O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason

Several years ago I read an excellent two volume biography of Adolf Hitler by John Toland. Late into the night I read how pre-war Nazi thugs infiltrated union meetings and other leftist organizations, starting shouting matches that would turn into brawls where they would bring out their clubs and chains. We often wonder how a phemenon like Nazi Germany could have occurred in the modern age, but I realized then how much power unreasonable people can weild and how they can drive reasonable people underground making them afraid to express their opinions.

What I mean by "unreasonable people" is people who react out of all proportion to the situation or issue at hand and often against their own best interests, similar to the way some today are reacting to healthcare reform. So far, violence has broken out only in a few instances, however reasonable people understand that when unreasonable people take control, there is always the threat of violence, and at the very least, reasonable people will be forced into stressful angry situations with little chance of being heard or making a difference. So reasonable people go underground, and, at worst, give up, so that the decision makers think they don't exist and the unreasonable people get their way.

Not to be too abstruse, let me provide an example. At the beginning of this century (that still feels strange), I decided to put a pro-choice sticker on my car. At the time I saw a lot of pro-life stickers, and I wanted to proclaim where I stood. The result of taking that stand was that many friends and neighbors with whom I never discussed the issue took the time to voice their support. I kept the sticker for two years until my daughter got her driver's license and I read (and saw) that anti-abortion activists were posting photos online of license plates on cars parked at abortion clinics. I knew I had taken a slight risk placing that sticker on my car (several people called me "brave"). The question was did I want to place my daughter, who would be driving my car to her after school job, at risk. As a reasonable person, I weighed those risks and removed the sticker. I made a similar "reasonable" decision about protesting at Planned Parenthood clinics. As a mother with responsibilities to my family, I weighed the value of possibly putting my life at risk and decided against it.

That's not to say unreasonable people think healthcare reform is worth dying or killing for. They don't think at all, they just react, usually after being whipped into a frenzy by otherwise reasonable people who find them useful.

While Hitler's mental health has been brought into question, everyone around him wasn't crazy. They were intelligent people, possibly idealogues, , and like many, probably greedy for power and money, who saw in that little man the very useful ability to whip up anger and hatred amongst the unreasonable people.

Of course, the great benefit of using unreasonable people to do your bidding is that you can always deny responsibility if it goes too far. You can also, with a wink and a nod, scold them for their actions. At the same time when the unreasonable people are knocking themselves out fighting against their own best interests, you can step in and reap the profits and tell them you are doing it for them. And they are so unreasonable as to believe it.

Conservative members of Congress–-at least some of them––are far too intelligent to really believe Obama is acting like a Nazi or that these minor reforms to our healthcare coverage will lead even to socialized medicine let alone a socialist government. They know there is nothing in these bills that supports killing granny or euthenizing Downs Syndrome babies, but they are not above resorting to such nonsense to whip up the unreasonable crowds to do their bidding, which is to simply bring Obama down and get back the power they had come to believe they had a lock on.

The people yelling (the term protest is not accurate) at these town hall meetings do not look to me like CEOs of major companies who could pay more taxes if the Bush tax cuts are repealed. Nor can they all be employed by private insurance. They are the people who would benefit most by healthcare reform and have absolutely nothing to gain if it doesn't go through. Yet the conservatives have whipped them into thinking healthcare reform is just another a raw deal for the little guy. They believe it and so the unreasonable people go to these meetings, shouting down those who are trying to inform them, while reasonable people make the reasonable decision to stay home, since there is nothing to gain by being there.

The sad thing is, in the end, the unreasonable people will have lost and so will the reasonable people. The only winners will be the manipulators.

It's truly frightening.