Thursday, August 13, 2009

What the....?!?!

I tuned to NPR while driving in the car today, as I often do (satellite radio is a life-saver in no-reception land!). Talk of the Nation was just diving into an extended analysis and conversation about all the wild and crazy behavior at the health care town-hall meetings around the nation. I switched it to the Broadway tunes station abruptly.

I am so....sick of this behavior. Absolutely people have real concerns and grievances when it comes to the topic of health care. But shouting others down? Chanting crap so that no one can talk or hear? Getting physical and even violent to stop events??? What happened to conversation and dialog? What happened to civility and basic decency? I just can't buy the line that they're just expressing their mistrust and anger. If you have real issues and concerns, then you'd be part of the conversation, part of the solution. If you have a larger political agenda and believe in shutting down true partisonship, believe in influencing through fear and appealing to people's worst instincts, and just love being a bully, then you act like the folks have been at these meetings. It's a perversion of what American democracy is supposed to be about.

Ugh. Ok, now that that's out of my system...

1 comment:

LoieJ said...

Some of the network commentators have been researching who is bank rolling this. It turns out that there are old guard political operatives, known in the past to be working for the Republicans, known for past underhanded political ads, who are paying for the websites that are promoting this dissent.