Anatomy of a Town Hall Revisited

Anti-health care reform protesters are entitled to their say

In a competing op/ed column in the Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee arcitect Steve Tenance offers a distinctly different account of the health care forum at which Dr Andy Opel suggests he was intimidated.

Tenance suggests that the forum was Congresman Allen Boyd's method of ducking holding a town hall meeting:

"Rather than hold his own town hall meeting for constituents in Tallahassee as he did in many other areas of our district, Boyd allowed himself instead to be a 'panelist' along with two self-described local experts who support a single-payer, government-funded health care system. The 'lead sponsor' for the meeting was the clearly left-leaning, pro-government health care reform advocate Capital Area Community Action Agency, led by former Tallahassee mayor Dot Inman-Johnson. Inman-Johnson claimed that the event was intended to be 'educational, not political' and its purpose was to 'clear up some of the misinformation which only serves to confuse the public.' As if this weren't enough to clearly indicate the blatant bias of the meeting, there were 14 so-called 'co-hosts' as well, most of which, judging by their Web sites, were also pro-government health care proponents.

Does Inman-Johnson have a right to invite our congressman to meet with her special interest group to discuss health care reform? For sure, no less than any other group; however, this meeting should have been in addition to, not in lieu of Congressman's Boyd's own publicly held meeting. While Inman-Johnson made an attempt to appear fair, alternating questioners of opposing views, it was clear that the deck was stacked with invited special interest groups from only one side of the issue and hardly representing a cross-section of Allen Boyd's constituency.

The truth is that to 'sponsor' the event, Inman-Johnson's group had only to pay a fee of $25 per hour to City Hall, for a total cost of $75 for the three hours; and with 14 'co-host' groups, each was out only five bucks. What did all of these groups get in return, one might ask? The perk of 'sponsoring' and 'co-hosting' was that they did not have to wait in line with the rest of us common folk; they had advanced seating through a side door, while the rest of us waited in line for more than two hours. Pretty good return on their investment, I might say.

I arrived at City Hall at 4 pm and immediately took my place in line right outside the chamber doors, and by my count, I was in spot number 52. The City Commission chamber has 250 seats, but when we finally were let into the room, I had to scramble to find an empty seat. I realized then that the room had at least 150 people already seated, far above the 50 that Bill Cotterell reported the following day.

Judging by the applause during the event, it was clear that all of the people in the center of the room were the ones who were pre-seated. Had citizens holding the opposing view tried to pull off such a stunt, Inman-Johnson and her crowd would have been screaming foul and labeled us a mob that was trying to thwart the democratic process.

Why is it that people who support a proposed government takeover of our health care system are considered 'grassroots support' by the left, yet those who seek a different type of reform with less or no government intervention are called 'AstroTurf'? The real intent of this meeting was to influence opinion, not to provide an 'educational' forum for our congressman to meet with constituents for an open and honest discussion with the people he represents in the US Congress. I find the blatant double standards of the left to be frustrating, annoying and simply unacceptable, and I'm going to call it what it is every time I see it.

Congressman Boyd's office has confirmed that he will hold a real meeting with his constituents 'sometime in the fall,' and hold it in a suitable venue to accommodate as many as wish to attend. Let's hope it isn't too late for 'We the People' to participate in the process."

Tenance's account on the story is, oddly enough, just as telling as Dr Opel's, although not in a way that Dr Opel would prefer.

Tenance's tale is that of a congressman attempting to avoid discussing a contentious public issue with their constituents -- substituting (at least for the time being) a public meeting in which communication tends to flow one way for one in which two-way (or multi-directional) communication takes place.

Dr Opel's account of the protests at the forum is one thing. Dr Opel attempted to portray those protesting as violent brutes, and attempt to divert the topic of consideration to racism.

It may be considered disappointing that one of the most politically relevant issues to emerge out of the discussion of a vital public institution is, instead, the manner in which those supporting President Barack Obama's health care reform package are attempting to conclude the debate by marginalizing their opponents.

