Painfully Misinformed
Jump this link and watch the video of Lawrence O’Donnell interviewing a young woman named Katy Abram who asked a scathing question to Arlen Specter at a town hall meeting. Her question was this:
I don’t believe this is just about health care, it’s not about TARP, it’s not about left and right. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I am only 35 years old, I have never been interested in politics, you have awakened the sleeping giant. We are tired of this. This is why everyone in this room is so ticked off. I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. My question for you is, what are you going to do to restore this country?
If you watch the interview with O’Donnell, you come away with the impression that this woman is not some hardened right-winger, that she’s not some ideologue, nor that she is unintelligent. What you do come away with is the understanding that this is a person who seems to have listened to the people who are trying to frighten her, and it has worked–and that she looked no further to understand the issues she addresses at the town hall meeting, else she would understand how embarrassingly uninformed she sounds.
She states as the primary issue the concern that America is being dismantled. On that, she is right; where she is wrong is who is dismantling it. She did not speak out while the Fourth Amendment was crassly violated and trashed, nor while the Supreme Court was stacked with those who showed clear disdain for the Ninth Amendment and wanted to warp the meaning of the First Amendment. She stood still while trillions were handed out to corporations and the wealthy at her expense, and while the Iraq War was falsely started, again at the cost of trillions of dollars she would be responsible in the form of debt. She remained faithful to her country during those times, and yet when a new president comes in and wants to reform health care so that she has more choice and it will cost her less, she immediately lost faith and believes that the Constitution is being dismantled and we are turning into Russia. There is little or no doubt that she watches Fox News.
She fears that her country is “turning into Russia,” turning into a socialist or communist state. Presumably this is because she fears that we will be forced to all participate in a single-payer socialized health care system, apparently unaware that many elements of our society are “socialized” and she likely does not object to them–does she opposed publicly funded fire departments? Police protection? National defense? Medicare? Social security? She simply does not understand that social insurance programs are not what defines a “country like Russia,” and that her fuzzy half-remembering of Obama allegedly saying he wanted a single-payer health system many years ago is not equal to the specific legislation now before Congress. She speaks so kindly yet so painfully without real understanding about how the founders didn’t want socialism and felt that those who had wealth would help those without, not seeing that she has become the spokesperson for those with immense wealth who have savaged the poor and the middle class and want to keep on doing it.
She sees things “pushed through very quickly,” and yet had no trouble with the “Patriot” Act or with the trillions-dollar tax cuts for the rich, which were pushed through just as quickly or even more quickly. She apparently had no trouble with the Iraq War, which was devastating in terms of costs in more than just a monetary way. She claimed only to “have faith in the government,” and she “didn’t really care.” But now she’s all furious and scared?
The poor young woman even admits that she doesn’t know the issues too well, she doesn’t know even what her own income is or how these policies would truly affect her, that she is not very politically aware. She doesn’t even seem to understand what Medicare is.
She comes across as a very sweet, caring, concerned person, cutting a very sympathetic figure–but also a person who has little or no understanding of what she is talking about. One gets the very strong impression that if she were to take the time to study, to come to actually know the issues, to understand the history, and see the situation for what it is, she would probably be completely in favor of the current health reform package.
Hopefully, this incident will not hurt her emotionally to the extent where she will withdraw from the issues, nor will it drive her easily into the arms of the mobs she is already associated with, who will offer her emotional support because she is aligned with their cause, but no truth or real understanding. Hopefully she will react to this the same way I reacted to my first scathing, embarrassing social drubbing upon my own entrance into public debate, and react instead by a strong desire to research, fully understand the facts, and re-enter the debate more informed, no matter which side she eventually comes out on.
But what good she has done is to shine a light on why so many sympathetic, well-meaning Americans are so completely wrong on the issues: because they don’t know the situation very well, are so easily gulled by those who would blatantly misinform them, and just don’t seem to have the built-in capacity–or, at least, the time and necessary resources–to strike out independently and inform themselves.
Hers is a movement which depends on people like that, which depends upon people being uninformed and scared to death. It uses people like her. She is not her own person, because she depends on others to handle things like knowing the facts. She simply trusts what others say, and works from that. And, like so many millions of Americans, she is being used against her own best interests, against the interests of her children.
