Verball bullies hijacking the health-care debate

No one likes a bully. You know, those hominid kids a little bigger than everyone else who get thrills from the power rush of intimidation. They stroll around schoolyards often with their minions close behind just looking for the weak or the wounded. They cluster in mini-gangs because they are really afraid, and their numbers and their sneers are meant to scare the few. They are rookie human predators sniffing the air for scents of fear. Feeling insecure and ignored is common sentiment of bullies. Their insecurity drives their belligerence.

Just as no one likes bullies, no one should tolerate them either. The consistent position is that you stand up to them. That is what we should do with verbal bullies as well. These are the people who with shouting or their swift tongues use intimidation as their modus operandi. They frighten, they scare, they bully with noise what the schoolyard punks do with a few inches, a couple of extra pounds. They rant and rave. They don't have a constructive thought in their brain; it is just scream and terrorize the vulnerable, the nervous, and the infirm.

Now we are hearing about the fore-planned strategy of hijacking public meetings about health-care reforms. These disrupters on the right are like the same ones on the left who commandeer lectures in universities that are contrary to their political agenda. They are word bullies. When has stopping conversation made a better world? Dialogue was part of the Creation. In the New Testament, "word" is translated from "logos," implying two-party talks. One cannot have a dialogue when one side dominates the other with shouts and screams and stories of goblins. It is intimidation. It is the stuff you read about in history when fanatical people come to power or seek power. They shouted down the opposition right before they shot them down.

It is not like they use the power of their arguments or strength of their logic; it is the power of their voice and the strength of their lungs. I can understand to a degree the emotions that the health-care debate can generate, but to use fear as the weapon of choice speaks to the paucity of their policies. No wonder they shout — their words are silent of any reasonable conversation. They don't know how to have a civil debate because they will lose and it is all about winning and losing for them; it is not about better, solving, improving and caring.

There are multiple tragedies in this tale. There is the sickness in their struggle using a strategy of shock and awe to take over a meeting like taking over a country. Every opposing person or thought is blown aside not by moral rightness but by repeated and unrelenting bombardment of words. The other sin is for others to stand back and do nothing.