"You LIE!!"

President Obama spoke to the nation the other night about his plan to re-do health care. During his speech, the American Right had its latest display of its true colors. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina hollered out, "You Lie!" (according to most reports) as the President made one of his points. Wilson apologized immediately, which President Obama graciously accepted, keeping with his determination to change political culture from division to debate.

Like the President, I am inclined to forgive Wilson. Representative government is actually that when low-end crackers have a seat in Congress. And honest debate over emotional issues sometimes evokes hot headed, Klan-ish outbursts by morons whose blood is angried by a lifetime of fried foods. This not only makes our nation great—because it's real—it also makes us improve. No pain, as they say, no gain.

For our literary, superior purposes here, however (as you expect and demand), I wish to point out that Wilson is but the frontal image of that destructive animal energy from the Right. It does not hope to mend what is seen as broken, as Ronald Reagan expressed. Conservatives have little interest in returning America to some cherished past, where individuals hewed respectability from a stubborn land. They want nothing more than to marginalize the mass of people with their simple vision of local tyrants.

You know, the small town King who owns the Mercury Outboard dealership, key real estate and has political control by means of cash dispensed to political lackeys. It's no more than that, because they are no more than that.

Here's how you get that: You disarticulate any large-scale social improvements because it requires big, thoughtful and intelligent contribution. Big is bad because it's not local and it's not them; thoughtful is against church teachings ("at least that's what Pastor Don says and I believe!"); "intelligent" is just a word that New York Jews have for themselves—plain old common sense will do just fine for good, local men. And contribution means it's not local and it's not them.

Next, you convince your neighbors that what you say is true because any other point of view is lies and anti-American. Flog this notion constantly, like a commercial for Olive Garden between 5 p.m. and prime time: Soon enough, lots of people will consume it enough to become obese with misinformation. Sick with it. Clomping around the mall with it pasted in their bodies. Dying from it as they declare its righteousness, resisting every remedy for it.

Guys like Joe Wilson are the next generation of guys like George Wallace and Rush Limbaugh. They have been snookered by the bad guys and now are the bad guys. They have consumed the smack produced by the previous generation and are moved to take their hollerin' fight to the very halls of perdition.

They are mean, small, silly people who cannot perceive anything more modern than internet porn. They are the same sad children who they disdain to help with basic nutrition, clean water, adequate health care. They are lunkheads we must navigate as we push toward the possibility of a just society.

They are fools.