On one hand we have a Florida State associate professor attempting to demonize his adversaries as racist thugs. On the other hand is a congressman who seems to be favouring a manner of public discourse that favours participation by those he agrees with, and limits the opportunities of his opponents to participate.

One may not necessarily agree with Steve Tenance's views on health care. But one thing that is beyond question is that opponents of health care reform deserve to have their say.

They shouldn't be bullied out of the debate by university professors eager to demean them as racists, nor should they be shut out by a congressman who would rather hobnob with special interest groups that already agree with him.

Look Hard Enough For Something And You Will Find It

The quest to discredit conservative activism continues

In an op/ed column for the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida State University Associate Professor Dr Andy Opel offers an "anatatomy of a photograph" that he believes is quite damning of opponents of US President Barack Obama's health care reform package.

In the photo, pictured left, a man is shown speaking with Opel in what appears to be a quite angry tone. Opel treats it -- and his experiences at a Town Hall meeting on health care -- as evidence that those protesting Obama's health care reforms are using "intimidation and threats of violence" to advance their agenda.

This despite the fact that the man in the picture seems to be pointing at Opel with sheet of paper clutched between his middle and ring fingers.

Even through his own reporting, the story that Opel presents does not materialize. What materializes in its stead is a story about the desperation with which advocates of health care reform are attempting to marginalize and demonize their adversaries.

As with most such stories, it isn't a pretty picture. It begins with Opel going looking for a confrontation:

"On Tuesday, I went to Tallahassee City Hall to attend a forum on health care reform that featured Congressman Allen Boyd as a panelist. The hall was full when I arrived, but outside I found a large group of people participating in a rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity and the James Madison Institute. Some were carrying signs ranging from a swastika with a red line through it to another that read, 'Government Healthcare makes me sick!'

As someone who supports health care reform and would like to see universal coverage in the US, I was curious to find out what was motivating the resistance to health care reform and why anyone would be so hostile to proposals that will provide health coverage to the 46 million people who currently lack access to medical care."

To most people, this would actually be perfectly evident: one way or the other, these people simply do not see this issue the same way Opel does. Opel, like many committed ideologues, doesn't seem to understand this, let alone does he understand how someone may see the issue differently.

But, as it stands, Opel doesn't really seem interested in it at all. He seems perfectly content to portray opponents of health care reform as base brutes.

"What I found, and what the photo I was pictured in on Wednesday's front page revealed, was that many people who are resisting the current government initiatives would rather use intimidation and threats of violence instead of rational debate to advance their agenda."

The picture does seem rather tense, but still a far cry short of impending violence.

It's also perfectly evident from Opel's body language in the picture that he doesn't feel the slightest bit intimidated by the man with whom he is arguing. If anything, his body language is every bit as confrontational.

But that, sadly, isn't Opel's only argument. Despite the folly of recent efforts to invoke racism as part of the health care debate, Opel conflates concerns about illegal immigrants and where they would get their health care into evidence of some kind of white supremacist agenda -- much like MSNBC concealing the race of a man with an assault rifle in order to suggest that he's white.

"Among the people to whom I did talk at length, a number of themes emerged.

One thing that quickly became clear was that this is not really a debate about health care. Within a matter of moments, multiple conversations turned to the issue of 'illegal immigration.' These individuals mistakenly believed that their tax money would be paying for the health care of 'illegal immigrants.' This was followed by criticisms of US immigration policy, border security and a slew of racist comments against non-English speakers and the poor."

Interestingly enough, the question of illegal immigrants and how they would access health care can't be as easily separated as Opel would like to believe.

After all, it isn't as if amnesty for illegal immigrants -- who, for the record, have broken the law by virtue of their method of entry into the United States -- is a cause that has never been championed by the Democratic party.

