Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Tea Party

Imagine a tea party, where instead of tea, they were serving only Kool-Aid.

Not only did you have to drink it, no questions asked, but you had to say it was tea.

Despite the bright cherry red color, the unmistakable smell from the artificial flavoring, and maybe even the big Kool-Aid Pitcher symbol with the smile on it and arms and legs on the “tea” pot….you just had to call it tea, or else.

That “crazy” Alice in Wonderland kind of situation reminds me of what is going on now with the ultra-right wing extremist self-proclaimed “Tea Party” people and the federal budget.

These folks are truly “Drinking the Kool-Aid” when it comes to cutting the federal budget.

Cut everything, they say. Shut down the government, they say. No facts. No logic. The consequences of steep budget cuts applied with a meat cleaver rather than the needed scalpel would affected millions of Americans negatively.  If the Tea Party Kool-Aid drinkers get their way and shut down the government, the consequences could be even worse.

Many aspects of people’s lives will be hurt by either illogical budget cuts or shutting down the government. More specifically I can tell you from a scientist’s perspective that potentially life saving biomedical research including stem cell research will be delayed or stopped entirely for some unknown length of time.

The Tea Party extremists don’t care.