Don’t Give Me Health Care, or Give Me Death

It’s not easy to explain Civil War re-enactments to my Spanish friends. To them it seems a little curious that otherwise sensible people would eagerly volunteer their free time to re-create one of the most horrific chapters in history. Turns out that trying to explain Civil War re-enactments is nothing compared to trying to explain the protests staged against Obama’s health-care proposal. I.e. why on earth anybody would stand up against, even threaten some sort of armed insurgence against, universal health care.

A good question. Maybe it’s the camera angle, but from here these protests look like manifestations of serious mental illness. The rampant paranoia, the delusional ranting, the spasms of rage. Get these people some help, soon. Some Thorazine, some counseling, something. Don’t worry about the cost of the treatment—presumably they can cover that, out of pocket.

Or can they? What’s hardest to explain is that the protesters do not seem to be especially well-to- do people. They look to be the self-described “Joe Six-Pack”s. If this is the case, Joe Six-Pack is doing the dirty work for much fatter cats, at the expense of his own interests. Either Joe Six-Pack is terribly masochistic, or he is being manipulated, tooled, and screwed (again). It is baffling. It is shameful. In the end, it is just plain sad, for all concerned.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.