Liberal hypocrites should remember their own rage
OPINION - Protests by conservatives are just as ferocious as the ones liberals put up against the Bush White House for 'treasonous' activities. These 'acts against the country' included...
People keep talking about the level of rage coming out of health care town hall forums throughout the country. Although the pictures and sound bites of conservative protesters are the ones making the news, there is in fact, a lot of emotion coming from participants on both sides of the debate. The images of congressmen breaking up fights, being condescending towards their constituents, and talking on cell phones while fielding questions from the audience may make for some unemployed politicians very soon.
While many continue to grasp at straws to explain the dynamics of the protests (explanations have ranged from racism to paid participants) people fail to remember the heated exchanges from 8 years of the Bush II administration.
Protests by conservatives are just as ferocious as the ones liberals put up against the Bush White House for ‘treasonous’ activities. These ‘acts against the country’ included sending America into ‘an illegal war’, and apparently not caring about black people after Hurricane Katrina. At the time, ‘Wanted dead or alive’ posters were made of our elected president. Bush was actively demonized as an anti-Christ and mocked constantly for his speech, his appearance, and his ability to duck projectile shoes. If you saw a political poster of George W. Bush smiling, the president was also given horns and a pitchfork. And people are mad about posters featuring Obama as the joker?
The fact is, however, that these heated town hall meetings are not taking place just because of the calls for change. They are continuations of disgust carried over from past cycles of criticizing the federal government.
Conservatives troubled by the direction our country is taking under the spend-and-spend-more approach advanced by the Obama Administration, are also disgusted with the Bush administration’s expansion of government during the earlier part of the decade. Whereas the response to Bush’s tactics was an overall sense of Republican betrayal, the response to Obama’s directives is fierce because conservatives see them as a fulfillment of the promise of “change” that they voted against last November.
The town hall rage starts with health care reform, but truly centers on disgust with an older, term limit-less Congress that has run amok with Republican infidelities from 2001-2007 and Democrats that continue to fail to seize on numerical advantages to bring about true leadership from their side of the aisle.
The outrage stems from 10 years of disconnect between the government and the people. The hypocrisy of the government – one full of immoral scandals, unethical monetary kickbacks, and turncoat loyalties – has outraged the country far more than any one political issue could, regardless of its nature.
If you keep this in mind, you’ll see that no at the town hall debates needed to get paid to voice their anger. All they needed to do was pay attention to what has been going on for the past 10 years.
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