"A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds that 41% of Americans believe that President Obama's health care reform plan will lead to government panels withholding life-or-death treatments from patients. Said pollster Keating Holland: "That's a minority, but it's a pretty sizable one, and that could spell trouble for the White House."This comes after President Obama called such claims -- made by Sarah Palin and others -- as "lies" in his speech before Congress last week."
TW: This death panel meme has been around now for a couple of months. It is no longer a "rumor", folks at this point either believe their POTUS or believe Sarah Palin/Limbaugh etc., facts be damned (I am personally done trying to argue about it). This is where demagoguery leads. Little nuggets of truth are twisted into falsehoods which become embedded within the public's consciousness.
When folks lament the inability of our government to act decisively one should remember the results above. Folks choose to "trust" Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh over their POTUS. Such is the challenge of democracy. Are things getting worse? The only thing that provides (mixed) comfort for me is the knowledge that right-wing nuttery is not new and we have survived. What is new perhaps is their embrace by senior Republican leadership but the transition of the Barry Goldwater bloc into the leadership of the Republican party was already in motion by November, 1963 (and Goldwater himself would likely puke if he saw how far right some of his Republican colleagues have evolved). This genre of folks is reactionary with a perverse view of what constitutes "real" America.
From Vanity Fair:
"...[JFK biographer]Manchester...discovered that Dallas “had become the Mecca for medicine-show evangelists … the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry Societies, and the headquarters of [ultra-conservative oil billionaire] H. L. Hunt and his activities.”
“In that third year of the Kennedy presidency,” Manchester wrote, “a kind of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed, ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas.…Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were required to attend radical seminars.” A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as “the Democrat flag.” A wanted poster with J.F.K.’s face on it was circulated, announcing “this man is Wanted” for—among other things—“turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations” and appointing “anti-Christians … aliens and known Communists” to federal offices. And a full-page advertisement had appeared the day of the assassination in The Dallas Morning News accusing Kennedy of making a secret deal with the Communist Party..."
From
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