I'm Sorry: I Can't Help Myself

What I find so stupefying is not the sputtering White Man's Anger, or the blatant use of falsehood, or the calculated use of fear as a motivating tactic (though I continually hang my head in shame for my country's citizens for these things).

No, it's the spur for those things in Joe Wilson's outburst, the prime mover behind his uncontrollable rage: is he upset at, say, our country having been railroaded into making war with another nation, thereby killing thousands of our own citizens (and god knows how many others)? Is he upset because our basic freedoms are being dismantled and we deprived of our rights? Or is he upset that government is being systematically undermined and its ability to function effectively impinged?

No, nor could he be: for all these things are the achievements of his own party. Did he lose control at mention of our staggering national debt? He'd have good reason there, though I only hope he'd been similarly motivated when W DOUBLED the national debt in eight years.

But no. He was made apoplectic by the idea that some people who do not have a right to it could possibly find themselves with medical care.

That's it. Never mind that already hospitals can't really deny basic care to anyone, citizen or no; never mind that covering illegal immigrants is specifically prohibited in the current bill:

H.R. 3200: Sec 246 NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

Never let facts get in the way of an explosion of riotous idiocy. And never mind that actually covering these people would cost a comparative pittance, a tiny fraction of what, say, our military escapades in Iraq have cost. I read one Obama-hater online today whose support for the contention that the President had lied rested upon the certainty that Congress's bill, whenever it was written, would not necessarily hew to the President's no-more-deficit pledge! Not that Obama would sign it, or even that he didn't mean his pledge to not affect the deficit. No, Obama is a "liar" because, well, just because.

There in a nutshell is the intellectual meltdown of conservatism in this country.

How long will it take before sane, sensible conservatives wrest control of the Republican Party from the grip of mental illness that presently holds sway? I may never vote for them, but at least I could stop feeling shame on their behalf.

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Addendum:

Naturally, I see on HuffPo now that Keith Olbermann says all this and more much better than I.