SOCIALIST!!!

If you have been paying attention to the news lately, you’ve probably seen coverage of the healthcare town hall meetings that are taking the country by storm.

And that may not be such a bad idiom to use. Massive throngs of people, many of them elderly, are converging on auditoriums all over the country to make sure their opinions about healthcare reform are heard. The Congressmen who are hosting many of these town hall meetings are being greeted with boos, screams, enraged accusations, and the deafening hum of oxygen machines. Many of these gatherings have been less than civil, with frequent outbursts of anger stinking of regurgitated talking points from Fox News anchors and republican officials. In weather parlance, its been a perfect storm of misinformation, senility, and anger.

So when I got an email notifying me about a local town hall meeting with Democratic Congressman David Price, I knew I had to go.

The meeting was held in the stuffy auditorium on NC-Central University’s campus- a historically black college that I am quite certain has never seen so many old and white people parading around. My brother and I arrived an hour early and got decent seats about 100 feet from the stage. We scanned the audience to find potential trouble makers- the moustached man a few rows back with a US Marine Corps hat and a hand-written sign that read “Liberty or Death”, the white-haired gentleman in the center section scratching out notes on the back of an envelope, the motorcycle couple up front with matching mullets and tightly-crossed arms.

Apparently, lots of people had seen the news reports. The auditorium quickly filled to capacity and beyond, with camera flashes and video camera lights blinking in almost every row. Local news outlets and reporters were on the scene, yearning for a chance to capture someone shouting “socialist” or accusing Rep. Price of wanting to kill old people. The anticipation of conflict was certainly palpable.

In those types of situations, I am always tempted to do something rediculous and completely out of left field. But I decided to let other people do that for me.

The emcee of the event began the evening by asking everyone to rise and recite the pledge of allegiance. We then observed a moment of silence for those who “were unable to join us tonight.” Im assuming that he wasn’t referring to the millions of other Americans who were probably watching reruns of CSI on their couch. Either way, it was a little strange to bang the drums of patriotism and recite oaths just to talk about healthcare. Once everyone felt happy and tingly on the inside, we started.

The first outburst came about 4 minutes in. One of the speakers on the panel was talking about the absurdity that Bernie Madoff will be receiving healthcare in his jail cell courtesy of the US government, but that almost 50 million hard working Americans do not have access to the same resources.

“I came here to talk to my congressmen, not to be lectured by some mo-ron!”

Ironically, the disgruntled shouter stormed out of the building, despite the fact that Rep. Price was twiddling his thumbs queued up to speak next.

There were several more outbursts and boos as the evening went on- mostly reacting to the possibility of elderly people being marched out of their retirement homes to face a government-sponsored firing squad. But many of them were hushed and suppressed by the eloquence of Mr. Price and the other speakers on the panel (no, not a death panel). The folks who lined up on the yelling side of the aisle were drowned out by the other participants who actually had things to say. I suppose its pretty easy to get riled up watching Sean Hannity or Glen Beck yak about healthcare on tv, but much harder to translate these unintelligible sentence fragments when faced with an intelligent opposition.

My favorite outburst came towards the end of the evening, when another man with a moustache got behind the microphone and said: “I have three daughters, and I just am worried about America. I don’t want them to be raised in...have to pay debt, because socialism.”

It sounded like a direct translation from a Japanese video game. What the hell does any of that mean? Nouns and verbs and adjectives don’t fit together that way. And certainly no sort of meaning could be derived from that rubbish. But the funny thing is that other people nodded. Other people seemed concerned by what was troubling this man, and his words made sense to them.

Rep. Price stared blankly for a minute and then answered tersely: “I think we have a problem with definitions here.”

And we do. We have a problem with definitions, with information, with scope, and with meaning. We have completely lost sight of what the healthcare discussion is about, how it got to where it is, and what needs to happen. We let people think for us and act on our behalf that have no business doing so. We all need to go to a town hall meeting and listen to the David Prices of the world and see if his points are really refutable. And when we feel tempted to accuse someone of being a socialist or cut and paste from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, we should pause just a minute and remember that this fight is not about politics. Its about doing what is right.

-Dave