Lunatic Fringe

In the early 1980's Tom Cochrane, the Canadian singer/songwriter wrote "Lunatic Fringe" in which he penned lyrics I believe to be relevant today:

Lunatic Fringe In the twilight's last gleaming This is open season But you won't get too far Cause you gotta blame someone For your own confusion We're on guard this time Against your final solution

If there were ever a situation perfectly tailored for a South Park episode it would surely be the spectacle unraveling on our television sets each night in what will surely be remembered as the Summer When Old White Men Went Postal Over Their Right to Not Face End of Life Decisions. It is a fight to the death over "death panels". It is a version of you will have to pry my medical card from my cold dead hands. It is Death with Indignity. Okay, you get the idea.

Somehow, the venerable institution of town hall meetings has horrifically morphed into little more than senior extreme games, with enraged, belt-busting, bespectacled, graying, health care revolutionaries preparing to storm the barricades to reclaim capitalism from the socialists who have taken power. The participants in this geriatric version of a bar room brawl are intoxicated with rage fueled by hatred and fear, stocked with daily doses of venom dispensed by dreadful doctors of doom who pose as media pundits: Dr. Limbaugh, Dr. Beck, Dr. Coulter, an entire faculty at Fox University Hospital.

As a white male staring down the barrel of sixty, my first inclination is to chuckle and dismiss the rapid disintegration of civility led by the gray brigades as a product of senility combined with entirely too much free time. But such flippant dismissal ignores the deep underlying emotions that have been ignited here. As we have seen far too often over the past decade, fear is both an indictment and an incitement. It is an indictment of our resistance to accept change and an incitement to overreact to change.

Fear breeds hatred, hatred breeds irrationality, and irrationality breeds violence. Taken in this context what might at first appear irritatingly amusing quickly turns into sober reflection.
Put simply, this is no laughing matter, particularly if you are one of the 46 million Americans with no health insurance, one of the 14,000 who lose their health insurance each day, or one of the 670,000 children in California who are projected to lose health coverage in the next year due to state budget cuts. It is a disgrace and those fomenting and participating in the current uproar are disgraceful.

I have neither opposition to nor a problem with those who wish to rationally question or disagree with the direction of health care reforms being considered by the Administration and Congress. This is the nature and the beauty of democratic government and a free society. And to those who profess to be true patriots, town hall meetings are designed to encourage rational discourse and discussion of issues, and should be utilized as the forums upon which to make their voices heard. It appears, however, that the ostensible goal of the opposition is to disrupt not to discuss, leading one to seriously question the true intention of the health care reform countermovement.

The subtext of the drama unfolding on the town hall stage is not an argument between liberals and conservatives but rather a tug-of-war over what and who represents conservatism. Currently, it appears as though the forces espousing what most consider to be fringe ideas bordering on lunacy are holding sway in this battle. The fringe elements, carefully nurtured by fear, hatred, mistrust, and fitful bouts of fantasy are positioning the conservative opposition into a death spiral, a particularly apt metaphor given the current discussion. The conservative opposition today is now being maneuvered into a position where they can only be responsible for one of two options: either paralysis or irrelevance.

And if they are successful in paralyzing the system in a way that denies the health care reform supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people, then they will become irrelevant. Adhering to the lunatic fringe prescriptions will most certainly take them straight to irrelevance, bypassing paralysis altogether.

But what exactly is driving the fear that so prominently guides the counter-reform movement? Is it a fear of universal access, a fear of cost containment, a fear of true reform? I doubt it. My guess is what is truly motivating this movement is a combination of greed, racism, and paranoia, the three primary ingredients of the Kool-Aid they have ingested.

What is genuinely guiding this movement is a campaign designed to disrupt and derail a popularly elected and still popular President (who just happens to be an African-American) with an agenda that enjoys widespread support. These "patriots" are fearful of the reality of an ever-changing composition of our society, reject the reality that government plays a large and constructive role in both the economy and the health care system already, and have no realistic conception of the fact that there are better models of health care already in operation in many places around the globe.

Let's hope that the current lunacy that has captured this debate will streak across the sky like a comet and burn itself out quickly, and that upon sober reflection cooler heads will prevail among the conservative opposition so that meaningful progress can be made on the health care front. For those who choose irrelevancy, so be it, good riddance, and mercifully you will pay a steep price indeed. For those who wish to paralyze the system into inaction, one can only hope you will render yourselves irrelevant sooner rather than later.

The final verse of the song concludes:

Lunatic Fringe We all know you're out there Can you feel the resistance Can you feel the thunder

Follow Lance Simmens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lancesimmens

Comments

[Scrunch]

Good article, Lance. Not much feedback.

I'm very psychology oriented - what's going on in people's heads. This health care debacle is a doozy. One innocuous little provision providing payment for end-of-life counseling being contorted into Death Panels, euthanasia, kill Grandma, even Nazi Germany and eugenics (Glen Beck), is so far beyond rationality that it's hard to comprehend that even us not-so-rational human beings could think this way.

So, your article gave me some thoughts on the matter, but I'm far from being not-totally-befuddled at what the human mind is capable of.

[Tsinky]

"South Park" is precisely the correct analogy.

