Town hall protesters drown out legitimate debate

Angry is ugly.

We’ve seen that during this angry August, as town hall meetings on health-care reform have disintegrated into screeching scrums resembling schoolyard scuffles.

Those opposed to finding a new way to provide and pay for health care have come packing heat and hate. They spout and spew. They rage and go off half-cocked — verbally, thank God, and not literally with gun in hand.

We’ve seen them on Fox News and MSNBC, which interviewed a man who stood outside one of President Barack Obama’s confabs with a legal and loaded gun strapped to his thigh. (Why carry a loaded gun to a political event? Well, as the guy told Chris Matthews: “Who would be silly enough to carry an unloaded firearm?”)

We’ve seen them on YouTube. We’ve seen them in California.

Some are kooks who believe what they say. Others are insidious manipulators who understand that in America, if you say something loud enough and long enough, enough people will believe it. It worked for Joseph McCarthy and later for the tobacco industry. And in some ways the liars of those eras were amateurs.

Today’s manipulators have the megaphones of talk radio, the blogosphere and YouTube. And they are having a field day. Reform opponents have portrayed Obama as Adolph Hitler, apparently oblivious to the irony of comparing a black man who came of age in America to a dictator who promoted a master white race.

They’ve shouted that reformers want to create death panels that will decide who lives and who dies — an outright lie. They argue that the real goal in fixing our dysfunctional system is the overthrow of capitalism in favor of socialism. The point is not only wrong, it’s nonsensical.

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” an exasperated Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., finally asked a town hall taunter. She had described health reform as a “Nazi policy.” Right. Frank, who is gay and Jewish, is down with the Nazis because what gay Jewish man wouldn’t embrace the Nazis? And, of course, aligning with the Nazis is a real vote-getter in Massachusetts.

Untrue but effective

The claims of the Bellicose Brigade are ridiculous, despicable and dishonest. They’re also effective. NBC released a poll last week that shows that if you shout loud enough, you can fool most of the people some of the time. More than half the respondents believed health reform proposals in Congress seek to give coverage to illegal immigrants. (They don’t.) A similar number thought proposed reforms would lead to a government takeover of health care. (Nope.) And nearly half bought a version of the death panel bill of goods.

All of which is a shame. It’s a shame because the red-faced eruptions by the conniving and the confused are killing the opportunity for a meaningful discussion about how to fix a health care system that is unsustainable.

Learning experience

Jerry Mungai of San Jose learned this firsthand. He’s the poor guy who weeks ago innocently invited Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to the Almaden Library and Community Center to give his neighborhood association a routine legislative update. As luck would have it, the meeting was scheduled for August, smack in the middle of our health care days of rage.

“Unbeknownst to me,” Mungai told me recently, “there is this Web site out there and it says, ’You guys go to these town hall meetings, and there is one in the Almaden community.”’

Yes, go to the meetings and raise a ruckus. A meeting that might ordinarily draw 40 concerned citizens attracted a standing-room-only crowd of about 300. There was hooting and booing and insult-hurling.

Too bad, because whether you agree or not with reform opponents, some do have legitimate concerns. Mungai, for instance, wonders whether the current supply of doctors could handle tens of millions of newly insured patients. He believes every person should be responsible for paying for his or her own routine medical care. Insurance, offered by private companies, should be reserved for catastrophic health problems, he says.

And, “private markets,” he says, “are always better than government.”

Others worry about the cost of an overhaul and wonder about the specific ways those costs will be controlled.

I’m among those who believe our health care system needs reform — quick, dramatic, radical reform. But I’m willing to hear other reasonable points of view. Those views are being drowned out and marginalized.

A recent overflow town hall in Florida with Rep. Kathy Castor devolved into chants of: “Hear our voice! Hear our voice!” I heard. We all heard.

The problem is, the screamers aren’t really saying anything.

X Mike Cassidy is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.