A Few More Thoughts (see below)
Following up from yesterday and cross posted at
First Draft:
OK, just to state the obvious (and I've been accused of that before) re: the latest eruption of the Crazy Eileens, it's plainly evident that for them it's not about health care. They've lurched about for the last year or so, waddling from Sarah Palin rally to tea party to town hall meeting, at the latter functioning, consciously or not, as a
de facto studio audience.
Sure, they're more than capable of causing significant damage. One, they're plain nuts, two, they're the types for whom "Happiness is a Warm Gun" isn't a John Lennon song but a philosophical foundation (well, to the extent that they have a philosophy), they favor apocalyptic rhetoric, tend to believe in lunatic fallacies like the rapture and/or the Left Behind books, etc. etc. So I'm not suggesting they be ignored...
That said, neither should we allow them to intimidate. For all their
hollering and moaning about birth certificates, death panels, and socialism, I'm pretty sure they don't command anything approaching a majority or even significant minority. And while, yeah, that's more hunch than science on my part, here's my reasoning:
If these freaks really did constitute a massive group, SOMEONE would already be trying to sell them something:
Anyway, the evident lack of enthusiasm to tap into this "market" suggests it's less a market and more...more a, well, television studio audience: loud, sure, but small and insignificant...provided someone doesn't go bugfuck insane and try to blow things up.
