Week 3 Analysis

In the debate over health care, one identity conflict that I have witnessed is political identity. Health care is a very divisive issue, I witnessed the 9/12 anti-health care rally on the National Mall and noticed that people were very angry. One can look at the signs saying "Obama is Hitler" or "Obama is Stalin" and notice the strong backlash among the right-wing. Having talked to some of the people there, however, some of them weren't all that radical. Many weren't concerned with the healthcare bill on the "socialist" aspect but simply they questioned whether we could afford reforming the system at this time, others wanted to implement reforms at a slower pace. The identity crisis comes at the individual's attitude vs the group one. As we can see, the overall group mentality among conservatives is moving more extremely to the right. The crisis occurs when the group's views move out of the range of some members, and the conflict is whether they stay in the group or not. For example, a conservative may be opposed to healthcare on fiscal grounds and is angry enough to go to protests, but is offended upon seeing increasing numbers of "Obama is Hitler" signs. The crisis is whether to remain with this group, form a more moderate group and risk splitting the opposition, or giving up because the other people in the group are too crazy. Identity plays a role in the sense of people protesting the issue because of the groupthink mentality, ex: "I'm a Republican and other Republicans are protesting this issue so I should too". But I don't think an identity issues created the debate.