Why I Secretly Love That Conservatives Are Protesting

The ranting and raving of conservatives at town hall meetings isn't all bad for America. That's right. I said it. Worldwide it has always been progressive parties who come out to protests. Very rarely are people out with signs saying, "Support the rich!" or "I want less civil rights!" Progress is often made when the wealthy becomes corrupt and people have had enough of being under their thumb. In fact the very premise of Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" (that few have actually read, but everyone seems to oppose) was/ is that capitalism could only work for a finite amount of time before it would isolate wealth within a small portion of the population and the people would demand a fairer economic system. Where he was wrong was in capitalism's ability to keep "the people" on the rope just enough that they might complain, but they won't rise up. Socialism is the natural next step (after industrialization) of a civilized nation. It is where people go once their country has made enough money to raise the entire nation to the next level--a moral high ground that cares about everyone living there. The reason working and middle class citizens are protesting is that they are no where close to being able to comprehend a moral high ground in their personal lives. Morality is a subject out of their realm of comprehension. It gets them no closer to having their basic needs met.

Let's take, say, the family of a medical doctor. They make a considerable amount of money and I don't think anyone would argue that if they are not financially well-off it is their own fault. The children of these individuals will likely have their schooling paid for--in many cases private schooling with very dedicated teachers and very harsh rules that encourage discipline and self-reliance. The children of wealthier families can see the value in this type of education mainly because they are allowed to have very high standards for their lives. They won't have student loans to pay back, they won't have to work fulltime jobs that distract from their studies, they won't have dysfunctional families causing trauma in their lives; they can focus solely on learning and later on making money. These people hopefully learn a certain level of compassion somewhere along the line. Financial comfort makes it easy to be compassionate. If one has a great deal of disposable income it is eventually seen as rudeness and avarice to not give something back. It can also become socially isolating. Thus, these are not the people we are seeing at anti-healthcare reform rallies. In fact these individuals have been relatively quiet in this debate. Why? What decent human being with financial and social comfort is going to stand in the face of 50 million uninsured and millions more under-insured--people who are their neighbors and family members in many cases--and say, "We don't need reform. Let them figure out a way to take care of themselves."

This is why the ranting mobs of middle and working class conservatives at town hall protests is encouraging to me. It means they are engaging in the national conversation. This is the first step toward learning, and thus, toward progress. Eventually they are either going to get tired and go home, commiserating with one another, and feeling dejected and unheard, or they are going to calm down and attempt to articulate what specifically they are so angry about. The reform is for them. They are the uninsured and under-insured, yet they have been so ingrained with the, "Government bad, free market good" dogma that they can't even hear the details of the plans being discussed. As "the people" (meaning the majority of Americans making under $50K a year) become engaged in the debate--if they actually listen and debate--will start to recognize that they are being very subtly oppressed by the principles they believe so strongly in. When this realization hits on a widespread level a country naturally moves left. We are the most conservative democratic industrialized nation in the world. The fact that this is true speaks to how uninformed and hopeless our citizenry feels in competing with corporate fat cats. They've made their peace with these giants and walk through life trying to be good little conservative workers so these companies will hire them. The only way to compete with corporations is to use the legislative powers of government to balance the scales. Engaging in the national conversation leads people to see that this is true. When the majority starts voting to tax the wealthy more to instate more public options (and improve those that exist) to supplement their small salaries (instead of supplementing with credit card debt and irrational loans, and unhealthy means of making money, which only makes them weaker an corporations stronger), the country will improve all around. It's happened all over Europe. Gun violence drops, crime decreases, drug and alcohol related issues decrease, etc. People want and need to be taken care of. So far the people have not realized that the answer is as simple as showing up at public events and speaking their minds. Instead they turn to unhealthy behaviors to ignore the issues or get their needs met. They isolate, the way depressed people do. They pull out of the conversation and out of the culture and become hard and stubborn and ignorant. Then we see what we have now; people protesting their own best interests in favor of supporting the very people denying them health coverage.

This is why I am secretly loving the political atmosphere of the U.S. these days. People are engaged. They're pissed and they're coming out of the woodwork. This does two things: 1) It allows respectable, moderate conservatives living in their comfortable suburbs to see how scary their political party has become, and 2) It allows these people to start learning about politics in general. It's embarrassing how little Americans know about their government. If radical reforms is what gets people researching their arguments and trying to make cases against progressive politicians trying to help them, I'll take it. Let'em yell, or let'em learn. Either way it's better than watching them isolate and collect garages full of guns waiting for the second coming to solve all their problems.