Take the TV cameras out of these town hall meetings and see what happens.

[gageeandbaba]

we need to STOP CRYING and MAKE OUR OWN CASE FORCEFULLY WITH FACTS instead of only pointing out the radical right wing's problems. we can do both, GET A DAMN SPINE

[they-r-us]

WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE WHEN WHEN WALL ST. ET AL BANKRUPTED THE COUNTRY???? The energy spent on this issue should have gone into demanding answers from a plethora of our financial giants, CEO's, "leaders" and others in colllusion in the largest money heist in history that literally stole from the poor and gave to the rich. (Reminds me of the fall of the Roman Empire)

Anyone involved in the medical field is well aware of the much needed counseling that takes the guesswork out of a difficult family decision when loved ones are ill. It makes sense to take care of things ahead of time before a loved one falls ill. That's all it is. Common sense. For those who want to bury their head in the sand and put the blinders on not wanting to think about life or death choices, get a clue. Your anger is misdirected. Please inform yourselves. The herd mentality is certainly alive and well with ignorance.

[Openeyes]

I don't understand how you think they are irrelevant if they achieve paralysis - that would be a great victory for them and a huge loss for the country. How can that be irrelevant?

So many Dems seem to think that because the Republican positions look stupid or ill-informed that the party will simply evaporate. There are plenty of conservatives out there who would love to see the President completely stonewalled for his entire term. That doesn't make them irrelevant and they aren't going anywhere. The fact that the Republican party continues to lose identify overall is very misleading. They aren't losing members in the Congress, at least not until there's another election, so they aren't irrelevant there either.

Wake up! Labelling them the lunatic fringe doesn't get rid of them or make them irrelevant. Even if they are the fringe - what does that matter if they can stop health care reform and other important initiatives in their tracks? You dismiss them at your peril.

[LewDan]

They think paralysis will catapult them back into power because if Dems fail everyone will turn Repub. In a way its not unreasonable, we've a history of punishing one party by voting the other whether we actually LIKE the other or not.

But their "plan" could only work if Dems are blamed for the failure, not Repubs. They'll be spinning like mad but we're not THAT stupid. If there's paralysis, EVERYONE knows who caused it.

And after 2010 they'll no longer be in a position to obstruct, hence irrelevance. If they stop reform now do you really think we're going to let it STAY stopped? WE get the final vote.

[pdog]

Read it again.

For those who wish to paralyze the system into inaction, one can only hope you will render yourselves irrelevant sooner rather than later.

[AxelDC]

I don't understand why anyone close to retirement age or older cares about health care reform. If you are old, you are on Medicare. You don't see old people trying to end Medicare, and yet what they are protesting is trying to bring Medicare to working-age people.

I have to hand it to Republicans. They have managed to convince people dependent on Medicare and Social Security that the Federal government is evil and only socialists and gays want government benefits.

[bigpigdaddy]

I tried to visualize what one of these numpties would look like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSgrzdbfHuk

[SensibleAmerican]

This fairly widespread MISconception amongst liberals is well summarized in the following lines in your post Lance: "The conservative opposition today is now being maneuvered into a position where they can only be responsible for one of two options: either paralysis or irrelevance"

I have read about similar misgivings when Carter was pulverized as weak and indecisive after the Iran hostage fiasco! So, one of the most visionairy Presidents like Carter has been reduced to an icon of the "fumbling and weak". Since FDR Bill Clinton has been the ONLY 2-term Dem President and now Obama is being labeled as Carter. Wonder why? because the same "lunatic fringe" finds its messages percolating into mainstream through right wing talk radio nuts, FOX "news" and the likes of Lou Dobbs. Today an out-of-office Sarah Palin's "death panel" insanity is gaining more traction than a sitting President's message and a President whose IQ is ostensibly 3-4 times than the ex-Governor-who-also-ran-for-VP! Bill Oh-Lielie's rants indirectly caused the murder of an "abortion Doctor", Dobbs pulled the leprosy-illegal immigrants' connection out of his gassy behind and touted it on CNN many times and ofcourse one can go on and on with such examples

Liberals continue to sit in their ivory towers and continue to believe that the "pen is indded mightier than the sword" while the right wing nuts are walking around and brandishing actual swords as it were ...

[joeythetrollslayer]

You guys don't get it, do you. These town hall mobs are simply another Republican tool to leverage the debate. This manufactured anger comes from people who are paid to be so, like actors, and from true nutcases. They don't represent the Republican voice, and will likely go away until they are needed again. They were used in the 2000 election, and likely again in other matters.

[sixyfivepercentwater]

Obama's mistake with this crowd is in not giving them a common enemy. Bush knew the needs of this segment of the populace. He fed them nightly with their necessary diet of fear of the brown man. Either the illegal immigrant from the south, taking their jobs and health care, or the muslim from the east, jealous of their freedoms.

Many people simply cannot live without a daily dose of fear.

[BobLablah]

Thank you for this post. I am so tired of people only pointing out the lunatic fringe of the Democratic party. I know the 9/11 and Diebold conspiracy nuts were the worst but it's nice to see someone pointing out that there's a few nuts on the right too.

[pdog]

a few? count them again I think you missed a few million