Knowledge is power. Without knowledge, one becomes used.
Update: In the comments, a visitor pointed out the DailyKos story in which it was found that Ms. Abram has been a member of meetup.com since 2006 and lists group interests as being “Conservatives” and “Glenn Beck.” While this sounds like she’s been into both those categories since 2006, it could also mean that she’s just been a member of the service since 2006 and added those specific interests only recently. The fact that she scrubbed the interests from her meetup page suggests that she didn’t want these things to be known, but doesn’t necessarily mean that she was lying previously; she may just want to avoid being dismissed as an ultra-partisan.
For me, this primarily just confirms one thing that I even predicted in the main post: that the TV channel kept on in her home is Fox “News.” That she’s a Glenn Beck fan is even more revealing, as he is the nexus of insanity on that network. It doesn’t mean that Ms. Abram wasn’t gulled or that she’s somehow a bad person–but on my humble opinion, anyone who is a Glenn Beck fan is more than likely not an innocent sheep, and not someone who will try to become an informed person as I had hoped. The likelihood is that she is and always has been strongly partisan, only finding enough fear to protest as of late.
My bet is that her claim about not being “politically aware” before Obama came to office simply meant that she has always been strongly conservative and cheered Bush on in everything he did–and then, like many other tea-baggers, she started to see the End of the World when Obama got elected, and simply absorbed all the bozo rays Beck gives off.
Maybe she’s still a nice person when politics is not involved, but my estimation of her in general has now dropped a great deal. Anyone who likes Glenn Beck is not a person to be admired.
If the Irag war was “falsely” started blame many of your heroes in congress because they voted for it.How are those with wealth “savaging” the poor. Last time I looked a lot of wealthy people own small businesses that hire lower income people. Was the “Patriot Act” 1300 pages that wasn’t even read by the people voting on it? I don’t think so! Do YOU even know what all 1300 pages of the health-care bill entails? I doubt you know the details. Most senators and congressmen don’t either. The “mobs” you talk about are just concerned citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights! I have seen a lot worse behavior by protesters at RNC conventions!
Carol:
I am almost tempted not to reply to your comment at all, as it bears all the hallmarks of a “drive-by” comment–someone finds the story on Google or a blog aggregator, drops in and leaves an acerbic comment, and never returns. The comment is usually snide, follows standard right-wing talking points, demands detail and proof that the commenters never themselves provide, and almost never leaves a source for the claims made.
Nevertheless, let’s see if we can answer these points, and hope that (a) you’ll return, and (b) will participate in actual debate.
First, I don’t think I ever suggested that I respect the Democrats or moderates in Congress; in fact, I have criticized them often for being weak-kneed, afraid of their own shadows, and too ready to compromise for nothing in return. So let’s dispense with the unwarranted sarcasm, shall we?
As for the assertion that Democrats are to blame for voting for the Iraq War, there are several points of contention. First, it was a Republican bill and almost all if not all of the courageous ‘nay’ votes came from the left. Democrats were the ones holding back, wanting reassurances, speaking caution. They were the ones insisting on evidence (remember Colin Powell’s fraudulent assurances of WMD? Remember Cheney’s certain statements that Iraq was 6 months away from a nuclear weapon?), insisting that Congress be the one to approve or disapprove, insisting that this be an international endeavor with outside support–for which they were excoriated.
Second, the main reason that some Democrats voted for the bill is that Bush and the Republicans had done such a thorough job of making the war seem so absolutely necessary that had more Democrats voted against it, it would have been risking political suicide.
Third, many Democrats who did vote made it crystal clear that they were not approving the bill so that Bush could push the country into a war; instead, they trusted Bush for what he claimed: that he didn’t want to go to war and would do so only as a last resort if all else had failed and there was no other option. Kerry, for example, when the bill passed, made this stance of only-as-a-last-chance-action very clear, and was later demonized for it. Some Democrats were foolish enough to trust Bush on that, and we now know that Bush always intended to go to war and lied about doing it as a last resort. He abused the power Congress handed to him.
But lastly, many Democrats did vote for the war–and liberals still to this day castigate them for it. I think what they did was out of political fear, and that they should have refused (see my blog entries from before the war for proof), and many on the left, including myself, still blame them for their weaknesses, however little choice many may have felt they had.
