How dare you question my wisdom?

It looks as if town hall meetings are no longer meant to give us a forum in which to express our concerns and hear lawmakers try to support their decisions. It is now a forum in which the lawmakers tell us what we are going to roll over and allow them to do. It is no longer a place of persuasion and debate, but a place of demands and coercion. What happened?

Well, apparently Obama got tired of hearing people object to his plan, and so he rustled up his union buddies to go attend these town hall meetings. The result: Thursday night featured the first bouts of actual violence in the entire government-run healthcare debate.

A note about the protestors and town hall participants: They raised their voices. They held signs. They chanted sometimes. That's it. They are not violent people. They are not terrorists. They're people like you and me. The initial town hall meetings reminded me a bit of heavy metal fans. Now that probably sounds like an odd correlation to make. Let me explain it.

My sister and I attended a heavy metal concert with a couple of other friends. We found ourselves, country mice on a long journey, in the part of Poughkeepsie where the cops don't go, in line with a bunch of people (mostly men) wearing black leather, chains, spikes, ponytails, and various piercings. To hear the major news media reporting on town hall protests, you'd think these people had attended them. You might not be off the mark.

Why? Because they turned out to be the friendliest, gentlest, most respectable and respectful people you could hope to share an auditorium with. Imagine this: at a standing-room-only concert, I tried to step forward to get a better look at the band. The people in the audience readily parted for me, giving me an excellent view close to the stage. You could get bumped into in a crowd like that, but not without an exchange of "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me" and "That's alright". There were a couple of bouncers on hand, who were not needed. There was no violence, no trampling, no accidental injury, and the fans even left the place clean as it was when they arrived.

From what I have seen and heard of the town meetings, the people were very much like that. They would rail and shout, but nobody was getting trampled, nobody was getting separated from their group, and nobody was getting frightened... except for the Democrats up on stage, who are not used to having their wisdom questioned and did not know how to deal with well-reasoned opposition from the people who are supposed to follow like sheep.

Then Obama spoke up. He sent out emails to his supporters asking them to show up at the town hall meetings to shout down the protesters. This act made apparent that he was not looking for actual discussion. At the absolute best, he was hoping for a photo-op of people not disagreeing with his plan. Oh, he got a photo-op alright. The pictures and video taken of the violence has hit Youtube and, as the phrase goes, "gone viral". (This despite having not hit the major news media in any way except a vague sort of "there was violence between opposing groups" without revealing who was actually throwing people against walls.)

Now I've heard people raise various possibilities of why Thursday night's violence happened. The kindest opinion, however, is just as bad as the least kind. The least kind opinion is pretty obvious. Many people believe that Barry Obama, Chicago politician, purposely rounded up the union people in order to intimidate and attack the town hall attendees. They account the violence, which resulted in torn shirts, bruising, and one man beaten into the hospital, directly to his fault. They view him as a modern-day crime boss telling his minions to go out there and break a few knees.

The kindest opinion is that Obama is so blindingly inept at the only job he has any real experience in, community organizing, that he simply did not know what happens when you ask union officials to get their guys to show up and provide a counter to a protest. Despite my adventures to places like heavy metal concerts, I have grown up in a fairly sheltered community, among Christians and homeschoolers, in a rural neighborhood. Even I knew exactly what was going to happen once union thugs got involved in this wasn't-yet-a-mess. If even a rural Connecticut housewife knows how they behave, how could an urban community organizer and Chicago politician have no clue whatsoever?

Of course, this raises serious questions about our president. Is he utterly inept and astonishingly naive? Or is he purposely intimidating ordinary citizens with the only means of force that will target innocent people? Note that these first clashes were not against police (who were already monitoring the protests long before Thursday) or military (who have not been called in), but union people proudly wearing their union shirts.

In either case, it seems that the one thing the Democrats do not want us to do is to object to their plans. They are not interested in compromise; they are not even interested in our opinion. Now we find out whether they can strong-arm the American People into backing down and giving them their own way. If this issue is decided by force, our way of life just might be over.