Recess Event on Healthcare

[mendeleev 68]

Today I went to an event held by a local Representative of Congress in my city on health care held at a grocery store. There were lots of Obama supporters there and not as many, but quite a few very vocal, even belligerent, people opposed on reform. It was a boisterous assembly that at times, verged on violence. I saw a person wearing a Patients First shirt take a swing attempting to slug an elderly man who was talking about the benefits of the President's initiative. This individual was restrained by others in the crowd. He was not arrested -- there weren't any cops right there although I did see a half-dozen or so cops on the periphery of the assembly. The elderly gentlemen, whose arguments I could hear, wasn't saying anything that justified or asked for the attempted assault. A while later, I saw another person also wearing a Patients First shirt take a swing at someone else. Those were the only two violent incidents I saw at this assembly.

Now maybe these two individuals are just bad apples. Maybe the provocations toward violence I saw were isolated incidents. But I'm aware that Congressmen elsewhere in the country have called off their public meetings because of fears of violence. Those fears may have some sound justification.

I've been to plenty of political gatherings over the years. Those organized by people on the left often had monitors, trained by the sponsoring organization, whose job was to circulate in the crowd and work to keep things nonviolent. In those events I attended in the past, they were successful. In one of the incidents today, I saw a person with an Obama cap on step in and de-escalate the situation effectively. It looked to me as though this person had been through it before and been trained in keeping demonstrations nonviolent. If opponents of reform want to keep a civil discourse going, it would behoove them to provide some of their activists with similar training and then use them to keep their people civil and nonviolent.

Or maybe the accusations of Brown Shirt tendencies have justification.

Edited August 8, 2009 by novotul

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

They're called "Rethugs" for a reason.

Here's a good letter written to Andrew Sullivan by a reader of his. It accurately describes who these animals are:

Your obvious shock and dismay at the sheer angry ignorance of the health care teabaggers reiterates my largest problem with your rosy immigrant's view of America. You have often underestimated just how poisonously dangerous the American populist right is.

I don't blame you. You came to America after the rise of Reagan. Most of your life in America, you have lived under different Republican presidents who placated these folks with platitudes and campaign rhetoric. The one period when the populist right didn't feel they had a fellow traveler in charge was when Bill Clinton was elected (thanks to the reactionaries splitting their votes). You remember, no doubt, the level of crazy Clinton had to defuse and dodge, and this was a man who had the advantage of being a Southern bubba who has dealt which such people all his life.

For most of your time in America, this insanity has been muted by the success of conservative politics. Since you live in Washington, you probably saw daily the face of the successful conservative political establishment that milked the populist right, and by milking them kept their bitterness at a manageable level. That safety valve was stuffed up by George Bush's failed presidency.

So now, these people are facing their worst fears; actual change.

...

A political and demographic re-alignment is happening before their eyes, and they are reaching back into their old bag of tricks of intimidation, violence, and apocalyptic fearmongering. You are British, Andrew. You love this country, and we love you for it. But you didn't grow up around these folks, and you don't realize what a permanent and potent part of the American political landscape they are.

They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.

These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town's borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.

I'm always optimistic about America. We're a naturally rich and beautiful place. Every generation we renew ourselves with a watering of immigrants committed to the American dream, immigrants like you. But please, Andrew, do not for a second underestimate the price in blood and tears we've always paid here for progress.

I voted for Obama with my fingers crossed, because I knew that as the populist right lost power, they would become more extreme, more concentrated, and more violent. As to dismissing them as only a quarter or so of America, please remember that it only took a quarter or so of Americans to actively support the Confederacy.

Source: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...e-bursting.html

[mendeleev 68]

There was other interesting moments at this assembly. A young man (in his thirties probably, which I realize says something about me ) was arguing for Obama's plan with a pauchy, shabbily dressed 50-something man who was accusing the young guy of being a socialist. The young fellow says, you don't know me, don't call me a socialist. When the older guy persisted, the retort was, "Look buddy, I work for a private equity firm. How can you call me a socialist?" And the older guy said, what's a private equity firm and persisted in his accusations of socialism. It was pretty funny, in a sick sort of way.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

There was other interesting moments at this assembly. A young man (in his thirties probably, which I realize says something about me ) was arguing for Obama's plan with a pauchy, shabbily dressed 50-something man who was accusing the young guy of being a socialist. The young fellow says, you don't know me, don't call me a socialist. When the older guy persisted, the retort was, "Look buddy, I work for a private equity firm. How can you call me a socialist?" And the older guy said, what's a private equity firm and persisted in his accusations of socialism. It was pretty funny, in a sick sort of way.

Funny, but not surprising

By the way, you may wish to post your story as a diary on dailykos.com.