Community Organizing

[kandrathe]

I'm sure it all makes sense in your head, so care to sum it all up, because it all seems like nonsense to me, no offense.

Ok.

First, lots of conservative people against the health care bill have been adopting the plays from the Alinsky handbook "rules for radicals", and the democrats are up in arms about it. That is what I meant by goose and gander. For decades, anti-war, environmental, anti-fur, anti-G8 progressives have been "community organizing", so it is ironic that the "Organizer in Chief" is being foiled by a bunch of tea party neo-patriots chanting "Tyranny" and running around with "Don't tread on me" flags. Or, in other words, community organizing. The white house responds by asking US citizens to inform on each other with a tip line, and they say it is merely an innocent way to find out how people are misinformed. Imagine if Bush had set up a tip line for people to send in the names of web sites that were against the Patriot Act?

Then you have democrats Pelosi, Durbin and others running around calling the protesters Nazi's because they spotted a sign implying Obama might be one. And the Republicans are calling the Acorn and SEIU muscle "brown shirts" for intimidating the "organized anti Obama HC protesters". I've heard of both sides now claiming that they are getting death threats, and no one is actually talking about what is in the thousand pages of the health care bill. This is the genesis of my comment on brown shirts, suggesting that both sides are thumping heads and not trying to listen to what the other people are saying. This is not how we engage in debate in America, and if we continue this way, it will escalate into outright violent confrontation.

Obama continues to recite the mantra "No one will lose their private health care", while Krugman, Pelosi, Barney Frank, and other democrats are on record assuring their constituents that this bill will lead to a single payer system. In fact, there is language in the bill that I interpret to mean that once you are on the public option (e.g. you lose your job and can't afford the COBRA option), then you can never leave it. It's a one way trap door that will slowly squeeze private health insurance out of business. And, then they claim the evil insurance companies and big corporations are organizing people which they denigrate as "Astroturf" not grass roots. How more damn insulting can they get?

The polar bear thing really was out of place, but I just saw the tear jerking ad and couldn't take it anymore. Polar bears are more sexy than peeper frogs, even though its reptiles and amphibians that are dying off in droves.

Anyway, what sews them all together is the strategy of propaganda. I wasn't much of a believer in Hegelian dialectics used to keep the people stewing and stupid, but this health care debate is giving me cause to wonder. The democrats want to shove as many bills through congress as they can before the people can rise up in opposition. They are seeking to keep everyone confused and off balance, even to the point where the final markups of the bills as they come out of committee are voted on without the time or desire for them to even be read or understood. What I'm seeing is the pinnacle of demagoguery and deception by both the democrats and the republicans. I think the 2010 elections are going to be interesting.