Hippies and Teabaggers

Unlike most conventional pundits who rail against the tyranny of polarized extremism, I think the problem with our political system is the overwhelming power of consensus elites to define debate and control outcomes. One way they do this, however, is through the promotion of extremist sounding but essentially just stupid paranoid rhetoric purposed toward elitist policy goals.

For example, ADM and Monsato could just lobby on their own behalf to be left unaccountable for putting poison in your food. But it's a far better strategy to let the argument fall into the hands of stupid crazy people who just make a mess of everything.

Conservative activists have apparently rallied to the call, helping to ensure that passage of a bill that once seemed like a sure thing is far less certain. While the tea party's interests often seem to coincide with corporate America's—as in the health care debate—in this case big agriculture, the grocery store lobby, and the restaurant industry all firmly support the bill. Why? The food industry has found the recent rash of food-poisoning outbreaks to be extremely expensive and generally bad for business.

But Coburn and the tea partiers have found an unlikely group of allies in their fight against the bill: hippies. Or "granolas," as food safety lawyer Bill Marler calls the organic farmers, locavores, health nuts, and artisanal cheesemakers who oppose the legislation. "The granolas come at it from a standpoint that they want to eat all natural foods, and drink raw milk because they believe it cures everything from autism to erectile dysfunction," says Marler, who's been involved in drafting the food bill for a decade. "Then you have the tea party involved not because they drink raw milk but because they don't want the government involved in any aspect of their lives. It's all about how the government is out to get their seeds."

Everybody wins here. Agribusiness gets to take a reasonable public position on food safety while not actually having to be held responsible for it by the law. Increasingly angry and threatened American consumers get to channel their outrage into cathartic but unproductive activities such as buying "survival seeds" and balancing their chakras. Nobody pays a political price for any of this other than these mythical "liberals in Washington" who don't really exist anyway. Meanwhile, our news media doesn't have to get bogged down in discussing the boring ins and outs of food safety regulation but instead has a ball ogling and promoting the spectacle caused by these misguided activists.

And the self-perpetuating cycle of stupid can continue.