The most interesting development over the couple of days I've been offline is the rather uncivil dialogue that has developed over health care during Congresspeople's "town hall meetings" in their home districts. No doubt you assiduous readers have seen all the written and video reports, so there's no need for me to repeat all that.
Everyone's big question seems to be, gee,"what's causing it?" The answer to that question is, I think, pretty obvious, but many writers and commentators shy away from stating it - which may make you think that they're either blind or dumb, but this is one of those cases where the modern "journalist" succumbs to a false sense of "balanced" reporting, providing both sides of a story that has only one. Under this approach, if a group of reality-deniers wants to push a claim that the world is flat, the balanced reporter treats that assertion seriously, interviews those who profess to believe it, tries to find the pros and cons of it, and maybe even finds a quack scientist who will support it. It's the same now with the disruptive tactics of those who oppose changes to health insurance.
The clear truth is that the problem can only have arisen largely, if not entirely, by orchestration of the Republican party and/or its zealous right-wing bedfellow blogs and websites. Why do I suppose this? We might reflect that nearly all the screamers just coincidentally look like the very stereotype of Republicans, a role perfected by John McCain during his campaign last year - old, white, and angry. Or, we might consider that anyone with serious concerns about the proposed legislation would want to ask questions and hear them answered, rather than engage in a shouting match.
But we don't have to suppose at all. It's been reported for several days that arch-conservatives have specifically urged the shout-down as an approach their followers should adopt. Today's New York Times carries a summary of these efforts, in particular those of one Robert MacGuffie, with such advice as "become a part of the mob," "yell," and "stand up and shout."
The Republican Party, bereft of constructive ideas throughout the health care debate, has chosen instead to pretend that "it ain't broke," to falsely represent proposed changes, and to stir fear and misgivings about them. The kind of tumult we are now seeing is only the next step in that continuum. Unfortunately it's a destructive continuum. As anti-health-care Republican activists and their followers insist on their "democratic right" to prevent democratic debate, resort to calling their Congressmen Nazis and drawing Hitler moustaches on Obama posters, it is apparently lost on them that the shout-down tactic they are using was exactly the way Hitler began his rise to power.
And equally unfortunately, as Gail Collins points out in the same issue of the NY Times, it seems to be working to a degree. If Democratic legislators cancel town meetings, hide behind an answering machine, or resort to taking only preapproved questions, they're allowing the little guy with the brush moustache to win the day.
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