Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party and Michelle Bachmann

Bachmann is the perfect symbol of the Dumb and Dumber approach to high finance. She makes a great show of saying things that would get a kindergartner busted to the special ed bus -- shrieking, for instance, that AmeriCorps was a plot to force children into liberal "reeducation camps" (Bachmann’s own son, incidentally, was a teacher in an AmeriCorps program), or claiming that the U.S. economy was "100 percent private" before Barack Obama’s election (she would later say Obama in his first year and a half managed to seize control of "51 percent of the American economy").

When the Chinese proposed replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency, Bachmann apparently thought this meant that the dollar itself was going to be replaced, that Americans would be shelling out yuan to buy six-packs of Sprite in the local 7-Eleven. So to combat this dire threat she sponsored a bill that would "bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency." When reporters like me besieged Bachmann’s office with calls to ask if the congresswoman, a former tax attorney, understood the difference between currency and reserve currency, and to ask generally what the hell she was talking about, her spokeswoman, Debbee Keller, was forced to issue a statement clarifying that "she’s talking about the United States . . . The legislation would ensure that the dollar would remain the currency of the United States."

We live in an increasingly complex world. Few can understand the world of high finance and just how and why our economy ended in a train wreck. It wasn't vecause of too much government or too many regulation but rather because a cadre of smart people understood just how to manipulate complex financial instruments for their short term gain and rhe average person's long term lost. Returning to a 'simpler' time and relying in the intentionally vague Constitution will help no-one, If anything , it will lead to more of the same.

That vague argument resonated with the frustrated masses which i why the Tea Party was so successful in the elections. That and the fact that the system allows those very ame 'smart' people to pout billions into political campaign to befuddle the populace even more into voting for politicians who will only allow more of the same.

Anti-intellectualism has become the flavor du jour when just the opposite is called for. Read it all here.