Concern over illegal immigration, and the massive security risk it poses to the United States not only in terms of terrorism, but also in terms of issues such as organized crime and drug smuggling, is a legitimate issue. Trying to delegitimize that concern is a service to no one.

Of Dr Opel's legitimate concerns is the misinformed nature of many health care reform opponents:

"I also discovered that there are parallel worlds when it comes to statistics about health care. When I asked individuals if they were content to let 46 million people go without health care, I was met with the repeated line, 'It's not 46 million.' I would then ask how many were uninsured, and the repeated answer was that most of the 46 million were 'illegal immigrants' and that the real number was fewer than 10 million and those people could pay for insurance but choose not to.

These opinions contradict data from the US Census Bureau, which documents 46 million uninsured American citizens in the US in 2007.

A similar disconnect occurred around my attempts to compare US health care spending and outcomes with other developed countries. According to the people I spoke with, health care systems in Canada, England, Germany and elsewhere are all on the verge of collapse and those countries are looking to replicate the current US model. These ideas challenge World Health Organization data that rank overall US health care as 37th in the world, 24th in life expectancy, all while we pay nearly twice as much in health care costs per person as any country in the world. Paying more for less is not an indication of a healthy marketplace, but these protestors were ready to defend the current system at any cost.

Finally, the number of senior citizens protesting 'government run health care' stood out with great irony. When I asked a man holding an 'Obama = Socialism' sign if he wanted to give up his Medicare, I was told that Medicare was underfunded."

Certainly a great many more Americans would share Opel's enthusiasm for health care reform if they were aware of the facts surrounding the state of health care in the United States. They may not necessarily be eager to embrace the health care models of Canada, Britain or Germany, but they would almost certainly be in favour of some kind of structural reform.

But the greatest irony of Opel's column is only about to emerge:

"These intellectual and ideological disconnects are a reminder of the power of niche media to create echo chambers that allow us to live in isolated worlds where our own views are rarely challenged and demagogues offer bumper-sticker slogans instead of policy solutions. Examples include Sarah Palin, who spread the 'death panel' lie; Fox News host Glenn Beck, who has called President Obama a racist and joked about poisoning Nancy Pelosi; and Rush Limbaugh, with his ongoing accusations of Obama's policies paralleling those of the Nazis."

To be fair, the reporting of media outlets such as FOX News on a great many topics -- including health care reform -- has been of rather dubious merit.

But then again, so has the reporting of outlets such as MSNBC. For Opel to decry the "intellectual and ideological disconnects" of Palin, Beck and Limbaugh is one thing. What of the "intellectual and ideological disconnects" of Contessa Brewer, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann?

Not only is Opel content to ignore them -- conflating concerns over the costs of health care reforms, whether or not citizens will provide the benefits of such to non-citizens, and the scope of reform with racism -- Opel is more than content to embrace them on his own.

It seems that, as far as echo chambers go, Opel is more than content to be just another voice ringing through the chamber.

"When US Senator Chuck Grassley repeats Palin's lies and groups like Americans for Prosperity host two clips of Glenn Beck on the front page of their Web site, we can see the echo chamber at work, propagating myths as political reality and fanning the flames of fear and insecurity in a time of economic crisis and demographic change in the US."

We can also see the echo chamber at work when Opel joins the chorus of those trying to delegitimize those who dissent from their own views. And when people such as Brewer and Maddow make bold predictions that an assassination attempt is imminent, what are they playing to but the politics of fear?

It's one thing to decry the alleged fear mongering of one's opponents. It's another thing to do it while fear mongering on your own.

"As conservative politicians and media pundits exploit fear for political gain at the expense of any real health care solution, we all suffer from the economic drag of an inefficient health care system and the moral failing of a society unwilling to care for its most vulnerable."

One has to imagine that Andy Opel believes he's doing fellow advocates of health care reform quite the favour.

The truth is very different.

