We have recently witnessed the appearance of angry mobs at town hall and other information exchange meetings focused on the Health Care legislation currently winding its way through congress. They have been belligerent, loud, and disruptive. The intent of these groups seems to be a unified desire to intimidate legislators and others into voting down any substantial health care reform.
Media coverage and blogosphere responses to these disruptions range the gamut from seeming to confirm the claim that these mobs are merely exercising their First Amendment rights, to claims that these people are essentialy aged, badly dressed Nazi Brownshirts.
What’s the real story?
Really? It’s kinda both. Mobs and their frequently violent outcomes are a dangerous evil, and yet as American as baseball and apple pie. In fact, it is fairly easy to argue that without Mobs, there wouldn’t really be anything like the United States we know and feel strongly about today.
Mobs made America. In particular, Mobs started the Revolutionary War. We’re all familiar with the general framework that explains how a disparate grouping of largely loyal British colonies with little in common ended up as a united (if still disparate) group of states rebelling against the Royal Crown (And by this I do not mean the whisky, although whisky has certainly played a substantial, even pivotal role in American politics.)
First off, the mean British parliament decided the best way to pay for the immense costs of the 7 Year (or French-Indian) War was to tax those colonies which had been the focus of the military defense. Further, they could keep a standing force of troops available to defend the colonies by keeping them there in the colonies. This was clearly unfair, so we started the Revolutionary War. We were right, so we won, the U.S. was born, the end.
Only not quite. To start, the makeup of the colonies was hardly uniform. It had then as now, a tiny, wealthy, politically connected overclass which largely worked directly for the crown as administrators and governors, and if anything benefited from the new taxes, since they got to take a cut of the bounty as appointed tax collectors. It then had a substantial "middle class" of merchants and landowners who, while only 10% of the taxable population, controlled over 66% of the taxable wealth. At the bottom rung of the ladder, there was the lowest income 30% of the population, who literally owned nothing that could be taxed.
Now, as long as taxes were made on property, only the 10% of taxpayers in the middle class really suffered. Those above them were making money by working for the Crown, and those below them weren’t affected because they didn’t own anything that could be taxed. They might not be happy, but an unhappy 10% middle class does not a revolution make, even though early on landowners were grumbling treasonously about their taxes.
A revolution, though, needs a mob. An angry mob. A violent mob.
So Parliament gave the 10% what they needed: a pissed off bottom 30%. They passed the Stamp Act, an indirect tax on common goods, which was extremely regressive. At the same time, the lower class had to tolerate the competition for low paying jobs they were encountering from off duty soldiers. (Red coats were not extraordinarily well paid, and so were free to pick up work in their off duty hours.) Bad enough that the average Joe had a hard time getting a job, but now the few things he could afford to buy were also being taxed through these stamps? No thanks!
Realizing the situation, a canny group of merchants and landowners formed a terrorist group freedom fighting group called The Sons of Liberty. Keep in mind, these are the Founding Fathers we all invoke: they were mighty fine orators. Happily, they gave speeches to the public, in some cases providing free booze. Inflamed, the public (now a mob) marched on the licensed distributors of the Stamps (tax collectors who got a cut of the takings).
In boston, they first started by burning the Tax collector in effigy.
Then they got angry, and alarmed at how violent they had become, most of the Sons of Liberty ringleaders took off, likely in the interests of plausible deniability. The mob they left behind would go on to tear houses apart (literally) in their fury.
In the end, the mob was so successful that they prevented the Stamp Act from being enforced. Ultimately, a pissed off Parliament would reverse the act, but they were now angered at what they saw as American belligerence. Ultimately, they would go on to pass the Townsend Acts, which would lead to the Boston Tea Party, etc. The revolution was born.
Speaking of, the Boston Tea Party? A mob act, one in response to taxes so low that for the first time, legally imported tea was cheaper than smuggled tea. The Boston Massacre? A mob was throwing rocks at British soldiers (an act that doesn’t end well in the days of tear gas, much less musket balls,) and the British soldiers responded predictably.
It sounds irrational, doesn’t it? "Tea is cheaper than ever! Let’s go throw some in the harbor!" "Bastard Red Coats! Why didn’t they let us throw rocks at them!"
So why the disconnect? Well, the mob was being manipulated, orchestrated from above by the middle class Sons of Liberty. It isn’t a coincidence that the Revolutionary aftermath created a government that provided representation for the middle class, but left the lower class exactly where it had been before: unable to vote or influence the men who taxed them.
But it is clear that the manipulated mob’s actions led to something pretty good. Ultimately, we got a (kinda) true (ish) representative democracy. Not too shabby. So if the ends can justify the means, what do we make of the current mobs in action?
Well, if mobs gave us democracy, they have also given us lynchings, fascism, and unthinking violence. It seems that the current mobs fall further on the "evil" side of the spectrum, in that the end game for them is to reinforce a Healthcare Insurrance industry which is toxic to our national well being.
First, let’s acknowledge that they are miserably informed. Where do they get their information from? Let us turn to the modern Sons of Liberty. I’m sure the conservative commentators would love the comparison, but it isn’t a positive one. The original Sons of Liberty got us some good things, but they did it by being manipulative bastards. One of the reasons they got away with it is because there was no one to hold them accountable.
Happily, we are here to hold the pundits accountable. They are, deliberately or not, misinforming their audience. My question for all of you is: how do we do this? What is the best path to informing and accountability?
(If you have an idea, please, refer to what we can do that might work. Refrain from what would be merely satisfying at the moment, like screaming back at them. As richly deserved as such a response would be, I'm interested in functional efforts.)