If you made it up, it would seem cartoonish—angry people sallying forth firm in the belief that their advanced age means they’re about to be euthanized, folks convinced that reform of healthcare is the same thing as the Holocaust. Yet that’s what’s happening around the country. The Holocaust statement is not hyperbole—it came from a group called Patients First, whose representative said, “Adolf Hitler issued six million end of life orders—he called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we’re going to call ours.”
Other insidious claims abound. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has, to no one’s surprise, joined the fray, talking about the evil of a system in which the elderly and her Down Syndrome baby would be given life or death by an Obama administration “death panel.” (Which would indeed be evil, were it real.)
The results of anger and misinformation like that have turned politics into performance art during the August congressional recess. In New York, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) found himself, at a press conference, accosted by a riled-up man whose line could not have been better scripted had it come from Edward Albee: “Just because I don’t have sophisticated language, I can recognize a liar when I see one.”
That particularly GOP character, the self-proclaimed noble dummkopf, often is the foot soldier for causes far larger than he or she is willing to believe. The remarkable depth of ignorance on display was revealed at another recess townhall meeting in which South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis faced a protester who said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Not even Inglis—a Republican—could convince the man that Medicare was a government program.
While the noble dummkopf provides a slab of comic relief, things aren’t promising to remain amusing. That’s because this piece of artifice, an off-Broadway production ginned up by many a right wing lobbying group and the healthcare industry itself, is not artifice to its cast of enraged players. They seem to experience no twinges of irony when they say, as one Syracuse, New York agitator recently did to a questioner who supported healthcare reform, “Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!” They do not seem to understand that shutting down a debate is not the same thing as engaging in debate. It is, in fact, profoundly undemocratic. The protesters deserve to be heard, but they don’t seem to understand that their opponents deserve the same in a democracy.
This theatrical production is worth watching in the usual sense—it’s plenty dramatic, if dripping with wild-eyed energy—but it’s also worth watching in the sense of remaining aware of its danger. Those who possess terrible misinformation, who believe that their America is lost forever, are crossing lines that should not be crossed.
One Democratic congressman was hung in effigy; The Hill recently reported: “The Secret Service may investigate a fax sent to a Democratic lawmaker that depicts President Barack Obama as the Joker and warns of ‘death to all Marxists.'” Bad enough. But in St. Louis and Tampa, physical fights broke out that have both sides pointing fingers. In Douglas, Ariz. someone dropped a gun at a meeting with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, says the Arizona Daily Star. How far will things go before reason returns to its precarious perch?
The Valley’s own Rachel Maddow recently interviewed Frank Schaeffer about the “teabaggers” and townhall protesters. He, like yours truly, grew up in the evangelical world, and he and his father helped start what we know as the Religious Right. He’s since abandoned that cause. I believe him when he explains why this is happening now—it rings true with my own past experience.
Schaeffer recently wrote: “The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama’s election has driven them over the edge. … Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks for building ‘amateur-looking’ websites to promote far right interests of [former Rep. Dick] Armey. FreedomWorks represents a top-down, corporate-friendly approach that’s been the norm for conservative organizations for years. How do I know this is the norm? Because I used to have strategy meetings with the late Jack Kemp and Dick Army [sic] and the rest of the Republican gang … I know this script. I helped write it. … ‘Protesters’ surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) and forced police officers to have to escort him to his car for safety. We used to do the same to Dr. Tiller… until someone killed him.”
Schaeffer does not believe we’re necessarily on the verge of widespread violent conflict in America, but it seems clear that the escalating pitch of townhall protests does not point to a place any of us should want to go—in the end, this is aw-shucks theater of the very worst kind.