Posted on 08/16/2009 7:34:42 AM PDT by WayneLusvardi
Who are we to believe about national health care reform: the so-called extremists who show up at Congressional Town Hall meetings or the Congressmen and medical policy experts who appear in media images as the most reasonable on this contentious issue?
The answer is not obvious: the Congressmen and hand-picked TV medical personalities, policy wonks from universities or think tanks, HMO and long-term care executives, and so-called health care consumer advocates, all of whom are pro-health care reform advocates, are the fanatics and the so-called fanatics are mere movie "extras" in the social engineering of consent about health care reform. Let me explain why and how.
Those protesting health care reform at Congressional Town Halls are not in power and, despite the strident tone of many of them, are mostly harmless as demonstrated by the recent round of townhall meetings across the country. This is not to say that those opposed to national health care reforms can't be fanatics or extremists, but that they are mostly powerless at this time and became enraged and strident only after great provocation and marginalization by politicians and the media.
Gauging from what this writer has observed from attendance at the so-called Health Care Townhall of Congressman Adam Schiff (D), Southern California, the public meetings have not been a debate about the specific provisions of the proposed health care bill HR 3200. Rather, the meetings, at best, have been about selling a concept; and at worst, have been about characterizing the opposition as extremists.
There are several pieces of legislation floating around Congress so any public debate is only selling a concept of reform. Thus, the apparent purpose of the townhalls has been to type-cast the opposition as "wingnuts" and the proponents as models of civility and reason, as the particulars of any legislation are still up in the air. Once type-casted, the proponents believe they will have gained public legitimacy and the moral high ground for a massive reform of the health care system.
Consider some of the Machiavellian tactics a la Presidential consultant David Axelrod deployed at the townhall meetings and by the media attended by this writer:
1. Health care reform opponents were first incited into action on the internet with the threat of being excluded from the debates by the threat of allowing health care reform proponents to arrive earlier or by busing in union and ACORN activists to stack the meeting. It was announced that the indoor meeting hall would only accommodate about 200 people. Hourly emails by the health care reform proponents before the meeting made the Townhall into a public media and numbers contest. The health care opponents countered by planning an outdoor rally in front of the building.
2. When everyone arrived at the place where the townhall was to be held the meeting had been shifted to an outdoor meeting in the middle of the street in the civic center. This dissipated and diluted the planned early rally by the opposition in the front of the meeting hall building. The opposition was to be given no media event of their own. That the location of this opposition rally obviously was picked and approved by the local police department, who are members of a public union, could, in retrospect, arouse further suspicion.
3. At the meeting this writer attended, a panel of all-Democratic Party affiliated health care experts were assembled to speak with no opposing experts invited. That the meeting had been changed from a townhall debate format to lectures by a highly selected panel of all pro-heath care reform experts was not revealed until the night before. This only further incensed the opposition.
4. Once the meeting started, Congressman Adam Schiff and his panel of pro-reform experts cooly and calmly filibustered for at least half of the meeting, only further provoking the crowd to shout their objections over the highly-crafted rational appearing testimony of each expert. Each expert was given a microphone which boomed their voice over loud speakers from an elevated stage. The talking points of each of the experts were skillfully crafted to provoke and enrage the crowd only further.
5. Those in attendance were allowed to ask questions only by shouting with their voice without a microphone over the din of the crowd in the background. The moderator had to repeat each of their questions for the audience to hear it, thus giving a false appearance of active listening. And perhaps most revealing of the hidden agenda of the meeting, oddly only opponents were selected to submit questions. The pro and con debate of a Townahall meeting was intentionally abandoned. The health care proponents were only there as hecklers, sign-carriers, or as robotic members of some public employees union. They were props in a highly-staged public drama.
6. The next day the local newspaper, playing tag team with the Congressman, reported only "hundreds" in attendance, while a local radio station reported more accurately from 2,000 to 4,000. This further antagonized the opponents to flack the online version of the newspaper with reactionary hostile comments, thus boosting the newspapers online hit count. The negative reactionary comments in the online version of the newspaper only further "proved" that the opposition were fanatics. Later, the local editor of the newspaper ran an op-ed column entitled "As health care battles, avoid the "wingnuts!" Of course, the TV news at 11 pm ran film of the fanatic-appearing protesters shouting over the crowd to be heard. Afterward, President Obama went on the political stump to townhall meetings in rural areas of the U.S. to portray himself as the model of moderation on the issue.
The health care townhalls are a cleverly crafted public drama populated by living actors, each side taking the roles assigned to them. It is the process of the engineering of consent on health care reform fashioned by leftist political consultants, tabloid newspapers posing as journalists, and Hollywood media.
One of the keys to sorting out who to listen to in such highly manipulated public debates is to look for which side casts and provokes the other as the "enemy," as "extremists," as "wingnuts." Based on this measure, the highly sophisticated and elitist proponents of health care reform can only be seen as rational fanatics, taunting their opposition only to portray themselves as moderates to the mass of people in the political middle.
What makes the American health care system rather unique is its pluralism -- many different policies and forms of organization rather than some monolithic system as is presently being proposed by the Obama Administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress. We don't know, nor can we know, what is the best system for health care financing or delivery. Neither can we easily sort out who is right in such a national debate in a web-based mass media society where citizen participation is manipulated into the engineering of consent.
Many different types of systems should be allowed in health care: profit and non-profit, local and federal, private and socialized, professional and non-professional, etc., just as they are today. Beware of so-called administrative reforms which could be implemented today even without massive reform (cost reduction by computerization of health records). But also beware of any centralization of health care records. Fragmentation can sometimes be good.
So if you are, like me, a moderate when it comes to the contentious national health care system debate, and don't care for the heated tone of the opponents, albeit provoked, or the overly-choreographed rational posturing of the proponents, look for the following signals: beware of those who stigmatize the opposition, who cast themselves as the certainty experts and provoke the opposition, who adeptly use sophisticated social-psychological web-based mass media persuasion techniques, who intend to seduce by the appearance of reasonableness, and advocate some monolithic health care system. Beware the mass engineering of public consent on health care reform. And beware the type of government and media which doesn't see you as a citizen but as a mere pawn who is to be manipulated.
Why doesn’t Obama ever have a town hall meeting in a black neighborhood?
60% of Americans are un-American. Hmmm.
Interesting phrases.
From “The Rockets Red Glare- when America Goes to War”
by Richard B. Barnett (copyright 1990)
“To market official truth so at variance with reality or to engineer consent to policies that mock American values or to bypass public opinion altogether, government must now so thoroughly misinform the public ast to poison the wellspring of democracy.”
Moderate = Frog in ever warming pot.
They will omit contentious language now, only to have it interpreted IN, later.
Liberals are always willing to accept incrementalism.
If we don’t let them get started, we won’t have to battle the next increment.
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