Ever heard the term useful idiots? Thousands of them gathered in the streets of D.C. at the height of the Iraq War. Pink-bedizened. Face paint. Bush/Hitler signs… strutting and fretting their 15 minutes on the stage. They were incapable of engaging in rational discussion. Arguments began with an effigy and ended with a ‘No Blood for Oil’ sign. America eventually turned against the War. Perhaps the idiots were useful. But when it came to “rational discourse,” there was no outcry from the establishment left.
These days, useful idiots comprise a small percentage of the town hall meetings and tea-parties of the center-right. This subset is loud, angry and not particularly conversant on the subject of health care. But they may be useful. Early on, the MSM tried to magnify this minority as a means of discrediting all opposition to healthcare nationalization. Turns out, they were more useful to the right for whipping up the base and expanding opposition to healthcare nationalization despite the MSM. For better or worse, people did a double-take.
Now that these idiots are being somewhat effective, the left (and even some libertarians) are whining about “rational discourse.” Part of me longs for an intelligent conversation. But as one who has witnessed way too much useful idiocy on the left – from Code Pink to the Hope and Change sheeple – I am no longer terribly eager to explain the nuances of end-of-life consultation now that the tables have turned. Democracy is warty. And tit was made for tat.
When it comes down to it, the right has been offering good ideas for healthcare reform for years—one of which was completely sandbagged in 2006. Saner rightwing voices are being marginalized by the MSM. The MSM's favorite narrative is that the right is being “obstructionist,” offering no reform ideas of their own. Nothing could be further from the truth. Now that a merry band of useful idiots is helping shut down the left’s aspirations for a “public option,” I’m okay with some of these folks being right for the wrong reasons. Until the left and the MSM are willing to a) acknowledge our reform ideas exist, b) discuss them intelligently before the public, and c) stop framing genuine opposition as nothing but a bunch of birthers, racists and troglodytes, I for one will sit back and smile whenever I hear a useful idiot say something like “death panel.”
(Note: none of this is meant as my weighing on on the World Net Daily controversy. Some forms of idiocy are probably not useful.)
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