By now many of you have probably heard about the controversy over health care reform. We've been told by such illustrious public figures like former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin that it will result in "death panels" that force people to prove their worth to society to a shadowy group of government bureaucrats. Not only is this a flat out lie, it's also really stupid to believe that the government would try to forcibly euthanize portions of its population. If it was really going to do that, you wouldn't be hearing about it.
But perhaps the worst aspect of all of this are the health care reform town hall meetings that members of Congress are holding in their districts. Completely ignorant people show up to these meetings and attempt to derail debate by shouting stupid slogans like, "Just say no!" when people try to speak. Many proponents of this argue that they are just expressing their freedom of speech. Though true, they are also disrupting everyone else's right to the same thing.
Town hall meetings are an American tradition dating back to the early days of the country. It's basically how democracy works: people express their opinions, others listen even if they have a differing viewpoint. People come to a consensus based on a reasoned debate. You'd think that this tradition would be one of the values that "everyday, concerned Americans" who show up to town halls would observe, but surprisingly it isn't. This is because these people aren't simply, "everyday, concerned Americans." They are disgruntled, mostly old and white, and mostly Republican people who are being coordinated by lobbying groups and the Republican party.
That's right. These are engineered protests. Enter "FreedomWorks," a group funded by industry and run by Dick Armey. They are at the forefront of these protests, along with corporate shill groups "Patients United" and "Conservatives for Patient Rights" are all willing participants in this. Though they like to portray their groups as "people like us," to quote Rachel Maddow, they are really fronts for Washington, D.C. based industry lobbying groups and elements of the Republican party. How did this happen?
Well, let's take a ride in the wayback machine to that far away time of the 2008 election campaign. Candidate Barack Obama utilized grassroots campaigning in order to reach the base of support that he depended on. Many of these groups saw Obama as the right man for the job, so they organized and spread the message. Obama's team capitalized on these groups and set up a website to help coordinate their efforts to reach more people.
Republicans and pro-status quo people, distraught over their loss in the last election, have been frantically searching for the reason why a candidate who came out of nowhere captured the Presidency. They saw this grassroots style campaigning as a weapon that could be turned on Obama to benefit them. "I know," one of them must have thought, "why don't we find a mass of people who don't want things to change?" "But," another one might have chimed in, "people actually seem to want a change in the health care system! Early polls are showing over 70% approval about the President's idea!" The first one might have quickly responded, "Well, why don't we just make up lies about his plan and mislead the drooling masses who only listen to Fox News and conservative radio!" And thus the strategy was born!
Now we have a multitude of lies being spread by right-wing commentators on talk radio and Fox News. People hear that Obama wants to kill grandma. They hear that government bureaucrats will get behind you and your doctor. They hear that the government will ration care meaning grandma can't get her hip replacement, or that they can't get that triple bypass needed from a lifetime of poor diet. They hear cries and accusations of "Socialism" and "Fascism" and comparisons of Obama to Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party (Hey, socialism was in their name right?). And they get mad, very mad! Who wouldn't? Why should we let that damn socialist prevent me from my health care! We can't let them kill grandma! But the sad fact of all of this is that these are all complete falsehoods.
Now with an army of angry conservatives at their beck and call, the aforementioned "astroturf" groups spread the message that all true Americans need to come to these town halls and show their congressman that they don't want Obama's Hitlercare! According to TalkingPointsMemo, emails containing the disruptive strategy were sent out to conservative mailing lists like the Tea Party protesters (we all remember those, don't we?), and even Fox News jumped into the fray by providing the locations of all the town hall meetings -- only for Democratic congressmen though. Like the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, they have a plan.
Their plan is to utilize tactics such as, to quote TPM, "'pack the hall... spread out' to make their numbers seem more significant, and to 'rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation...to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early.... to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda...stand up and shout and sit right back down.'" Talking points were even distributed so that the angry protesters would have something to yell about. Of course, they were all deliberately misleading.
With their devious plan set, people showed up in droves to town halls all across the country. Whether or not they had real concerns, they parroted what they heard on Fox News and from Rush Limbaugh as if it were fact, disrupting the debate and allowing few people to discuss the real issues at hand. You can find many examples of this on YouTube. Conservative mouthpieces defend these practices as "just ordinary citizens using their right to free speech." That is an outright lie being fed to us as if it were the truth.
This just goes to show you what is wrong with our country today. Corporate interests, along with the Republican party are trying to subvert the process of democracy in order to promote their own gain. The insurance industry doesn't want to lose its profits, and the Republicans just want to see President Obama fail. It's never about the good of the country. It's almost as if they don't really care about the welfare of the people they are elected to serve.
Now instead of having a reasoned debate about the issues, we have a few loudmouthed people being utilized as shocktroops by the fake grassroots organizations. The sad part is that they don't even realize they're being manipulated to serve the interests of those who don't want any change because they already make bank from the status quo. It's very scary; the absolute ignorance of some people. They do no research of their own to verify if what they are told is true. They simply listen to the right wing idea machine that plays on their fears and makes them outraged over absolute and deliberate lies.
Hopefully we can look forward to a time when people will wise up and see the groups that mislead them for what they are: selfish, greedy interests that manipulate them for their own gain. For too long fear tactics have been used to scare people into voting against their own interests.
It's up to President Obama and the Democrats to do their best to combat these lies. For their part, the White House has set up a website debunking some of the common myths. This came about after the White House asked people to email them suspicious claims about the President's health care plan. The conservative media immediately branded this an absolute breach of freedom of speech, and likening it to Big Brother. These are the same people who didn't say anything when the President strong armed his Patriot Act through Congress, which is more like Big Brother than anything else because of its provisions for warantless wiretapping on American citizens. But oh no, if you spoke out against Bush and his plans you were "anti-American." The hypocrisy of a lot of these commentators is astounding. It really shows you the depths they will go to make sure we are all sufficiently afraid.
I hope people will visit the White House's website and read the truth about what they are being told, so we can actually look forward to a bill that will solve the problems of the health care system instead of promoting the status quo.
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