Reductio ad Hitlerum: The power of ignorance, idiocy, and fear

WARNING: this post will be very long (sources in brackets)

On Tuesday, 11 August, Democratic Congressman David Scott of Georgia awoke to find the image of a Nazi Swastika spraypainted on the sign outside his office in Smyrna, Georgia. According to The Guardian, this came less than a week after a heated exchange in a "town hall" meeting that he had participated in.
Nor is David Scott the only one. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, William Kostnic paraded outside of the hall in which Obama was due to speak, sporting a 9mm pistol on his thigh, and carrying a placard bearing the words "it is time to water the tree of liberty" (an obvious reference to the Jefferson quote "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"). One protester was heard to shout at the President of the United States (POTUS) "One day God is going to stand before you and judge you!". A protest placard of the infamous LaRouche Political Action Committee sports a picture of Obama with a Hitler-stache superimposed onto him.
What is the issue? Is it abortion? Is it torture? Is it whether Obama should implement a 100% tax rate? Is it gun control?

Nope. It's an issue that the entirety of the western world (and, indeed, large portions of the developing world) view as being about as controversial as votes for women: universal healthcare. Every other member of the OECD and the G20 has universal, government-funded healthcare policies in place for their citizens. The United States, however, is the exception to this rule. Approximately 45,000,000 American citizens (and that doesn't include illegal immigrants) are without health insurance, either through their employers, the government, or their own private plans. Even worse, those who are covered by the massive health insurance industry often find themselves denied essential care, or forced to hand over their life savings because of health tragedies. The horror stories concerning the American system number in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. An entire saga exceeding the size and complexity of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire could be written solely about how messed up the American system is. In a 2000 examination of national healthcare systems, the United States ranks 37th, behind France (1st), Italy (2nd), Spain (7th), Japan (10th), Norway (11th), Portugal (12th), Britain (18th), Sweden (23rd), Cyprus (24th!), Germany (25th), Saudi Arabia (26th!!!) Morocco (29th!!), Canada (30th), and Chile (33rd). The United States ranks well below the OECD averages in terms of life-expectancy, infant mortality, and yet ranks well above the averages in terms of per-capita spending on healthcare.

With all that in mind, the need for reform is relatively easy to see. The unfortunate part is that it has been well over thirty years since the formation of Medicare and Medicaid by Lyndon Johnson, and yet still there are people without healthcare coverage, nearly 1/6th of the population of the United States. Why is this? Simply put, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance lobbies have been so effective at putting out endless propaganda - enough to make even Stalin's Pravda envious - sputtering forth all sorts of bullshit arguments against "evil"(Sarah Palin), "Orwellian"(The Independent, The Guardian), socialized medicine and universal healthcare.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Obama's attempt to push through healthcare reform - however feeble it may be - has been an uphill slugging match against the powers that be. We've heard all the familiar arguments from the pharmaceutical lobby and the nuthouse that most people refer to as the Republican Party. We've heard that it will prevent you and your doctor from making healthcare decisions yourselves. Ironic, given that currently their made by insurance-industry bureaucrats whose goal is to finance their fourth 100-foot luxury yacht. We've heard that it will increase wait-times. This may well be true, but you won't be shelling out your entire savings account for retirement in exchange for an "experimental" or "unnecessary" cancer treatment. We've heard that it will decrease the quality of care that you receive. Again, ironic, given that the highest quality healthcare systems in the world (Britain's NHS, France, and Norway) are all heavily socialized. We've heard the same old words of "government control"(The Globe & Mail), "socialism"(The National Post), "costs"(The New York Times), "government debt" (though we seem to have no problem owing $4,000,000,000,000 to China at the moment), and all the other bullshit arguments that have been dragged out by everyone against health-reform from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich.

And then we've heard some things we haven't heard before. We've heard about these bizarre "death panels" that are supposedly in place to determine whether you live or die once you hit 65. From Chuck Grassley to Sarah Palin, this myth has been perpetuated by the Republican party and its supporters. We've heard cancer-survivors at the town-hall meeting of former Republican Arlen Specter perpetuate this myth (CNN), only to be verbally beaten down by the ever resolute and cool-headed Specter. We've heard these myths perpetuated by the usual blowhards of right-wing lunacy: Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Rielly, and others like them. The fact of the matter is that the bills in Congress contain no such "death panels". No universal healthcare system in the developed world contains such "death panels". It is - as the British say - bollocks. We've seen signs from the same LaRouche movement that "Hitler approves Obama's healthcare plan"(The Guardian). Last week, Rush Limbaugh commented that Obama's healthcare logo was "right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook" (The Guardian). Apart from the obvious call of Reductio ad Hitlerum, whereby the first side to make a comparison involving Adolf Hitler automatically forfeits the debate; such comparisons are obscene and ludicrous. Every major organization dedicated to monitoring real Neo-Nazism, from the ADL to Southern Poverty Law Center, has condemned the remarks as "[a] frightening display of bigotry and ignorance that should not be tolerated by a democratic society."(ADL Press release).
Why has the debate been allowed to reach such hysterical levels? How has a debate that was supposed to be about healthcare rights morphed into comparisons of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler? Simple answer: Because the American public is - by and large - ignorant, stupid, and extraordinarily prone to the tactics of fear.

Don't believe me? Let me throw some numbers out there for you. Today, 34% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. 1/3rd of the Republican Party believes that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, a majority of American citizens cannot name a single branch of government, explain what the Bill of Rights. 24% cannot name the country that America fought in 1776. 60% don't know what the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) does. 42% think that Christianity is older than Judaism. 20% of American schoolchildren are incapable of finding the United States on a map. The ignorance within the United States is astounding.
It is this ignorance and stupidity that the propagandists of the far-right prey upon with their comparisons to Hitler, their mentioning of the "death panels", their attacks on the NHS, their bashing of France and Norway, the use of the word "socialism" and "socialized medicine" to terrify the population. The numbers of far-right militias and terrorist groups are on the rise, the ridiculous "tea parties" choke the airwaves with insane pronouncements, and the propaganda campaign against Barack Obama goes on.

It is time America rose above this fear. It is time they rose above their ignorance, their apathy, their idiocy, and their ability to be easily duped by flashy tv ads run by Humana and the US Chamber of Commerce. It's time to make sure that no country in the western world does not have universal healthcare. More importantly, it's time to see the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins for what they really are in the scheme of this debate: lunatics and liars.