A Frightening Disconnect

I'm sure by now you've seen the videos of raucus Tea Party protests at town-hall meetings and heard the Democrats response to them - they're inauthentic, they're rent-a-mobs, they're Nazis. Since our buddies over at our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings are among the Tea Partiers, we know better. They've been inside the protests and the know who's coming to them and how they've been organized. Our Ambassador to the Mainstream Media, Peggy Noonan, has a great column on the disconnect between reality and the Democratic Party's view of the protestors today. Here's a tidbit.

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion.

That's the characterization and here's the reality.

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis.

Ironically, one of the left's leading intellectuals, Paul "I've got a Nobel Prize and you don't, you meaningless little droid" Krugman has what might be the ultimate response to the Tea Party protests in his column today. Calling people Nazis in America is one thing. Calling someone a Nazi in Germany is much more serious. Krugman crosses the Rubicon and does the equivalent American act. He calls the Tea Party protestors racists.

But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement ...

Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

Until I had read Peggy's column, I hadn't seen the bigger picture. That is, the passion of the protestors is not just being ignored, it's being attributed to evil intent and evil motivations. A line is being crossed by the government health care supporters, one that is sure to escalate the rage. You can call me a Nazi all day long and it doesn't bother me. I think it's funny and I can respond by talking in a fake German accent, goose-stepping around the room, doing the fascist salute with a toothbrush held under my nose and shouting lines from WW II movies. I find it hilarious. If you call me a racist, it's another thing altogether. It makes me very, very angry.

I don't get any sense at all from the elected officials and political operatives pushing this bill that they realize what they're doing or who they're dealing with and that is a bit frightening. Imagine how this AARP meeting would have gone had the snotty young chick hadn't just dismissed the old geezers and walked away, but instead called them racists.

Gasoline, meet lit match.