WHERE DID I GO WRONG?

Pretty clearly, I have been doing something wrong. First, I got a call today from the National Rifle Association, apparently convinced that I was one of their ardent supporters. After an inspirational recorded message from Wayne LePierre, the caller, a rather hard-edged woman, asked me, as near as I can quote it from memory, "Do you want to put your hard-earned liberties in the hands of a bunch of third world dictators and Hillary Clinton?" This was, I figured, a trick question, but I tried to answer it as homestly as I could. As I saw it, I only had two options for protecting my hard-earned liberties. The first was to place them in the hands of those dictators and Hillary, the second was to hand them over to the NRA. Unhesitatingly, I chose the former. "Yes," I said. For some reason, she did not linger on the phone.

Then the mail came, and wedged in, between a Medicare report of claims they had paid for Susie or me and a bank statement, was an invitation to join the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle. The letter, which actually addressed me personally as "Dear Robert," began, "Because you have been an active leader and a concerned citiczen, you are one of only a few Republicans in North Carolina who have been recommended by the Republican Senate Leadership to serve as a member of the prestigious Republican Senatorial Inner Circle."

I guess now I know just who is not reading my blog. Oh well. I still have Paris.

GANG AFT AGLEY

Well, we tried. Susie and I set out yesterday evening for North Carolina Central University to attend David Price's Town Hall Meeting on health care. Driving into the wilds of Durham, NC is, for me, much like going to Worcester, MA. I ALWAYS get lost. But I charted a course, fired up my GPS unit, and with some u-turns and such, managed to find our way there. No sooner had we parked than a couple in a car stopped to tell us that the meeting had been moved to a larger hall. Back we went, and very soon found ourselves at the end of a seemingly infinite line of traffic. It looked very much like a UNC basketball game or a rock concert. As we approached the new venue, we saw a long line snaking out of the building [this was forty-five minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting.] Planted across the street were a few authentic crazies, with a large hand-painted American flag and a hand lettered sign [which I never quite managed to read]. We spent the next fifteen minutes circling fruitlessly looking for a place to park, getting ever farther from the event itself. Finally, I decided that we were too far from the hall for Susie to be able to walk it comfortably [she suffers from MS], and it was doubtful that we could actually have gotten into the meeting, considering the size of the crowd, so we went off in search of dinner. At this point, the minatory lady inside the GPS unit issued a series of impossible commands that guided us to the end of a cul-de-sac, but with several re-programmings, we managed to find our way to Ninth Steet, the one-block long Durham simulacrum of Greenwich Village, and there we had a passable meal at Vin Rouge.

When we got home, I checked the reports on line. There were some attempts at disruption by the Republican thugs, but it would seem that the meeting was largely supportive of Price, who is a liberal Democrat. One anti was quoted as complaining that the pro-reform forces had been given advance warning of the meeting, so that we could pack it. That bit of news cheered me considerably, since it suggests that the Democrats are starting to use common sense, always in short supply on the left.

On Monday, I shall venture into Raleigh to hand-deliver a statement to Senator Kay Hagen's office. This is part of an effort by Organizing For America to flood her office with written personal statements, as a way of stiffening her spine and making sure that she does not once again flip-flop on the Public Option. It isn't much, but if twenty million of us do it, it will turn this thing around.

One final mean-spirited thought. It was reported that at the Price Town Hall Meeting, a woman got up and asked, "What right have you to force me to have health insurance if I don't want it? Where in the Constitution does it say that?" Price replied that if she got sick, we would all have to pay for her care. I have to confess that I dearly wanted to wait until she did get sick, and then bar the door to the hospital Emergency Room when she showed up, reminding her that she had, as a matter of principle, refused to buy insurance. I know, I know. You can't do that. It wouldn't be humane. But still ....

TOWN HALL MEETING

On the theory that one ought to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, I shall be going to a town hall meeting this evening being held by my Congressman, Representative David Price of the North Carolina 4th District. I have no idea what to expect, but I have been told to show up an hour early, probably to make sure that pro-reform voters get in. I shall report on the meeting in my blog tomorrow.

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE TURNS UGLY

The town hall protests organized and inflamed by Republican operatives have taken an ugly turn with the appearance yesterday in New Hampshire, at an Obama rally, of a citizen carrying a loaded revolver. The intensity and irrationality of the protests could quite easily morph into violence. Once Obama looked to have the Democratic nomination wrapped up, more than a year ago, my colleagues in the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts expressed genuine fear that sooner or later he would be shot. Secret Service or no, that remains a serious threat.

Despite the clear hand of cold-eyed opportunistic Republican operatives in these protests, there is very little doubt that the people doing the protesting are genuinely freaked out about something. What might that be?

