Paranoia on Parade

"A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. "

Mark Twain (also attributed to Winston Churchill)

The White House's plan to reform America's health system has been attacked by wild distortions and lies designed not to inform but to terrify. Sarah Palin reached the nadir (so far) of this fear campaign yesterday, shrieking,

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

It's all complete garbage, a dark and twisted fantasy spun out of thin air by people desperate to stop reform in its tracks but who are utterly unable to argue their case on the merits. (And by the way, Sarah, for someone who whines all the time about how your family is supposedly hounded by the media, you sure do love using them as props whenever it suits your purposes.)

In doing so, they are simply falling into line with the standard right-wing playbook: if the facts do not support your position, screw the facts and lie like hell, scaring the crap out of your audience wherever possible.

Horrifyingly, this terror campaign is working. Congressional town hall meetings have been inundated by mobs whipped into a frenzy by false talking points, and have been the location of numerous fights and physical attacks. At least one representative has received death threats and one other has decided to cancel town halls entirely rather than have them become occasions for more mob intimidation.

Thuggish paranoia is on the march in America, and the home of the brave has become the home of the frightened. People's minds are pumped full of terror on a daily basis, and some will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it caters to their fears.

For example, a few days ago the White House announced an E-mail address to which people can send the more pernicious lies encountered in this whole miserable situation so they can be quickly debunked. The right wing issued a bloodcurdling scream en masse, and a new phony talking point was born. "The White House wants you to turn in your neighbors!" this one goes. "Report anyone who does not agree with the president!"

And people are believing it.

(Deep and disgusted sigh)

What kind of a country are we, where our people fall so easily for the most outrageous lies? Have we really forgotten how to determine if something is true or not? How many ways can we say, "It is a lie?" How many times must we say, "It is not true?"

A few years ago, it was revealed that the Bush Administration ran a massive (and massively illegal) spying program, snooping on Americans' phone calls, E-mails, web browsing, and anything else they wanted. It was also revealed that the Administration attempted to set up a civilian corps of informants who would spy on people in their own homes and report anything "suspicious." (That one was never put into operation not because it was illegal or immoral, but because the American people would never have accepted it.)

Those violations of our privacy were real. This one is imaginary. And it is a particularly bitter irony that the very same people who a few years ago lambasted the Bush Administration's critics are now leading the shrieking chorus of paranoia. When the Bush spying operation was revealed, Senator John Cornyn, who started this latest freak-out, notably snapped, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Ah, what a difference a change in presidents makes.

The fear level is stoked ever higher by the talking heads who revel in terrorizing their listeners and viewers and who live for turning them into quivering lumps of paranoid jelly. Rush Limbaugh growls with dreary regularity that President Obama is like Hitler. Glenn Beck's broadcasts have become so drenched in paranoia that he actually had to plead with his viewers not to be violent. (They do not appear to be listening.)

Is it any wonder Obama receives 400% more death threats than President Bush did? How long will it be before someone with more guns than brains takes Limbaugh or Beck or Palin or whoever seriously, and decides to murder the president for the supposed good of the country? Or perhaps it will be "just" a senator or representative, perhaps at a town hall meeting. Have the people who get their kicks from terrorizing people with sickening lies considered that possibility? Or will they get it only when someone gets killed? (Then again, they didn't get it when Kansas doctor George Tiller was killed in church after years of vilification on Fox News.)

In the meantime, I'm making a direct appeal to anyone who reads what I write today. Don't believe the scare stories. Do the research. Think for yourself. Verify what you are told and decide for yourself whether it is true or not. And if it's crap, call them on it. That would be a very American thing to do.