Townhall meetings and health care

What an interesting debacle we have fallen into with these town hall meetings.

I've been watching a few on youtube. Swastikas painted on a sign in the GA governor's headquarters. Screaming. Shouting. Politicians losing their temper and screaming and shouting.

Is this what we have become?

A couple things strike me about this -

First, I recall a Thomas Friedman column called "China for a Day," in which he argues how nice it would be if our government could actually get something done. In this age of 24 hour news networks, year round campaigning, and special interest groups, our government doesn't seem to be able to get anything significant done. How nice would it be to be like China for 24 hours and actually get something done - I believe Friedman was referring to the government's inability to approve tax credits for green companies.

Second, why do we always hate the person in charge? Reading some of the commentary on youtube gives truth to my old mantra of "the masses are asses." When Obama is in, the conservatives insist that he is a socialist/Muslim intent on turning us into a hybrid Russia/middle eastern country. Yet, when Bush was in - and if you search the videos I bet this would be fact - I'm sure the liberals were ripping him a new one for his lust for oil or his struggles with speaking in public and so on.

I'm reminded of a shirt Axl Rose wore on national TV during the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in the spring in 1992 - it had a picture of Christ with a crown of thorns and it read "Kill Your Idols." My mom was outraged by this, but a sliver of it rang true to me - how many of our idols or leaders or people of power do we (or some nut job) assassinate?

Now we have pictures of Obama looking like the Joker with white make up and a Glasgow Smile under the heading of socialism.

If we cannot even conduct a civil town hall meeting, do you really think any president could remove guns from the nut jobs who hoard them in their basements waiting for the terrorists - or black people from the inner city - to drop in and try and pry them from their cold dead hands or turn our democracy into a socialist government? The American people would never let that happen.

Third, after learning all about Hoover's and Roosevelt's trials during the Great Depression, I've seen all of this controversy over health care and the cries of socialism before.

Do some research and you'll see that there was a significant rise in the call of socialism in America (led by our own MN governor at the time!). I always thought of Roosevelt and his famed 100 Days and New Deal as this breath of fresh air that saved the day.

Not exactly.

Vast numbers of people HATED Roosevelt and what he was trying to do! This has to sound familiar to Bush when he suffered the lowest approval rating of any president or what Obama must be going through now as he tries to reform health care.

And remember where we got social security (hey, what's that first word in that phrase?) and many other government run programs (Medicare) that if you stripped from people today, they'd flip over. Yet, Roosevelt failed to get health care truly run by the government - as did Clinton. We'll see if the present administration can fare any better.

Of course, people today think they have all the answers -when in truth - NONE of us have any clue what will really happen because we think we can base what will happen today because of what happened in the past. Some of that might be true, but if we really could base the future off the past, wouldn't we be more successful at it than we already are?

It seems to me the only thing we really are successful at is watching an event unfold and then - after it's happened mind you - saying what we should have done instead. That's not the same thing.

I love this quote that I heard yesterday regarding why we think we know so much and can predict what will happen - "the biggest impediment to understanding the past is that we know their future."

Sure our distant relatives in the future will critique our faults and missteps today - just as we do when we criticize past generations.

But none of us have an inkling of what the future will hold. Nor will we ever. Let's just be rational and patient and make logical and thoughtful analysis. Let's stop spraying swastikas and acting like morons at town meetings (and that goes for the crowds and the politicians). Let's act like more humanely and remember our place in the grand scheme of this.

And remember this great quote, which also takes a stab at predicting the future, though I think it's one we should try and avoid - "if all the insects were to disappear from the planet, within five years all life would cease to exist. If all humans were to disappear from the planet, within fifty years every form of life would be thriving."