Are "Ordinary Americans" Really This Stupid?

I love democracy. I love it as much or more than the next guy – especially when the next guy is a whacked out teabagger who has been whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity. As our legislators wade into the festering cesspool that is the health care debate, the right-wing talking heads have encouraged their devotees – so called, “ordinary Americans” - to assault every town hall meeting with a barrage of half truths and irrational frothing about everything from assisted suicide to Obama’s Muslim Kenyan origins. In an attempt to protect our Democracy from the dangerous Socialists who want to institute horrible Nazi reforms like giving everyone the ability to see a doctor, these thinly-veiled lynch mobs have disrupted town hall meetings all over the US, and prevented any realistic debate about the issue. The fact that just out-yelling your opponents is completely counter to the ideals of our Democracy apparently hasn’t occurred to them yet, but even if it did, they certainly wouldn’t let a little detail like that deter them from their appointed mission.

In fact, some of them are taking that mission so seriously that they’re prepared to take the next illogical step. Numerous Democratic lawmakers have reported receiving threats by phone, email, and in person. Just as you’d expect from the ignorant “guns and god” demographic, these threats involve promises of violence and death for legislators who support the health care bill. It’s only a matter of time before some lunatic hopped up on huge doses of Glenn Beck and Pabst Blue Ribbon actually demonstrates his interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and drops the hammer on a Democrat. Of course, Beck and the rest will abhor the violence, even though they are actively fomenting it with fear mongering and disinformation. According to them, the government is going to tell us all which pills to take, force us all to stand in line for hours in pools of your own blood, and euthanize grandma when she gets too expensive to care for.

Folks, I’ve looked the bill over – and notice I said, “looked it over,” because the PDF is over 1000 pages long. When someone says they’ve read the bill, please feel free to call shenanigans because they’re full of crap. At any rate, I’ve looked it over, and from what I can tell they really aren’t going to bureaucratize us into death camps, no matter how many times those wankers on Fox News say so.

The truth is, the majority of Americans have nothing to lose in this battle. The number of uninsured and underinsured is always a subject of debate, but the experts all agree that those numbers are rising steadily every year. The Census Bureau reports that the families hit hardest are those with incomes between $25,000 and $75,000 a year – which is the bulk of “ordinary Americans.” Hand in hand with the rising uninsured number is a decrease in employer coverage, which also hits the 25 to 75k crowd the hardest. So tell me again why these “ordinary Americans” are protesting a bill that will help them the most?

It comes down to this – they have been lied to. Worse yet, many of them lack the cognitive skills to know a lie from the truth. That's right - I'm outright calling them stupid. Given that they are stupid, those who would lie to them to further their own political ends are despicable, but those who would do so for something so base as ratings deserve to be placed in the very same dystopian healthcare systems they predict. When Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are bleeding out while standing in line for government health care, THEN I might support euthanasia.