Much of the water cooler talk and email traffic of the last few days has been about the sequester. While most discussion is on the direct impact on our little corner of the world. Few of my colleagues opt to engage in debate as to the causes.

First, I should step back a bit. When I really began paying close attention to politics, around the year 2000, I began to see a bit more clearly the more I learned. On the one hand, I watched The O’Reilly Factor and Fox and Friends almost every day. Why? Well, absent any real knowledge up to that point, I accepted the conventional wisdom that all of the media but Fox News were draped in some nefarious cloak called “liberal bias.” You may not recall, but Fox and Friends wasn’t always an over-the-top propaganda mill with a target audience of cranky assholes in the early stages of dementia (I choose to believe that, rather than the alternative, that I was easily deluded). Mr. O’Reilly was a bit slicker, and I was able to stomach his show for far longer. Unfortunately, I have a rather good memory. As I have come to notice about all professional right wing bile-spewers, O’Reilly’s analyses are always wrong and he mistakes volume for veracity as the most important facet of argumentation. Once I finally accepted the implication of the pattern of intentional misdirection and creative interpretation with which he feeds his sheep, I began to strictly read the news.

…but I digress…

So I do understand how easily a person can be misled if he hasn’t done the homework required to get a full appreciation for what is going on in the world in general and the world of politics in particular. That doesn’t stop my blood pressure from approaching dangerous levels when I hear blame for the absurd “problem” lay equally at the feet of the Republican House and the Democratic Presidential Administration.

The sequester can be analogized in many ways, each focusing on a specific facet of the stupid. But I like things simple, and I would describe it simply. The sequester was put in place to force the Legislative branch to do its job. How? Obviously, the consequences should be so dire that only a malignant idiot would allow it to proceed. While I would argue that they have overstated the results, nevertheless, I will take on the other part of their premise. Rather, the so-called Tea Party did that for me. This “grass-roots” organization funded by the same handful of John Birch Society supporters that fund most right wing groups poured billions of dollars into the coffers of the most misanthropic collection of halfwit sociopaths ever assembled (that was not subsequently defeated by the Justice League, that is).

They were planted in the government with the intent to prevent sanity from ruling the day. The purchasers of democracy have gotten exactly what they paid for. And not a one of them regrets it.