The Nutters Are Coming to Get You

They've always been here. But the nutters are surfacing in a way and to a degree that is finally catching the agape attention of non-nutters. It is not only the ferocity of their anger that is surprising, but the focus of it: this birth certificate stuff, the death panel business, the tea bags, and the apparently heartfelt belief that the end of America is upon us.

It's super nuts.

Still, we are in a realm which, I believe, is more puzzling to most people than frightening. What is this about? Is it possible the nutters are really this outraged about this stuff? That guy at the town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, in his face-off with Arlen Specter about the sanctity of the American constitution, rather seemed, in his paroxysm of raw emotion, to be defending the life of his child.

My friend Larry Kirshbaum, the literary agent, calls this "symbolic rage." The inchoate attaches to the most assertive claim of deviance from, or seeming offense against, virtue and righteousness. The notion of bureaucratic panels with the power of life and death is obviously meant to provoke feelings of helplessness and panic more than to describe the decision-making process of a new health care system. The birther stuff is all about conspiracy and aliens.

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Comments

[LilBits]

03:52 PM on 08/13/2009

The GOP supporters are very quick to shoot down every idea or thought coming out of the DNC but cannot give me an alternative other than spewing a bunch of hate about a certain race of folks. Can they give me at least one alternative bill that will suffice for healthcare or are they just going to keep this mess up with this so-called grass roots (trying to be Obama with his community organizing instead it is really hate spewed Jim Jones type of disarray) strategy of disruption, violence, and pure hatred, as inquiring minds want to know. I cannot see bi-partisanship anywhere in this current Democracy we have as the GOP would rather we go back to the 1950’s way of living where all people were not nor will they ever be in the GOP book created equal.

[LilBits]

03:52 PM on 08/13/2009

Personally, I think these “nutters” as you have referred to them are superficial in all aspects of their lives and will believe anything that is told to them but will do nothing to garner proof that these things are actually true. I have always been told if you stand for nothing you will fall for anything and these nutters have proven that statement so true, now about this birth certificate mess, if President Obama was not a citizen, where were these nutters when he was a Senator????? I did not see a one of them nor any Congressional members asking for his birth certificate then, why now, maybe because he is black and America (well most of Americans) have made a change that they can believe in or at least try to based on the last 12 years under the Bush Dictatorship we had.

[BobLablah]

12:17 PM on 08/13/2009

The nutters are finally getting attention because the MSM didn't want to report about the deranged Democratic nutters during the Bush years. They have delight in reporting about the Obama era nutters.

[cbat]

05:57 PM on 08/13/2009

You mean the Dem nutters who were protesting against the war Bush gang lied about getting us in and the 4000 diead soldiers. Yeah, we are so ashamed. Not. At least "Dem nutters" had an issue, these people do not even know what the issues or call all they know is Obama is black and that is good enough for them.

[DownerCow]

11:47 AM on 08/13/2009

Why don't the corporations choreographing this 'grass roots' effort to destroy democracy just come out and issue them all brown shirts?