When Opel falls all over himself to deligimize his political opponents he reveals himself to be every bit as misguided, dishonest and unprincipled as his ideological adversaries. He shows that he is exploiting the same echo chamber, and he is doing so secure in the knowledge that those within that chamber will not seek any outside information or perspective.

There is a great deal of security to be found in such an echo chamber. For example, Contessa Brewer, Toure and Dylan Ratigan have yet to retract their report in which they edited footage in order to obscure the race of a gun-bearing individual at an Obama rally so they could suggest white racists were planning Obama's assassination. They don't actually need to. Because those viewing their show very likely may have never watched a story about the rally in question on a competing network. Although they know full well they've misrepresented the story in question, they need never admit it. That is the power of the echo chamber.

Just like MSNBC may even find some who are legitimately racist among those opposing Brack Obama's health care reform, Dr Andy Opel clearly went looking for a confrontation with ignorant opponents of health care reform. He evidently looked hard enough to find it. But that is no surprise.

When one looks hard enough for something they want to find, they may even convince themselves they've found it.

Who Scans the Scanners?

For the past 20 years, the United States has been fighting a war on drugs.

US forces have been active in many South American countries where drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are produced. Yet, no matter what the American government does, they can't seem to prevent this war from coming home to their own streets.

In A Scanner Darkly, Philip K Dick presents a chilling depiction of a crucial part of the drug war -- the intelligence war.

In the film Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is a cop under unprecedentedly deep cover. Not only do his roommates, who he is surveilling for an unstated reason, not know who he is, but neither do his fellow officers in the force. Even so, it comes as a shock when Arctor, in the course of his meeting with an also-unidentifiable superior officer, is assigned to watch himself.

In Preempting Dissent, Andy Opel and Greg Elmer argue that a culture of preemption has led to the development of countless weapons and surveillance tools for use by police to control "undesirable" or "subversive" elements of the civilian population.

In A Scanner Darkly, the Orange County sheriff's department is depicted using an unprecedented level of computerized surveillance in order to monitor the activities of Substance D users. In order to do this, however, they have to literally watch everyone, and they do.

The epitome of this new breed of policing technology seems to be symbolized in the scramble suit -- a suit that conceals the identity of its wearer by continually morphing into more than one million-and-a-half different personalities.

Like a surveillance net that watches everyone -- regardless of one's involvement or lack thereof with Substance D -- the scramble suit erases personal identity. In Arctor's case, it conceals identity to the point of personal confusion -- although the drugs he continually ingests throughout the film certainly must help in this regard.

Ironically, the scramble suit is used not to conceal the undercover officer's identity from those he is monitoring, but rather from their fellow officers. This makes it fairly clear how Arctor could even possibly be assigned to watch himself.

The "who watches the watchers?" (or in this case, "who scans the scanners?") theme of the film actually goes even deeper than this. In A Scanner Darkly almost nothing is as it seems, right up to the final credits.

The film even unfortunately does take a few seconds to indulge blowhard conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in his own delusions of significance -- in one scene in the film he's swept into an unmarked van by men dressed entirely in black. At least those who have always wanted to see Jones kidnapped by a team of G-men will be able to enjoy these few seconds of the film.

For anyone interested in a film combining the best elements of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the best elements of The Recruit, A Scanner Darkly is sure to please, but the grim warning about the unrestrained development and use of police surveillance technologies should not be overlooked.

Knowing Without Meaning May Not Be Enough

In Knowing, ingenious director Alex Proyas presents the tale of an astrophysicist who is convinced by a number list "randomly" presented to his son that he can predict and prevent disasters.

When John Koestler's son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) comes home from school with a list of numbers scrawled out by a youngster 50 years previous, John (Nicholas Cage) insists that he must return it as quickly as possible.

Upon more closely examining the page, however, John recognizes that 9/11 is predicted on it -- right down to the number of people killed on that fateful day. As he continues to examine the list he finds that each one corresponds to every major disaster of the previous 50 years, including the one that killed his wife.

