The "Con" Trap

OK, everybody: shut up about how the hooligans - now rioters - disrupting health care reform townhalls are just dupes of the anti-reform special interests and repugs.

Today, both Josh Marshall and Steven Benen have pieces on how the disrupters are being conned into believing various insane lies about President Obama's health care reform plans.

No, they're not being conned. The people who turn out to disrupt the health care town halls may or may not believe the kill granny and socialized medicine and concentration camp stories, but it doesn't matter, because all of that is irrelevant to their real goal:

stop the ni**er who stole the White House.

The birther hysteria, the contradictory accusations of Obama being a commie, a terrorist and a fascist all at the same time, Acorn, Ayers, all of it are just convenient means to the only end:

stop the ni**er who stole the White House

All efforts to educate or persuade or mollify these people are doomed to failure because they don't address the real problem: these people won't stop until they get rid of the ni**er who stole the White House.

Generations from now, their children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will tell stories about how their ancestors never gave up until they finally got rid of the ni**er who stole the White House.

These people are a clear and present danger to the republic and the president. Sic the Secret Service on their asses, throw 'em in Guantanamo and leave 'em there to rot.

In the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates gets to the heart of it:

... is part of it based on the idea that "national health care" really will cover everyone? Historian Ira Katznelson outlines how Roosevelt was able to past the New Deal in part because Southern senators were able to cut their black constituents out of the "deal."

And there is the fact that never in this country's history have people admitted to being racist. Even the Confederate white supremacists insisted that they were looking out for black people. They were as cynical as any Senator today.

And then I got this via e-mail today:

Yesterday evening I was to attend to the Health Care summit with(D) Rep Betty Reed and(D) Rep Kathy Castor, I'm a Precinct Captain (203) in Tampa and we received our talking points to rebut any NEGATIVE GOP talking points on healthcare. I never made it in the building. I've never in my life really experience outright racism in a public place. Signs of Obama hung in effigy, racial slurs on signs, people chanting negative words ( too many to list) and outright screaming at Obama supporters. The hatred was in their eyes and they actually scared me for a moment. At first I was shocked, then a little scared and then I got outright mad in the span of 1 minute.............. I actually left (the "hood" would have come out). I was totally blown away it was a mad house. I'm kinda mad at my self now, because I left. I'm still shaking my head in awe....................I'm still cold inside.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....