It's An Outrage!

A manufactured one, at least.

This post is a response to the fussing and fighting that's going on at all these town hall meetings regarding the Obama health care plan.

And I don't mean to pick on Obama, but he is the President, and this is his plan.

The first meeting I recall seeing footage of was the one in Pennsylvania, featuring former Kansas Governor (thank God!) and now HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, the former Democrat turned RINO turned Democrat. One woman in the audience dressed the Beltway pair down - very eloquently, I thought, and while firmly, respectfully. Her ire seemed to be over the fact that Senator Specter and his ilk appear to be all too happy to spend their taxpayer-funded salaries voting on bills they haven't read, bills that will appropriate billions upon trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Seems like a fair gripe to me. Maybe because it's one I make every day.

After that, though, things turned ugly.

People started shouting. Shouting down the Washingtonians, who, despite their continued lying, cheating, stealing, voting-on-bills-without-reading-them, and general thieving from the tax kitty, still have a right to be heard. Up to a point.

Then, the accusations began. The Dick Armey Brigade is feeding the protests against health care reform. The Obama Administration is feeding the backlash against them.

Know what I think? I think they're both right.

I don't want to start sounding conspiracy theorist, but I think both sides are sending their henchmen to these staged town hall meetings in an effort to portray, in all its ugliness, the great partisan divide that consumes this nation. In so doing, they proliferate it, which serves the two-party agenda that keeps this country divided, and keeps them in power, since no viable third-party alternative can emerge. That keeps the Ted Kennedy's and the Orrin Hatch's in jobs that are probably the only jobs they could get.

The more divided they depict us as being, the more divisive we become. That further delineates the gulf between left and right, further vilifies each side in the minds of the other, and widens the gulf. And win, lose or draw for one party or the other, in a red-state, blue-state world, it increases the odds of holding one's position, gerrymandering aside.

So what's the solution? Throw the entire lot of bums out, I say. Start afresh. Screw party politics. Vote against all your own guys, just to shake things up, or get behind a viable third party. (By "viable," I do not mean Ralph Nader. More like Ron Paul.)

Vote your current bum out. If you think he or she has your best interest at heart, you probably also think that I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.

And protest to your heart's content. Screw the media lemmings, who repeat what Washington stuffs down their throats. Engage in challenging but respectful discourse, in whatever forum. Exercise your right to be heard; Lord knows Washington isn't interested in what you have to say, but doggonit, say it anyway.

And don't let the suckers sell you down the river. For God's sake, not that. Make them explain why your job has to go away, why you're not getting that scholarship, while your taxes are going up while they get their automatic pay raise.

Then, and only then, can you sleep at night, if you can at all. And if you can, send me your secret. I'd love to know it.