What I Saw at the Town Hall
Twenty minutes into my two-hour wait to get a seat at Senator Ben Cardin's town hall event, I started keeping a "Nazi tally" by counting references I overheard to Adolf Hitler, Germany, or the Nazi Party. Besides the usual suspects, the Lyndon LaRouche brigade was out in full force handing out fliers and pamphlets likening Obama to a new Hitler (although the real problem is the Jews, if you ask them, so I'm not sure why they don't welcome that). It was a common theme, and not just amongst the anti-Semites: "This is exactly how Nazi Germany began!" was a standard echo heard in line.
After a couple of arguments with Christian fundamentalists who accused me of not really being on their side because I'm a godless libertarian-type, the lines funneled in. "Welcome to an exercise in democracy, son," a guard told me. Indeed. By way of contrast, while standing in line to question Cardin, I spotted an eleven-year-old boy being told by an older woman that "this isn't what democracy is about."
The town halls are exactly what you're seeing on television. The crowds are overwhelmingly conservative -- and I mean Glenn Beck conservative, not David Frum conservative. I'm talking angry, ready-to-roll conservative, not rational, let's-discuss-philosophy conservative. I can't think of any more appropriate word than 'redneck' to describe most of the crowd. Literally every person who took more than ten seconds to preface his question was shouted down by "Ask your question!" by an array of overfed hicks. They were also prone to shout "You work for us!" and "You just don't get it!" at Cardin, as if Cardin should be expected to represent the ideals of the 9/12 Project or something.
A reporter for The Hill interviewed me afterward, asking me about the tone of the locals. I apologized for their behavior, of course, but hastened to assure her that she should not neglect the rational, capitalist case against "universal health care." That same theme tied into the question I asked Senator Cardin. "My question cuts to the philosophical root of the issue," I said. "Strip away the histrionics of the crowd, the specific provisions of the individual bills, and what you're left with is a question of its philosophical core. So I want to know: in your political philosophy, how do you determine what a right is? And more importantly, how do you determine what a non-right is?" The crowd clapped, though not as enthusiastically as they did for those filled with anger. Cardin's response was typical political mush about how he believes in corporate responsibility and good government. Okay, whatever. I tried to follow up, but the microphone -- understandably -- had been turned off.
After the town hall ended, an obese women in a plain white t-shirt attracted the attention of about a dozen reporters. Practically in hysterics, she explained that her liver was thrashed and that under Obama's plan, she'd be killed off as an unproductive member of society. The woman was bawling her eyes out, the reporters taking in every tear. Nobody wanted to talk about the issues. They wanted their narrative. And they got it.
Cardin himself is useless; if there's a bigger nonentity in the Senate, I can't think of one. Every last one of his answers were pathetically canned, although someone managed to squeeze out support for investigating tort reform from him (don't hold your breath). But nobody left the town hall knowing anything more than they did when they arrived. On the other hand, though, nobody actually showed up to learn anything about the bill. I'm not sure who's more responsible for the pointlessness of the event: the audience or Ben Cardin.
All in all, I'd have to say that I learned something today: what we need is not health care reform. What we really need is education reform.
Image courtesy of Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television.