Beware of right-wing pandemonium

Make no mistake. They are coming to the townhall meetings to make an intentional scene. Right-wing community members did this in my community to great effect in order to stop a shopping center in an area that was zoned for shopping, decades before they moved into the area. They are loud, they carry signs, they solicit the media. They are waiting for us to make a mistake. One shove, one cop too many, and suddenly, they have a photo opportunity that they will blast to everyone else in order to hook in the independents into their crazed way of thinking. And they are crazed.

Consider this stage four in the right-wing activist handbook. If they have succeeded, they have made you hesitate, and that's just long enough for them to push forward. Imagine they're pushing a boulder over a cliff. Never mind that the village lies below that cliff and there will be casualties that they haven't considered. Someone has already convinced them, that in order to save the village, that boulder must go over the cliff. So they will use everything at their disposal to do this.

When they reach this stage, they are not rational. The things they say will be frought with contradictions and misinformation. As a left-winger, you might hesitate because you see this discontinuity and think everybody else sees it too. That hesitation, is your weakness. You need to be prepared to speak in rational tones and point out what they failed to see, and hope that a camera captures it. Because it will be the rebroadcasting of the event, when cooler heads prevail, that the obvious will be seen.

But just to make things more interesting, remember, that right-wingers are not always 100% wrong. They may have been stoked by a germ of truth. Find that truth and acknowledge it and deal with it. The rest dismiss.

Last thing: Don't assume that you don't have virulent right-wing dems who don't get caught up in this. They do.

We know there is a tremendous amount of misinformation circulating around the country regarding the healthcare reform bill and we really need people to be quiet and pay attention to the facts.. I noted that the DNC is making an effort to dispell the myths at
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/settingtherecord

While I am delighted at the effort to correct misconceptions, I'm concerned. What strikes me is that this message is like preaching to the choir. Each bullet point will be construed as inflammatory by most conservatives who enter the site because it is all about what the republicans are doing. Why not a site that merely sets the record straight. A matter of fact approach like "We are concerned about the misinformation circulating regarding health insurance reform. Here is the misinformation ....and this is the facts....." Instead, immediately the reader is hit with :

False Republican Attacks on Health Insurance Reform
In an attempt to stall or even derail health insurance reform, many Republican officials have continually made false and outlandish claims that distort the truth about the reforms that are actually being proposed.

Special Interest Groups' Misinformation Campaign
Special interest groups continue to rely on scare tactics and mistruths to create confusion and distort the debate. In many cases, they’ve attacked provisions that don’t even appear in any of the health-care measures under consideration.

Viral Chain Emails Filled with Blatantly False Claims
Many people have received anti-health-reform chain emails filled with blatantly false claims.

Staged Disruptions Organized by Right-Wing Groups
These disruptions are being organized and funded by special interest groups who are trying desperately to preserve the status quo. One of the groups behind these disruptions – Conservatives for Patients' Rights – is being helped by some of the same people behind the notorious 'Swift Boat' ads of 2004.


To me, these bullet points seem antagonistic and counter productive to our intent. If the intent is to "set the record straight" as the site indicates, it seems to me that the site will turn off the very people it is meant to inform. The site is sponsored by the DNC and linked to www.whitehouse.gov. If this is the way we are going to deciminate truth, we are never going to overcome partisan hurdles. We've got to quit with the republicans this and democrats that. Can't we just put out the information for the facts they are and not call political parties into the explanation ?

It's not our job to make them look more presentable to the media. I loved a photo I saw in a paper today where the right-winger who had come to speak had completely distorted facial features, because it was truthful. That picture captured the insanity of their performance. Obviously, if they spoke in more rational tones, we wouldn't have the photo opportunities to capture those moments.

Listen, we're allowing them in the townhall meetings when we were excluded by their right-wing president in the last term. If they come to talk in a rational manner, we'll listen to them. That much is obvious. WE'RE ALLOWING THEM A PLACE AT THE TABLE WITHOUT PUTTING CONDITIONS FOR THAT ACCESS. They would never do the same for us, but that's what makes us different.

What you want to see is a contrast between us. They are loud and disruptive and devoid of most facts. The only thing I caution leftwingers, is to be honest about the fact checking. If there is even a 1% truthfulness in what they say, acknowledge it, before, rationally dismantling the rest.

However; a bully is a bully is a bully.

These so called outraged folks at the townhalls they are bullys and until recently they have been allowed to bully and interupt the townhalls with bullshit. Barney Frank shut that woman down as he should have...being nice to bullys is not always the answer.

Dems have tried to talk and educate these people and they hear absolutely nothing...why because all they care about is there is a black man in the WH. They are not going to get over it and they are not going to move on...it's sad but true.

is what pushes them beyond the levels of civil discourse. If there was only some way of peeling the layers back so that everyone can see their true motivations.