Americans Choose to Fear and Hate

Joan and I had been visiting family in New Jersey. Part of the visit was devoted to stuffing ourselves with Jersey Shore hot dogs at Max's and The Windmill; part was just visiting friends and relatives. One set of the latter were devotees of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, normally rational and intelligent people but, insofar as politics is concerned, willing to suspend common sense and adopt the paranoia being offered by GOP operatives.

I was told that President Obama is a socialist and a fascist by people who had never read The Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf; Michelle Obama was "in your face" and "uppity"; Barack Obama wasn't a "real American" and on and on. I was assured that the President had a plan to limit all physicians' income to under $50,000 per year and that all government programs were inefficient, wasteful and fraud-ridden.

Yet the Medicare and VA health care delivery systems work quite well. When we drop a letter in a mail box, we are reasonable certain that it will be delivered to the right person.

For a while I tried to return the conversation to reality but it became apparent that discussion and political discourse are impossible if the parties cannot agree on basic vocabulary. It was as if one of us were speaking in French and the other in Chinese. There is no way to communicate.

When we returned to Tampa another reality had set in.

We have a 23 year old granddaughter who is attending a local Community College, working full time and spending nearly all of her income on rent and gas and insurance on an old car. She has no money left over at the end of the month and lives frugally; she cannot afford health insurance, one of some 50 million Americans in the same position. If she is in an accident or becomes extremely sick, she will be forced to turn to Tampa General Hospital's ER, a major trauma facility. If she gets a "little" ill, she is unable to conveniently visit a physician, will continue working because she needs the income, and probably infect co-workers and patrons of the establishment for which she works. In the first alternative, Hillsborough County, state and federal taxpayers will pick up the substantial bill; in the latter, she might become more ill, meanwhile spreading any germs far and wide.

We have a daughter who had been laid off by a large bank when it merged with another and found itself with a surplus of employees. After obtaining new employment, she had an accident and broke both legs, had surgery and faces a long period of rehabilitation. The extent of her injuries was, in part, due to an inability to have early diagnosis possible through testing, tests that her health insurance company would not approve or cover. Her medical care was rationed by a company which, quite understandably, felt that the test would interfere with their profits. The health care protestors scream and shout about the possible "rationing" of medical services; we have that rationing now but it is performed by organizations that have a vested interest in the rationing.

Back here in Tampa, I had written about the Tea Parties, the Town Hall forums and meetings disrupted by opponents of health care reform. While I believe the leaders of the protestors and shouters are manipulating, heartless, calculating political operatives who give not a whit about health care or the millions of people for whom affordable coverage is just a dream, there is no doubt that many of the people at these meetings, as well as friends of our relatives, are sincere good people.

At least I believed that to be the case.

Now, after listening to and reading about a Town Hall meeting in Red Bank, New Jersey, I am thoroughly disgusted at the people we have become. Marianne Hoynes, an American woman afflicted with two diseases was shouted down by "patriots" who had no compassion, no charity, no feeling for a fellow citizen who pleaded for her elected officials to consider her situation. She was told to stop whining, to buy better insurance and to just be quiet! Similar outbursts have taken place all over the country, rude, loud mouth rabble shouting down the comments of others.

These shouters are not evidence of "grass root" protests, they are simply tools of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries - and they are totally unaware that they are being used. So they shout that the President is the same as Hitler, is a man who wants to destroy America and, above all, he is uppity. While the leaders are cynical operatives looking only for profits or political power in a few years, they are feeding on the racist fears and prejudices of many. The operatives have no regard for the truth, they lie brazenly, feed on the fears and insecurity of their followers and the sheep fall into line.

This is not the America I love, not the America where speech was not prevented where an honest respectful dialogue could be maintained. This is a display of ignorance, bigotry, fear and a refusal to apply common sense. The same crazies who assert with a straight face that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that he attended a school for terrorists under a false name, that he has plans to dress our children in brown shirts and have them spy on their parents, that he wants the government to erase private ownership of everything, that he hates white people, that government employees will decide if Granny should live or die - they will believe anything fed to them by the manipulators. Where are the members of the GOP who believe in fairness, who are not afraid, who respect the electoral system in the United States? Where are the rational conservatives?

We need those conservatives, not the Senators who proclaim that, as they are "negotiating" a health care plan, announce that whatever they agree upon, whatever, they will vote against it!

I feel health care reform is needed in this country. Even more, we need to end the overly partisan cruelty directed at our neighbors, our fellow citizens and those of us who are less fortunate, the poor, the infirm, the children and the elderly. We were once a proud decent compassionate people.

I do not like that which we have become.