If angry conservatives can shout down health reform, then America is in deeper trouble than we thought.
In case you missed it, Paul Krugman has an insightful and important opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “The Town Hall Mob,” that gets at what is arguably the most disturbing trend in American political life.
Some would argue that the most disturbing trend in our political life is the 
continuing saturation of the electoral process with special interest money. But here, as Krugman points out, we actually have a marriage between vested industry groups with lots of money, and genuinely angry citizens who are now using the health care debate to vent spleen about all sorts of phantoms. Generally, the anger is expressed in charges about how Obama and the Democrats are seizing the country and leading us to fascism, or socialism, depending on the speaker, or the mute, crimson-faced, sign-waver.
Thus, from the wild scenes at district-level, public meetings this past week, what we seem to be witnessing is not just a well-organized assault on health care reform. It also appears to be a chilling escalation of hysterical, open therapy events for conservatives still fuming over the Republican Party’s reversal of fortunes and the ascension of a black family to the White House. Here the even nuttier “birther” conspiracies challenging Obama’s legitimacy to be President are conspicuous and perhaps not a coincidence.
I hope by my criticisms of Obama’s lame response to Wall Street’s devastating piracy and the President’s shameful reluctance to prosecute torturers, I’ve persuaded some of you that I’m not a knee-jerk partisan. But this attack on health care reform is not just loony, it’s dangerous moonshine.
Consider that one of the principal funders of this supposedly grassroots, anti-reform effort is Rick Scott, the disgraced former head of Columbia/HCA, a private hospital chain that pled guilty and paid $1.7 billion in fines for overcharging government health plans. (Scott drew an outraged reaction from CNN anchor Rick Sanchez yesterday when he lamely offered that the company paid the fine after he (Scott) was removed from his position.)
But the real reason these events should frighten you is contained in this scene from a Texas town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Gene Green (D) that Krugman relates in his column: “An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they ‘oppose any form os socialized or government-run health care.’ Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.”
It reminded me of a cartoon I saw a couple days ago where a couple on their way to demonstrate against government involvement in health care are asking a pharmacist to hurry up and give them their government subsidized prescriptions because they’re late for the rally.
I think this is a vivid extension of the utter craziness in American political culture that Thomas Frank brilliantly portrayed in his 2005 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Frank’s organizing question is how lower and middle income conservatives have been enlisted as political foot soldiers and cannon fodder to promote laissez faire policies that generally undermine their own economic interests. Frank’s answer is that there is a weird alchemy in the culture wars where, in exchange for religious totems (Republican opposition to abortion, gay rights, etc.), the good folks of Kansas are willing to accept the agenda of corporate greed heads, even when it conflicts with their own economic self-interests. Again, I think it goes back to this nutty notion Americans have that–despite the immense taxpayer subsidies and perks to banks, agribusiness, and other private groups–we’re all still yodeling cowboys at heart who just want big gov’ment to get out of our ways so we can fend for ourselves with the money we’ll make in Dodge City. Dream on.
What the shouting accomplishes, of course, is that it makes the facts irrelevant. Facts can’t get a hearing when a group of people decide that an orderly public meeting is not going to occur on their watch. Want to read something chilling? Go to Talking Points Memo and read this “Rocking the Town Halls–Best Practices” memo distributed by one of the conservative/populist groups behind this shout-them-out movement.
Part of the absurdity, here, is that there’s nothing in Obama’s political makeup that marks him as a proponent of big-government. If we had a health care system where a basic right to health care was even close to being delivered by private insurers, no one would be happier about it than Obama who, lord knows, faces daunting challenges from so many other directions. But now we have a collection of angry mobs, blocking even the discussion of reforms, with the blood-curdling scream that Obama is taking us down the road to socialism, or worse. This, even when it is Obama’s team that, as much as the Republicans, has thwarted any meaningful consideration of a single-payer system, variations of which work in most other industrialized nations.
Indeed, as Krugman hints at in his column, the energy behind Obama’s reforms may have already been drained by his readiness to compromise with opponents who are heavily backed by private insurers and willing not just to distort facts, but use ideologically charged and even race-coded language to whip up opposition to reforms.
Ultimately, though, it comes back to the rest of us, and what we’re willing to do to protect what’s left of our democracy from people who are demonstrating that, in their misplaced rage, they are proudly unwilling to have a reasoned discussion. If that’s America to them, it can’t be America to the rest of us.
–Tim Connor
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