With apologies to Bill Maher, whose show I don’t even watch except in clips online:

1. If you actually believe the health reform bill includes (or included or ever will include) “death panels,” you are too stupid to live. Please report to the death panels.

2. If you are a senior citizen and you are ranting at town halls against socialized medicine, you are required to give up your government-run, single-payer Medicare coverage to a younger person who has been refused service by private insurance companies.

3. Chain emails containing stories that “the liberal media won’t report” are the single least-reliable source of information in the world, with the possible exception of 24-hour cable news networks. (This one is less a rule than an observation.)

I don’t mind people being against the idea of a buy-in government-run health insurance plan, a.k.a the public option, but at least start the debate on planet Earth, okay? I predicted the conspiracy nuts would return back in November, and once again I hate being right. At least it’s not a new phenomenon — Nixonland author Rick Perlstein has a new piece about “America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.”

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America’s nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles — instead of long-range bombers — and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. [...]

Before the “black helicopters” of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a “civil rights movement” had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would “enslave” whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn’t lack for subversives — anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and ’50s.

[...] My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

Perlstein concludes by noting that the biggest difference between then and now is that now the crazies are invited to appear on TV news and treated as if their views have merit.

To be honest, I’m starting to think the only people who support reform are people like me in the private sector. Most opponents seem to be retired, military, or a government employee, all with government coverage. (Or are rich enough not to care.) Rationed care? Dropped coverage? I already have that — they’re called Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and I just spent 3 months trying to convince them that, yes, they do have to pay the $900 bill for my last routine physical. One more month and the bill collectors will be after me. Hooray for the free market.