attending Catholic school, we were exposed early on to school prayer, scripture, theology, ethics, morals… you know, all the stuff that makes being a sentient being a lot harder. So of course, along the way, we learned the Golden Rule as expressed by our Lord in Matthew 7:12: “Do unto others…” Yadda. Yadda.

Then we would go to Pete’s, the corner tavern, and learn about real life – how it works, why it works, when it works, in the City that Works – from a barroom Bhagwan who hardly ever works: Uncle Jimmy “Barstool” Grobnik. From the top of his mountain, the end stool nearest the jukebox, Uncle Jimmy would dispense pearls of wisdom to us, along with the occasional quarter for the shuffle bowling machine. (We were nuts for that thing!)

Barstool’s take on the Golden Rule? “Dem dat gots da gold, makes da rules.” It’s a life lesson that has rung true. It’s also a life lesson that the Tea Party is about to learn.

The hard way.

They’ve been the unwitting, unwashed cannon fodder for their corporate overlords ever since they were astro-turfed into existence, voting as instructed to elect a cadre of Congresscritters only sometimes, and then only slightly, less idiotic than themselves, to further the interests of their masters. Global warming? Tax policy? Health care? All these mean less than nothing to the TeaBirchers, so long as they get to keep their guns and maybe shoot somebody, just as guns mean nothing to the oligarchs, so long as no one uses them to take away the TRILLIONS in cash they’ve been stockpiling offshore.

The only Superfly in the ointment of the super rich has been this Democratic President. So they will stop at nothing to avoid a repeat of 2012, where every billionaire had his pet candidate. Instead, they are scheming to throw the full weight of their oligopoly behind a single 2016 “establishment” candidate, mental-dwarf-tossing the Ted Cruzes, the Rick Perrys and the Michele Bachmanns of the world under the short bus they got off of, using the anti-democracy tactics they’ve been perfecting for the last 10 years. Turn out the lights, the Tea Party will be over.

Except for “dem dat gots da gold.”