Reaction to health care: A step backwards

Source: University of Virginia

There have been nasty and violent responses to the passage of health care: Spitting on members of congress; chanting the “N” word at black congressmen on their way to vote; images of Nancy Pelosi surrounded by flames; death threats to members of Congress; Republican congressmen on the House floor cheering protesters in the gallery; bricks hurled through Democratic campaign offices; Palin’s call to “reload” and her use of firearm crosshairs to “target” congressional seats; and calls for an armed militia to prepare for the coming battle — labeled “Armageddon” by House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Governors of 30 states were threatened (“resign within three days or face removal from office)” by Guardians of the Free Republics, a group that aspires to “restore the U.S. republic by peacefully dismantling parts of the government.”

The demographics of the Sixties and the present

If there were still Americans among us old enough to remember the Civil War, they might well remark that what’s happening now – the animosity between groups that hold starkly differing views on the role of government – is reminiscent of that time. Within living memory, the intensity of actions and emotions recalls the turmoil of the sixties.
I remember the passion of the civil rights movement. I was in Cambridge when police used dogs and fire hoses against protesters on the banks of the Charles. I stayed with friends in the suburbs of New Haven one weekend when violence got out of hand in my downtown neighborhood. I was in the crowd in Washington D.C. when Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech. I remember where I was when I learned he’d been shot.
Some things were different then. The Viet Nam war was in progress. The baby boom generation, amassed on college campuses, was filled with youthful idealism and felt the strength of its demographic bulge. Today it may very well be demographics again that explain what’s happening to the country.

A dwindling, threatened minority that fears disenfranchisement

One of the best explanations I’ve read comes from a New York Times editorial by Frank Rich. The anger we’re seeing, he says, has nothing to do with health care. While Social Security and Medicare had their share of opponents, it was only civil rights that prompted an extreme reaction comparable to what we see now.

[I]t was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance. …
[T]he current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since. …
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

If Republicans fear the Tea Party, we should too

Unfortunately for the right wing, the demographics are against them. For the year ending in July 2008, 48 percent of American births were to Asian, black and Hispanic women. Non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority by 2012.

The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded. …
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

Related posts:
Obama on race and the Tea Party
Our only language is English
Why is it so hard to reform health care? National identity
The tactics of health care opponents may discredit their message
Health care reform: Navigating the maze