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When the Lunatics Took Control

While some of us are trying to talk about health care,
some of our fellow Americans are shouting things such as,
"Heil Hitler!", "Obama is Nazi, or maybe a Communist!",
that we have lost our country (I did not notice that it had gone),
that providing options to insurance-company-run health care
systems is subversion, or a loss of liberty, or equivalent to
circumcision, or maybe treason, or not playing football.

People are bringing loaded semi-automatic guns to
town hall meetings, and arguing that it is their right,
and necessary to preserve liberty and bloodshed for all.

We did have an armed revolution, once, even before
I was born. We have fought in good and bad wars.
But we are not talking about the Boston Tea Party here!
We are talking about trying to design a better health care plan;
one which will provide for all of us, at a decent price,
instead of the system we now have, in which perhaps
a third of us are not covered, in which insurance companies
skim off monstrous amounts of money and give it to
their own executives as rewards for the rest of us being stupid.

A free society does not debate health care reform with
semi-automatic weapons. A democracy does not determine
agendas by deliberately sabotaging peaceful public rallies.
Sensible societies do not scream "Nazi!' at people of Jewish
descent, or religious persuasion. That is a citizenry gone mad.

Who persuaded us that anything we do together is treason?
Who persuaded us that meetings without guns are dangerous?
Who convinced us that a roomful of screaming hate mongers
armed with sidearms is safer than a rational debate?

None of this is rational. Civilized societies do not do it this way.
Responsible political parties do not encourage such hatred.

Where were all the rest of us when the lunatics took control?

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