What could be more democratic than a town hall meeting? This conjures up images of the local citizens meeting together to discuss the issues of their time. But in today's world, a townhall meeting is a very carefully choreographed event for the purposes of spreading propaganda and convincing people to support a specific political agenda regardless of merit.

Bill Clinton used townhall meetings a lot during his presidency, and my home town was the site of at least two of them. In his two visits to my town to conduct his townhall meeting; not once was there any public announcement before the event asking people to sign up or attend the meeting, yet the meetings always had a large and supportive audience. How did this come about? His second visit gave me an understanding of just what these events were all about. At the time I was in the Air Force Reserves and our drill weekend just happened to be on the same day that President Clinton was hosting a townhall meeting on the base. A large hanger was prepared for the event and the parking near the hangar was roped off and cleared of cars. Early in the day, it was announced that we would be signing out early on that day and that we were all ordered to leave the base before the townhall event started.

Now that seemed to me to be very strange. Why would military personal be ordered to leave the base before the President came? Now shortly afternoon, we all signed out and started to leave the base. Me and a couple of buddies lingered behind a little bit because we wanted to catch a glimpse of the President arriving. Instead what we saw were several chartered buses filled with people being taken over to the hangar where the meeting was being held. So that is how he got his audience, a group of hand picked people were being brought to the site to cheer on the President and ask him pre-planned questions designed to support his agenda. Now I ask you, does that sound like a democracy or a dictatorship?

If you remember during the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton was conducting town hall meetings and in one case, a young woman came forward after the meeting saying she was picked to ask a question, but instead of asking a question of her own, she was given the question that she would ask. The media had a brief field day with this, as if they didn't know that is what Bill, and Hillary, and Obama, and other politicians were doing all of the time. Fortunately at that time the media had turned on Hillary and gave a true glimpse of what a town hall meeting was all about.

Just recently President Obama conducted a town hall meeting for his health care plan. True to form it was another staged event. At the beginning, a woman was allowed to ask her question only to bring up her problems with cancer. Now I am not saying anything against the woman, but surely you can realize that Obama planned to pick her to make his point. Just like in a similar event during his campaign when another woman lifted her hand with a sad story. In each case Obama embraced them and said he would take care of them. What are the odds that similar events would happen in different meetings a year apart?

So the next time you watch a town hall meeting, remember, what you are seeing is a staged event. It is propopropagandathe leader being cheered on by his followers, it has nothing to do with an honest debate about the issues.

- Thomas Paine 2

In case you think I'm the only one saying this...

Los Angeles Times Blog - Top of the Ticket - Obama scripts town-hall meeting on health care

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