The right-wing, always so scornful of CODEPINK, has taken a page from our playbook and distorted it by disrupting congressional town hall meetings on health care. While we wholeheartedly support the practice of peaceful dissent, we can't stomach it when that dissent is based on ignorance or when the dissenters are actually thinly disguised lobbyists for the corporate health care industry.
Where to begin. Their "dissent for me but not for thee" attitude? Their smug self-assurance that while their causes are "just," ours our just foolish? Or that anyone who protests nationalized health care is a tool of an "industry" (ie; that old devil big business).
What I find most annoying of all, it's their assumption that most or all of the protests are planned and not outraged citizens waking up and realizing for the first time how close this country is teetering on the brink of socialism and ruin. And in an effort to play by the rules of Democracy, try to approach their representatives with their fears and questions only to get rebuffed and talked down to.
Most protesters are just ordinary people thinking the official who was voted in to represent them should listen to the will of the majority, while many of these officials seem to think they were elected because they are superior and know what's best for their constituency, who should appreciate their inferiority, shut up and allow themselves to be herded.