That said, your argument–that Democrats are to blame for the Iraq War–is facile and dishonest. You know full well that however some or even most of the Democrats voted, this would never have taken place had the Democrats been in the lead. Bush and Cheney created the war, falsified evidence and lied about the war, corrupted the intelligence agencies to create bogus support for the war, and Republicans in Congress were solidly pushing it, attacking Democrats viciously if they questioned it, calling them traitors and worse.
To lay the Iraq War on the Democrats is not only wrong, it is either sadly mistaken or outright dishonest.
This is the standard right-wing line: since wealthy people and corporations hire lower-income people, this means that wealthy people are doing poor people a special favor and should be lauded for their generosity.
A contract for employment is a two-way deal, it is not charity. An employer pays a salary not as a favor, but in return for hard work well done. And when employers hire, they negotiate the best they can to pay the least amount possible in the situation, and provide the least benefits. The corporate mindset is to never be generous; see this blog entry about how Costco was castigated by Wall Street for not abusing their employees.
Corporations similarly abuse their customers, making false claims, attempting to convince the public that they need things they don’t need, using psychological strategies to engender fear and lack of confidence that will cause them to buy the product, then use dishonest schemes to fool people into paying excessive prices for substandard products. Not all businesses, but most.
A corporation, by definition, works against the best interests of their employees and of the people in general. Without government laws against false advertising, monopolies, worker’s rights laws and so forth and so on, we’d be back in the days where children were being used in dangerous factories to produce the product–and that is, in fact, exactly where we are now with many third-world countries where U.S. corporations have moved in to take advantage of such liberties. The fact that such laws exist is proof that they are needed.
Anyone trusting a corporation or the wealthy to do the right thing or treat their workers with respect will be sadly disappointed almost all of the time. A few righteous businesses stand out, but for the most part, no.
Ummm… here’s where I begin to suspect that you may be a liberal pretending to be an uninformed conservative to be shot down. The Patriot Act was most noted for exactly that fact–that Republicans introduced it in the middle of the night and didn’t give Congress time enough to to read it before being forced to vote on it. The health care bill has been available for some time now for public view, far more than enough time for everyone who wants to read it to do so. The Patriot Act–about the same length as the current health care bill–was forced through passage only 24 hours after it was introduced and no one was given the opportunity to read it through and through.
What in particular do you want to discuss? Go ahead, ask. The bill is there for us to read, nothing is hidden. In particular, it’s be great if you could point to the part about “death panels” or instituting single-payer socialized medicine. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
When a group of people come to a meeting with the sole purpose of disrupting it with shouting, yelling, and intimidation, that’s a “mob.” Show me in the Constitution where people have the right to get bused into meetings in other districts so they can scream loud enough to make sure others cannot speak or hear or communicate with their representatives.
You act like a mob, you’re a mob. Period, end of story. If liberals act that way, they’re a mob too. Show me the video where liberals disrupted Republican town halls so that local constituents could not even talk with their representatives, and you’ll have a point. But protesters shouting from outside? Not even close.
She’s not the wide-eyed innocent she plays on TV!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/13/214857/520
If she’s not set up by reps, then she’s naive.
Or naive and lazy. It’s so easy to believe straightforward into whatever you’re hearing on TV – but in the internet era if you don’t google what you hear on TV, then you’re lazy and/or stupid.
@Carol P,:
those concerned citizens are arriving at Town Hall discussions, not to communicate, but to shout down and shut down reasonable debate – they don’t want people to be informed.
Those concerned citizens are arriving at these Town Hall meetings armed with guns. As I recall from the Bush era, a person armed with an Anti-Bush t-shirt had to stand in a “free speech zone” two blocks away from the event.
Who you people kidding.
You and your ilk are destroying America. Plane and simple.
These events prove that, if the United States is to survive, we need to return to the fairness doctrine, and it needs to be applied in all mediums
Also, people shouldn’t be able to graduate from high school without a minimal literacy in Geography, History and Civics.
Everyone note Kitty’s comment, and see the update to the post. Since Kitty was not registered and I didn’t see it until I woke up this morning (remember the Tokyo time lag), it did not get approved until after three other comments were made.
Kitty, thanks for the pointer, and see my comments in the post.
Carol:
I thought so.