These infuriated rightwingers are the very definition of "TOOLS, personified!!"

Tools -- things you USE for the ends you want.

What a sorry bunch of deluded morans. A whole lot of fury, emotion, and opinion -- totally heartfelt and invested in -- based on lies and manipulation.

It's puppetry at its worst.

I never much liked the term "tools," applied to people -- but here, it's a perfect fit. I feel sorry for them, and infuriated with their puppeteers.

but people also have a personal responsibility to understand what they do. Would you do anything just because someone told you to?

Would you sign a blank contract for a used car on the say so of the salesman, no matter how emotional you were about owning it?

At Nuremberg, the United States took the position that "just following" orders did not excuse war crimes. The US held everyone responsible for their own actions, ordered or not. I think that is fair. The people who suffered under the hands of those who were "only following orders" didn't have an opinion. They were mostly dead or so badly injured that they were afraid to speak at all.

The people who are disrupting health care meetings, who disrupted abortion clinics, who went to tea bagging meeting have choices to make too. Their judgment may be poor, but they are not two year old children and they are not under some supernatural control which makes them incapable of knowing right from wrong. They know that their actions will help hurt people in the end. People who need health care and who do not have it and cannot get it without government help. They simply don't care. They didn't care about torture in their name during the Bush years, they didn't care that people like themselves were trying to abrogate the Constitution. All they cared about were their own ideas and to Hell with everyone else.

I have noticed that this "we should feel sorry for them" stuff started recently once people began calling them what they were. Racists who could not stand the thought of an African American president,thugs and zealots without any regard for human suffering other than their own. People who would use much needed health care by others, simply to further a failed agenda, regardless of who it was going to hurt.

Your compassion is admirable, but that same compassion would engender nothing but contempt from the people you are directing it toward. They are not sad helpless people. They are angry, violent individuals who seemingly have no conscience about what they do and no empathy for others. They are capable of making choices, though. Not only for themselves but they repeatedly try to make choices for people who would rather make choices for themselves and live their own lives without interference. That is very, very wrong and they know that too. This why all of a sudden they want us to see them as the "real" victims in this situation, when in fact they are some of the chief victimizers.

I heard on Keith Olbermann yesterday about one participant in the town hall meeting disruptions and the tea bagging who had been very vocal about not needing or wanting any type of help with health insurance from the government. He is now very sick and he is asking for donations so that he can get treatment for his illness. You see, he doesn't have health insurance. He couldn't afford it under the present system. I wonder how many people who want and need health care that he has tried to put in the same position he is?

I've grappled with that over and over, as well.

But I still think these people have limitations, and inundations -- limited intellect, exposure to information, motivation, sense of security, etc, and they're inundated with powerfully misleading propaganda, emotional appeals, confusion, etc.

The people who know and manipulate their vulnerabilities are, to me, more morally culpable.

That doesn't mean the tools are completely without blame in all circumstances. But to a large degree, they really know not what they do. They operate on fear, primarily. (It all comes down to fear, whatever equations I use to boil it down.)

They're all responsible for their behaviors, yes. But just as in Germany, it wouldn't have happened without someone pulling the strings in highly crafted manipulation.

It's as though someone did a terrible act under a sort of hypnotic delusion. They bought into the delusion, they're responsible for their acts, but those who deluded them bear a greater responsibility, as I see it. So on some level, despite their accountability, I feel sorry for the tools who may wake up someday and realize what they've done, and how they've been used.

any good hypnotist will tell you that a subject cannot be hypnotized unless they want to be. What you are saying could be labeled moral relativism. Suppose you were robbed at knife point or worse, by a person who had no exposure to education, was illiterate, maybe abused as a child, and certainly angry at society. The law calls that assault, regardless. It is a crime. His/her only excuse would be to say there was no ability to tell right from wrong. Otherwise they would go to jail. Even if older friends egged him/her on it wouldn't matter. They might go to jail too, but the person who held the knife still committed a crime.

We all operate on fear. We fear different things. We usually manage to function as productive citizens who have respect for the rights of others and live our lives as best we can. The people responsible for these actions on all levels have the same ability to function as the rest of us.

As to it not happening in Germany without someone pulling the strings, the fact is that many Germans did oppose the Nazis. They were killed and punished with those the Nazis had singled out for persecution. Ordinary people did extraordinarily courageous things to try to prevent what death and suffering that they could. Some closed their eyes and tried to live as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Still others acted out and enabled the Nazi regime to function. There is no excuse for them. A country does not go through its life sailing on still smooth waters. There are always challenges to overcome and zealots to repudiate. That is the point. Everyone who encounters evil has the same responsibility to repudiate it and speak out. That takes courage and great sacrifice at times, but still good people do it.

So when you describe these few bad seeds as poor pitiful creatures led astray only by someone else's will and not responsible for their actions, what are you saying? That there are two separate groups of people in this country? That some of us have intelligence and others do not? That some of us have the ability and the duty to try to speak up when we know something is wrong because of some invisible thing inside of us that makes us "better?" While the other group of poor pitiful creatures are so incapable of understanding reality that they can be hypnotized and led around by the stronger wills of superior beings who feed them thoughts and emotions? Did you ever read Nietzsche's superman theory? Because what you are saying sounds a bit like it. Don't you find it a bit odd that you are in effect telling us that we should accept with equanimity the attempts of the non supermen to devalue our lives or even help the health insurance companies to take them from us? I do.

but it wasn't what I wrote. :shrug:

I was looking at it as I wrote my answer. Maybe you want to go back and read what you wrote to see if there is something in it that applies after all.

I was giving out some "tool tips." Simply put, no one manipulates the town hall thugs. They appear in many conservative venues and are entirely in control of their own actions. They are as culpable as their leaders, and no less responsible. Boiled down simply, that is what I posted.

If I can clarify this further do not hesitate to ask.