According to the philsophical principle of determinism, everything that happens occurs for a reason. It insists that there is purpose and meaning to everything that unfolds in the universe.

Determinism is at the heart not only of many theistic religions, but also of many works of historical study. Theological scholars, like historians, often look for underlying causes for any particular event that would render them inevitable.

John Koestler doesn't fully believe in determinism, even though his father is a pastor.

John eventually concludes that the number series is a warning meant for him. He concludes that he must be able to prevent these incidents from happening, if only he can discern what they are. And yet, despite his best efforts, they continue happening. These events may be pre-determined to the extent that not even his intervention can prevent them.

In Preempting Dissent, Andy Opel and Greg Elmer argue that preemptive action is based on a principle of inevitability.

Aside from the minor detail that inevitability suggests that an event cannot be prevented -- whereas most of those who offer justification for preemptive action insist that it's necessary in order to prevent something from occurring -- the determinist philosophy of which Koesler speaks of seems to be deeply ingrained within Opel and Elmer's thesis.

This element of determinism is unmistakable. It should be remembered that Elmer and Opel don't necessarily incorporate this determinism as part of their own personal beliefs, but rather attribute that determinism to the beliefs of others -- in this case, those who make important policy decisions.

While that determinism may not be as pure as the version described by Koesler -- purely considered, determinism ascribes meaning and inevitability to events through a combination of natural and human factors -- this impurity actually suits the needs of Elmer and Opel's argument. Opel and Elmer's thesis is best related to human factors alone.

In Knowing, there is much more to the list than it would seem. In its own way, the list very much is a form of otherworldly intervention. It very much does have meaning and purpose, even if the events it predicts actually cannot be averted -- even one that seems like it may be the end of the world.

Genocide Via Computer

Of all the Terminator films, Rise of the Machines was certainly the most disappointing.

Directed by Jonathon Mostow in place of James Cameron, Terminator 3 came across with all the gloss, polish and adrenaline of a Hollywood action film, and none of the grit and tension of Cameron's masterpieces.

But, interestingly enough, of the three Terminator films, Rise of the Machines may have been the best-situated out of the three in terms of its prescience.

In the film, John Connor (Nick Stahl) is living "off-the-grid", with nothing but the clothes of his back and his motorcycle. He works day jobs to subsist himself, and has no place of residence, credit cards, or cell phone -- nothing that would leave a record he could be traced by.

Even though he and his now-deceased mother, Sarah Connor, have been led to believe they had averted Judgment Day by destroying Skynet, Connor lives in terror of the future, and rightfully so.

The future isn't nearly as secure as he would like to believe.

An encounter with Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) brings John face-to-face with both the T-X -- played by Kristanna Loken, a Terminator sent back to the eve of Judgment Day to kill off Connor's someday lieutenants -- and with the T-800 sent back in time to protect her -- a role again reprised by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As it turns out, the program that eventually leads to the creation of Skynet is still in operation. Brewster's father is the head of this project, and has his own concerns about removing human decision-making from defense planning. Meanwhile, an unstoppable computer virus is overwhelming the civilian internet, and is beginning to infiltrate defense networks.

The virus is Skynet. Whether it's been seeded in the past as seems to be happening in The Sarah Connor Chronicles or is created outside the defense program and merely infiltrates it remains unexplained.

As nuclear weapons cross the globe toward their targets, what is explained is that Skynet had presumably infiltrated millions of computers worldwide.

While one presumes that nothing as hyperbolic as a genocidal computer program plotting the wholesale destruction of humanity is currently occurring, it is a well known fact that many countries -- as well as private organizations and individuals -- have been investing in cyberwarfare capabilities that would allow them to strike at their opponents through their computer systems.

China has made its commitment to cyberwarfar technology a matter of public record. North Korea, India and other countries are also investing in cyberwar technologies at an alarming rate.

