I Was WAY Off

Before tonight, I thought that the people in town hall meetings who depicted President Obama as Hitler (and his policies as Nazi-like) only represented a minority of the people at these meetings. My thoughts were basically such: Like it or hate it, the President's desire for health care reform stems from a desire to preserve American lives, and increase the standard of living for many more. Now let us assume that this desire to save lives also compromises the American idea of a capitalist society (or in layman's terms, makes us socialists), thus making his agenda, while having good intentions, a statist one. Even with such an assumption established, how (and why) does one compare this desire, to save lives, to another's statist agenda to destroy lives? To say that Hitler was a socialist is somewhat debatable; but to say that his agendas, statist-like or not, bear a striking resemblance to health care reform is absolutely absurd! It is clear, that when people compare the President to such an evil, fascist man, they are doing so only for political gains. If one wishes to compare President Obama to a socialist, they could easily find many others who did not embody such evil. By comparing him to Hitler, they wish to associate the President with a person that people want no association with, and essentially isolate him from the American public. I believed, however, that such an association (that does not connect whatsoever) would not penetrate the American public's train of thought. Call it naivete, but my hope in the average American citizen caused me to misjudge reality for what it really was. I arrived at Red Bank earlier this night at about 6:30 p.m., with a line a bit over 1,500 citizens eager to have their opinions heard. After waiting until about 9:00, I got a pretty good sense of how successful the association was. Sign after sign, chant after chant, minute after minute, I started to think that this town hall meeting was actually about the resemblance (or lack there of, if you will) between my current President, and a man who wished to wipe out my very existence. I was surprised, for far more people than I ever believed were holding up signs that compared President Obama to the most evil man that ever lived, and far more people chanted statements that projected him as a Nazi than I ever thought would. Coming out of this town hall meeting, it was clear that the majority, rather than minority, actually believed that this President's actions resembled that of Adolf Hitler's doings. This, of course, does not prove that the majority of Americans share this belief, but considering that the state of New Jersey in a democratic one, it does not speak well for the sane man's case either. Where have we gone wrong, as a society, in which people can act so insensitive, solely for the purpose of political gain? How has one man's goal, to wipe a people of the face of this Earth, become associated (by so many) with another's hope to save the lives of many?