It's unfair to cast every astroturfer as a mere pawn of the insurance industry. There are legitimate concerns over a government-run health care program. However, the cream ("Obama wants to kill Trig Palin!"..."Nancy Pelosi will euthanize my grandma instead of treating her gout!") rises to the top. There's so much god damn noise in this debate that I've tuned it all out.
Republicans and their corporate enablers know well how to churn up the fury in a crowd. But little does the crowd know that the program we will end up with will not be universal, nor single payer, nor even contain a public option. We'll get some Democratic corporate enabler-approved shit packaged in a shiny Obama logo embossed box with a grinning Reid and Pelosi standing by while Chairman Mao gives his Herbie John Hancock to the bill. They will declare Mission Accomplished and then move along. These are Democrats, remember?
Robert Kelly, a commenter at Crispin's place, captures my mood:
The thing
I've taken from this is witnessing the unbelievable incompetence of the
Democratic Party. Listening to the rhetoric from the Right, I'm
expected to believe that liberals are ushering in an age of
commie-fascism. Now, one day in 2003 millions of people, globally,
protested the Iraq War. Hundreds of thousands protested in New York
City alone. I wasn't likely to join them, but fat lot of good they did.
Listening to the Liberal Left, a hundred or a thousand people show up
at a Town Hall meeting and I'm expected to believe *this* is the next
coming of fascism. And these crowds, mobs, whatever, are still boring
and stupid; bullying, selfish and utterly reactionary. Is it really
that difficult to send the Democrats into a panic? I'm shocked that the
Trotskyist cults, neo-hippies and anarcho-communists haven't cooked Tim
Kaine in a pot for lunch and eaten him.
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