The type and extent of the anger and rage we are seeing at the health care town halls are of a unique nature and NOT typical political reactions. No these decent Americans are being horribly manipulated by the GOP on behalf of the big money interests that we all know are really running things in this country.
The big reason for their anger however is deep-seated anxiety driven Fear. Interestingly this fear is not due to anxiety over the healthcare or even the broader agenda of the Obama administration and the Democrats. We are being led to believe this but it’s not the case. At the base level these people are afraid and anxious about their own individual futures, and that fear in turn is being played upon and redirected into rage aimed at the folks in America who want a single payer health care system administered by the US Government, or anything Obama else that wants for America.
Look closely and you see a very large number of older white men and women in these meetings who are agitated to the point of apoplexy. Over an above their reactions to feeling largely marginalized due to the changes they see taking place all around them, I think they are afraid and angry because their lives have not ended up the way they believed they would or should have. Now they are mad as hell and are confused as to what to do with all the rage and resulting frustration. They are in fact out of options. The last thing they seem willing to do is look at themselves in the mirror and take responsibility for the state of their own lives or work with others for positive change. So they look outwards for ready-made villains, and the GOP and their minders are only too happy to oblige. The GOP and the wealthy power base that controls it (and much of the Democratic party) have made trillions of dollars over the years by exploiting just this type of anger and frustration. They have done it by redirecting peoples fear with the use of lies and fear mongering.
I’d bet for example you do not see wealthy Americans in these crowds creating all the disturbances, or for that matter even in attendance in substantial or representative numbers. That's because they are not profoundly unhappy with their station in life, and hence are not as exploitable. But the rabble who are jumping into the anger mosh pits are out of options. Their good paying jobs got outsourced, if they can find work they are earnings a fraction of the value of their labor, their houses are over leveraged and their home values have cratered, their savings and investments have been devastated and their retirement accounts have been savaged by wall street piranha, and largely pilfered by the very same masters they swore allegiance to and toiled for. The future for too many of these people is very bleak indeed.
I am reminded of the line from the David Lynch movie “DUNE”, where the hero is wrestling with a difficult dilemma and recites to himself “Fear is the mind killer”. True words. But fear manipulated by powerful people can be a nation killer.