One particular cyberwarfare weapon, the zombie virus, uses infected computers to pass itself along to the next victim. It attaches itself to email and fax programs, and transmits itself through the user's own communications.

These programs can have purposes ranging from the theft of information to disruption of emergency services.

In Terminator 3, the virus' purpose was to facilitate the destruction of humankind.

Interestingly, the writers of Terminator 3 could be argued to accept the "inevitability thesis" of Andy Opel and Greg Elmer. But once again, one would have to counter by arguing that preemption is only as valuable as the amount of certainty with which it can be executed, and as the diligence used to ensure that the threat it is aimed at is actually destroyed.

There Is No Inevitable Fate

"There is no fate but the one we make."

This message is at the heart of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The film picks up years after the original Terminator left off. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is in a psychiatric hospital in order to protect the public from the violent outbursts of her alleged psychotic delusions, and her son John (Edward Furlong) is in the care of foster parents.

Sarah lives in fear of the day when Skynet will either annihilate mankind with a nuclear attack or send another Terminator to kill her or her son. John, meanwhile, is living a rebellious life, angry at his current predicament.

This all changes the day that an extremely advanced terminator (played by Robert Patrick) is sent back in time to kill him. In place of Kyle Reece -- killed in the first movie -- the resistance sends a captured terminator (Schwarzenegger) back in time to protect him.

Allusions to Cold War tensions emerge for the first time in Terminator 2 as the terminator recounts for Sarah and John a more precise telling of how Judgment Day comes to pass. Skynet is designed initially as an automated pilot for stealth bombers, but eventually is placed in control of the entire defense grid of the United States -- including its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

When Skynet becomes self-aware, it responds to attempts to shut it down by launching nuclear weapons against the former Soviet Union. The notion of Mutually Assured Destruction is exploited by an entity that suddenly views the destruction of humankind as its best survival strategy.

Upon being rescued by John and the T-800, Sarah's first impulse is to slip into Mexico, away from Judgment Day's primary nuclear blast zones, in an effort to survive the initial attack.

Eventually, she decides instead to attempt to stop Skynet from ever being created by killing Myles Dyson (Joe Morton), the computer developer who will eventually create Skynet.

That attempt marks a turn in the film's plot in terms of the ideology of inevitability.

In Preempting Dissent, Greg Elmer and Andy Opel argue that preemptive action -- whether it be militarily preempting the actions of a rogue state or preempting political protests through the use of police power -- is predicated on a sense of inevitability.

In Terminator 2 James Cameron seems to reject this thesis, for a reason that seems evident to nearly anyone who thinks critically about that thesis. Preemption can only be justified if whatever it is aimed against can be prevented.

By striking against John Connor in the past, Skynet acts on the belief that its defeat by Connor in the future can be prevented. By striking against Skynet in the present -- by destroying all the research that leads to its creation -- John and Sarah act on the belief that Judgement Day can be prevented.

In choosing to collaborate with the Connors in the destruction of his work, Dyson shows a maturity that one wonders if many inventors would share -- destroying his life's work in order to prevent his life's work from taking billions of lives.

One may wonder what kind of a world we would live in today if the creators of the nuclear bomb had shown the same kind of restraint, or had heeded the warnings of Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity actually made the splitting of the atom possible.

When the T-800 collaborates in its own destruction at the end of the film -- it cannot self-terminate, but it apparently can assist in its own termination -- it echoes Dyson's restraint.

That a machine with no real sense of human compassion -- that instead learned to mimic human compassion under John's orders -- could better comprehend the importance of such restraint than some of the arguably finest scientific minds humankind has ever produced should remain unsettling to virtually anyone.

Of course, the act of striking against a looming threat in order to avert it requires a specific amount of certainty -- first, that the threat itself can be averted, and certainty that the threat has been averted.

Preventing the weapons that humankind has created in order to defend itself from instead destroying us could never be accomplished in one fell swoop, so long as human minds remain intent on pursuing the means to destroy one another.