Democratic Party Pod Congressmen

In Tuesday's Financial Times, their healthcare headline read: "US falling into line with other nations--European-style system forecast: Cost controls have yet to be tackled."

OMG. Americans are to be turned into Euro-socialists.

My thoughts immediately flashed to the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with me unpleasantly in the role of Dr. Miles Bennell (played by actor Kevin McCarthy) a small-town doctor whose patients suddenly start accusing their loved ones of being imposters. He quickly discovers that humans are being replaced by pod people--indistinguishable from real people except that they lack human emotions and are spawned from seeds drifting through space for years in order to replace the entire human race with more efficient and manageable creatures.

Here's the thing, my leftie friends. I'm not kidding--and neither are perhaps a majority of Americans. Seeing that health bill become law has induced in us the same paranoia-like fear that Kevin McCarthy felt in the movie when the policeman he was reporting the horror of the pod people to--turned out to be a pod person himself.

I say paranoia-like, because, as the old joke goes, it isn't paranoia if they are really after you. But it has the intensity of paranoia. And if any of you have ever felt a similar political betrayal and dread, then you understand what we are feeling now--and what we won't--can't--shouldn't-- let go of.

We are seized of a fact-justified sense of dread so strong that it grabs our breath and chills our flesh. Suddenly, a condition we care for more than life itself (our concept of individual American freedom) is felt to be in imminent danger of being extinguished.

When that fear turns to anger, well, as Margo Channing (Bette Davis) said in All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night."