Fear is the Fuel

Which keeps alive the incessantly nasty and often vicious actions of the teabaggers at these various town halls across the country. Here are two posts from Sullivan which illustrate these points vividly.

First money quote:

The America which Europe fears is the America of the Reaganites. The America once of the Scopes trial; the America of prohibition; the America of ignorant isolationism. The America then of ‘‘better dead than red’’; the America of McCarthyism; the America of the last fundamentalists of the 1950s. The America now of the new evangelicals; the America of the Moral Majority; the America of a now ignorant interventionism; the America which can see homosexuals as a conspiracy; feminists as a conspiracy; perhaps even women as a conspiracy.

If you'll notice, not one of these movements ever survived past a few years.

Second money quote:

When I tried to reasonably protest [his] statement, he just spewed forth a tirade of vile invectives.

We were outside and there were about 30 people milling about. I was shocked, embarrassed and literally frozen in place. I managed to turn and walk away. This is a man I have known and respected for the entire length of my sobriety. I am fairly certain this friendship is over. Reasonable discourse is over. The lies and hate spread by the right-wing have won.

This woman has given up trying to reason with her friend of 18 years. I can relate to this in a small way, as there are people I have known for a long time with whom I simply don't discuss politics. There is just no point debating someone when they are possessed of a bundle of "facts" culled from media machines that have no interest in disseminating them.

What will soon -- I hope -- hit these irrational people is that their tactics will accomplish nothing. Let them spew, let them cry "socialism" and "death panels" all they want; the healthcare industry in America will undergo a significant change. Even if Obama loses some key provisions of the current program, they will eventually return. What the movement conservatives have not yet realized is that their time in the sun has ended for the next generation. As we have seen repeatedly, younger Americans (and older ones like me who think like them) are sweeping into politics with greater tolerance, greater empathy, and a firm desire to separate from the elders who have held the reins for far too long and who have literally lay waste to both our economy and our environment.

The America of Fear may try to resist change, but change is gonna come.