Listening to them is not a useful way to find out, unfortunately. One of the targets of their rage is the range of proposals now on the table for health care reform. Now, we need to remind ourselves of a few familiar facts. Far and away the largest health care insurance program in the United States is Medicare, a single-payer government operated program. Judging from the pictures I have seen on television, I would guess that a goodly number of the protesters are already on medicare, and the rest have parents whose medical care and prescription drugs come to them courtesy of the same program. Nobody but Ron Paul actually wants to end Medicare.

A second target of their rage is the stimulus package and other deficit spending programs passed with Obama's support and encouragement by the current Congress. These are the same people, let us recall, who expressed no pleasure or approval at all while Clinton ran up impressive budget surpluses and actually started paying down the national debt, and who sat by silently while George W, Bush turned those surpluses into whopping deficits. It is simply not possible to take seriously the content of the shouts and snarls of these protesters.

The common thread in their expressions of outrage is the fear that the America they grew up in and know is being taken away from them. Now, these folks are not entirely rational, but they are not at all stupid, and what their gut tells them is in fact true. The America they have known IS being taken away from them, with a speed that leaves them angry and panicked. There is a Blcak man in the White House. Gay and Lesbian Americans are now openly members of the American community, accepted and recognized, even, in some states, allowed to be married. Spanish-speaking Americans populate countless American cities in increasing numbers. At the same time, these people, like millions of other Americans, are under enormous economic pressure.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with European and American politics of the twentieth century knows that this is a formula for fascism. I am not suggesting that we are about to see an American version of kristallnacht. But I am suggesting that we take what is happening quite seriously. If one of these gun-toting protesters goes over the edge and pulls a trigger, it could produce a very frightening explosion.

The Obama administration is busy organizing counter-moves to the wave of town hall protests. All of us who stand on the side of reform need to do whatever we can to support those efforts. I still think we are going to win this battle, but remember, many, many millions of Americans voted for McCain and Palin. They haven't gone away.

FOOOTNOTE

If you liked the post just below, pass the link on to someone else. It is a message that needs to get out.

BACK FROM SAN FRANCISCO

I am back from San Francisco, just in time for 100 degree temperature here in Chapel Hill. I had planned to blog for a day or two about my grandchildren, and I may still do that, but there is something more important that needs to be talked about, namely, the status of Obama's health care reform proposals. I am really very angry about the commentary coming from the liberal side of the blogosphere and mainstream media. Let me explain why.

At the moment, all attention is focused on the thuggish efforts to disrupt town hall meetings held by Representatives and Senators, and on the bizarre, hysterical claims emanating from the right about death panels that will order the euthanization of old people. The commentaries are full of bleak projections and dire warnings and gloomy judgments that Obama has lost control of the debate, or has failed to show sufficient courage, or has betrayed his supporters.

All of these commentaries have one central underlying premise in common, and that premise is flat out wrong. The premise is that we are all passive observers, handicappers, prognosticators, that our role in all of this is to stand on the sidelines and give or take away points according to our evaluation of how Obama is doing. We might call this the Paula Abdul or American Idol conception of our role in politics.

Well, folks, that isn't how it is. From the day he declared for the presidency, Obama said as much. Remember that breathtakingly uplifting line, "We are the change that we have been waiting for"? What on earth did you think that meant? If WE are the change that we have been waiting for, then it is WE who must make the change that we want. It is not going to be given to us, done for us. Obama had the good sense to recognize that major changes in American domestic policy would be possible ONLY if vast numbers of Americans worked for those changes -- not merely voted for them on election day, and then went home to wait and see whether they happened, but WORKED for them every day, for as long as it took.

We now have a president who proposes dramatic change and uses the office of the presidency to work for it. That is what we voted for. This means that IF we do the work that is required to force our representatives in Congress to vote for that change, then he will happily sign the bills and implement the changes. It means that Obama will appoint men and women who will manage their agencies and departments so as to advance the changes we voted for.

Obama is doing his part, with greater success than anyone knowing American politics had any right to expect. The question before us now is NOT whether HE will succeed or fail, but whether WE will do our part, and provide him with the political support he needs to enact the changes that he called for and that we voted for.

Anyone who does not understand this simply does not understand how American politics works, or else is too passive, defeated, and depressed to pitch in and make things happen.

So, what to do? I have said it before, but I will say it again. Go to http://www.mybarackobama.com and find SOMETHING on the website to sign up for. if you really cannot figure out what to do, send me an email and I will make some suggestions.

Now let's all stop whining.

ON THE WAY OUT THE DOOR

Check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com for a nice spoof -- a Kenyan birth certificate for Newt Gingrich, with accompanying birther style paranoid argument as to why it might be real.

The troops are mobilizing to counter the thuggish Republican tactics at the town hall meetings. I have a good feeling about this fight. I think we are going to win. We won't get everything we want, but we knew that from the first day.