I have to figure out a way to stop being surprised by what is happening in this country. The 8 months since Obama's election should have made me numb to what is going on. Every day a right-wing lunatic does or says something even more stupid or hateful than the day before, and every day I shake my head.
The kind of mentality it takes to yell and scream at a disabled woman in a wheel chair is something that is almost impossible for a decent person to contemplate. I'm sure everyone has seen the video. This isn't something that can be described or reasoned with. You have Michael Steele telling a girl whose mother died of cancer that she was just using her story to get on TV. That racist witch from Kansas who told a single mother to grow up and buy some insurance on her own. And yet these people are taken seriously, and in fact, are the leaders of the Republican party.
Most of these people (town hall protesters, teabaggers, whatever the hell you want to call them) are avid watchers of a TV show hosted by a raving lunatic who maps out imaginary communist conspiracies on a blackboard. This show is the dessert to the main course of Limbaugh and Hannity they are fed for 6 hrs. during the day.
What empowers these people to act like this in public? 99% of children don't act this way in public. If a student acted like this in school he would be suspended or expelled. When did it become acceptable to drown out the heartfelt statements of a woman who can't walk? Or to cynically dismiss a girl who just lost her mother to cancer as a attention seeker? Or to tell a single mother who is doing exactly what Republicans always say they want, working to support a family, that, sorry, tough shit, you're just going to have to work a little harder.
At this point, I have to conclude that the base, and therefore the majority of the Republican party, is comprised of sociopaths, and I am not even slightly kidding. If you support this kind of behavior, there is something very wrong going on inside you. Most of these people wouldn't have gotten their ass off the couch if George Bush was proposing this health care plan. This has alot to do with racism and a black president, of course, but that can't explain all of what is going on at these events. Is it not enough hate and ridicule minorities and homosexuals? Do Repubs have to now have to add to that list crippled people and grieving children? Sick, sick shit.
Finally, if Democrats can't get this passed now, it is never, ever going to happen. And I will, after years and years, finally have lost faith in them for good. If you can't stand up to a party that stands for nothing but racism, homophobia, and now, at long last, whistling on past while sick people die, then you can go to the same hell that, if it exists, is no doubt reserved for these town hall scumbags.