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Lies and the idiots who believe them: an examination of the war against health care reform
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I didn't think this picture needed any writing on it
About two months ago I went out to lunch at a little Irish restaurant I frequent near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, I believe it's called McDonalds. On my way back, my gaze was taken by a picture of our President, Barack Obama, with an unmistakable mustache drawn onto his face to make him look like Nazi leader Adolph Hitler. The caption beneath the picture - in all caps, of course - read "IS THIS YOUR PRESEIDENT?"
Insatiable curiosity being a personality fault I've been so far unable to shake, I went over to the table on which the picture was fastened and inquired exactly what it was that made Obama like Hitler.
It was explained to me, in very small words, that Obama was like Hitler because he had a secret plan to kill off the elderly in order to fund his extremist mission - healthcare. This, I was told, was what the Nazis had done to fund their war effort. Ignoring the inherently quizzical nature of killing the elderly to fund healthcare and the fact that killing the elderly didn't actually fund anything the Nazis were doing, I was perplexed.
Mind you, this was two months ago, before the current healthcare bill drafted by the House and passed by the Senate subcommittee was even known. This was before the US soldier made the declaration that our President was not a US citizen and therefore did not have the authority to send him to war and the whole country (or at least a third of it) lost its mind.
As I looked in disbelief at the simpletons who were insisting that I believe them, they handed me a brochure for the illustrious Lyndon LaRouche.
LaRouche, for those of you who don't know, is a crazy person. He is a crazy person who is an actual communist, not just someone people say is a communist to discredit him, who went to jail for six years for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and for tax violations. He leads a fairly sizeable fringe movement and is director and contributing editor of the Executive Intelligence Review News Service. If you ever want a laugh, read it sometime.
Fast forward to last week. All of a sudden town halls are being flooded by loud, angry simpletons who, led by Sarah "Paris" Palin, who henceforth shall be referred to as Queen of the Simpletons or simply Queen Sarah, are disrupting public meetings, accosting government officials and literally brawling in the streets.
What the hell is wrong with you people?
I mean that question in the sincerest form of inquisitory curiosity; what the hell is wrong with you people?
This movement is like the hippies, except instead of protesting war, death and greed in the name of love, peace and harmony, these people are protesting healthcare in the name of greed. Because apparently not enough people were onboard conservative think tanks have somehow manufactured the belief that Obama is creating euthanasia death panels. Here's the scariest part - all the crazies are now aligned under a defining craziness umbrella.
This is where I go back to LaRouche. LaRouche is a communist, you know, that thing that people have been calling Obama. LaRouche and his movement - admittedly not exactly denotative communism, but a hybrid of Trotkyism, Marxism and LaRouche's own special blend of crazy - are spouting the exact same craziness as Queen Sarah and her movement. Just think about the implications of that for a second. You have the grumblings of a left-field lunatic, one Lyndon LaRouche, now aligned with a former Republican governor and vice presidential candidate.
That's not even the saddest part. The saddest part of this whole mess is that people are protesting parts of a bill that do not exist, that they could easily read for themselves.
The bill is online, it's in this article, I have posted it before. It's available all over the Internet. It's available by request through the mail. All anyone has to do to see that this whole mess about "death panels" and forced euthanasia is absurd is read the bill, and not even the whole bill. The Republicans have pointed to the part of the bill (section 1233) that supposedly includes the provisions about "death panels" and it obviously says nothing of the sort.
This information is readily available, but you people would rather go grab your torches and pitchforks and go about disrupting town hall meetings at the beckoning of the radicals on Fox News, in the pharmaceutical industry and in Alaska than actually sit down and read the thing. That is just sad and there's no other word to describe it.
I don't particularly like hippies, but at least they knew what they were protesting. At least they had a cause that, when generations look back on their movement, will be clear, cogent and one worth fighting. These people are waging a war on behalf of misinformation, multibillion-dollar corporations and marginally-masked racism.
I completely support the right of people to disagree with the proposed health care legislation currently before the House. Dissent and democratic debate are what make this country great. And to be honest, I don't think it's a very good bill and I've said so. What I can't stand for, and what we as a nation shouldn't stand for, is this costic display of ignorance that is being so flippantly -- and loudly -- displayed.
In closing, I would just like to make a few points
1. This is not Obama's plan. Obama didn't write it, he didn't sponsor it, he didn't co-write it or co-sponsor it. Unlike the stimulus plan, he hasn't even come out and endorsed it.
2. Barack Obama is an American citizen. I just needed to say that.
3. I'm going to paraphrase Jay Bulworth here, If you people don't put down the malt liquor and protest signs and get behind someone other than a moose-hunting lunatic who doesn't even have a job, you're never going to get rid of someone like Obama.
4. A message to everyone going to town halls to make a spectacle of themselves by shouting, shoving or screeching: you're embarrassing yourself, you're embarrassing your party and you're embarrassing our country. When tax-day tea partiers came out to demonstrate peacefully against wasteful spending I applauded. But this? This is just stupid, infantile and indefensible and it needs to stop.
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