I've been slow to follow up on a lot of the insanity unleashed by the Republican Party and their Tea Partiers after the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, because the tsunami of articles and opinionating has been too overwhelming to follow. Yet amidst the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, I found this awesomely snarky "evidentiary report", Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job - Bloomberg.com:

More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed in a new Bloomberg National Poll say the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level.

At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.

They also look to the government to rein in Wall Street, with almost half saying the government should do something about executive bonuses. Supporters are also conflicted over whether private-enterprise elements should be introduced into government programs like Social Security and Medicare.

What's funny about this report is that a news organization has had to go out and poll these people to have evidence of their political lunacy: they call themselves fiscal and social conservatives as long as the government takes care of them. If they had a job, they allegedly wouldn't be complaining about Obamacare or Wall Street.

To be honest, I think this is an oversimplification of the TeaPublican phenomenon. It does't take care into consideration a few factors:

• most TeaPublicans are whites or aspirational whites,
• they view themselves as part of a middle class status that is their entitlement
• they view their whiteness and middle class status as payback for making American exceptionalism a reality through cultural, commercial, political and militaristic dominion

These are the people who bought into the notion that American Imperialism and Dominion was a good thing for them. As long as they had their jobs and pension plans and health insurance and homes with white picket fences and gas guzzling cars, they were A-OK with the idea of bombing Muslims in far away places or destroying whole agricultural economies in Mexico or owning little Caribbean islands as imperial trinkets. After all, Empire only made their lives infinitesimal better than the losers at the receiving end of the United States' policies.

The definition of American is being challenged not just by a negro in the White House but by a piece of legislation that acknowledges the United States' is in the middle of a social class war where 90% of the population are have-nots. That's a blow to the psyche of the wannabe imperial storm trooperteers of Teabagistan.

It's not freedom, but the heyday of American Imperialism what, whether they acknowledge it or not, the Republicans and their Tea Party are fighting for.