Disturbing Atmosphere.

The political atmophere today is quite disturbing to me. The disent at some of the town meetings going on about health care reform is not just heated debate. It seems more hateful. There are things being said that are difficult to understand. People are painting swastikas on signs around places of meetings, they are complaining about things that are going to happen if Obama's changes go through that don't seem to have any relationship to facts.

There are people who are still saying that Obama was born in Kenya. Like the State of Hawaii is lying, all of them. Unfortunately, there will always people who will believe only what they want to believe, never mind those pesky facts.

There are people who are saying that the reforms will cause old people to be euthanised. This rumor can be traced to the House GOP leadership. There are fake "grassroot"organiszations that are being run by suspect people. Freedom Works is run by former House majority leader Dick Armey. Conservatives for Patient's Rights is run by Rick Scott, former head of Columbia/HCA, a for profit hospital chain. Mr Scott was forced out of that job due to an investigation for fraud. The company finally pleaded guilty of over billing State and Federal health plans. They paid out 1.7 Billion dollars in fines!

Many people say they disapprove of "any"form of socialised or government run healthcare.The surprising thing is that nearly half of those questioned were on Medicare. They don't seem to realise that medicare is a government program.

There seem to be genuinely angry people out there, but what has them angry? I was approached by a person while I was at work. He took one of my samples, made some small talk, then started talking about all the "reverse racial discrimination out there, since that communist became President". For a moment I was struck speechless. I told him that I wasn't paid to talk politics, only food, but I was disturbed. This has happened to me before,from people that I thought I knew. I live in a very conservative state, especially once you get out of Salt Lake City. But our store is practically downtown. This is disturbing.

I read Jack Krugman's colunm as well as some others in the New York Times, admittedly a little on the liberal side. There are signs of cultural and racial anxiety among people. I guess they expected Obama to wave a magic wand and all would be well. Now everyone thinks he's not living up to his promises. There are cynical political operatives out there who are fanning the flames, stiring up the angry white man. It seems to me that the republicans don't just want to keep the staus quo on health care, they think failure of reform will ruin Obama's presidency and open up things for them to come back to business as usual. Heaven help us all.