THE KOCHS' NEW YOUTH OUTREACH PROGRAM LOOKS AWFULLY FAMILIAR

Generation Opportunity, a Koch-funded group meant to spread the gospel of wingnuttery to young people, held a faux-fair on the National Mall in D.C. this week, as Wonkette's Beth Ethier reported yesterday. Attendees were greeting by innocuous-seeming revelers, and then by security:

On arriving at their fenced-in dirtpatch, we found a juggling unicyclist and a gothy stilt-walking girl in a fringed corset circulating outside the entrance. An army of staff in red t-shirts formed a gauntlet to scan our tickets, search our bags, tag us with neon green concert bracelets, and herd us into the centerpiece of the event....

And what might that be?

... a darkened walled tent that held their Creepy Hospital.

In the first chamber, a shrill bureaucrat told a guy in the waiting room that his application for insurance had "timed out." As he fell to his knees and begged for his life, his tormentor ordered us into the infirmary next door.

Wandering among cots with plastic limbs sticking out from white sheets, a lady we guess was supposed to be a diabolical nurse told us we'd have to wait for "Doctor Reaper," who eventually appeared and insisted we all just call her Grim!

Another deranged-looking doctor barged in, tossing body parts onto the fake-roach and -rat covered floor, handing out sheets of paper he said held his patients' private information, and offering to treat us all for jock itch.

Just as we were wondering if Uncle Speculum was a no-show, we found him in the next room presiding over a Death Panel that yelled DENIED! a bunch of times....

That would be Creepy Uncle Sam from Generation Opportunity's notorious YouTube ads, which, like this Creepy Hospital, were meant to warn America's youth about the dangers and horrors of Obamacare.

In addition to Creepy Uncle Sam, there were tableaus like this:



And this:



Does all this remind you of anything? Young people enticed with the promise of entertainment, then escorted past scene after scene of horror, all of it meant to send a dire moral warning?



That's what it reminds me of -- the "hell houses" erected by socially conservative churches as Halloween approaches, which are meant to scare kids out of sinnin'. Wikipedia:

A hell house, like a conventional haunted-house attraction, is a space set aside for actors to frighten patrons with gruesome exhibits and scenes, presented as a series of short vignettes with a narrated guide. Unlike haunted houses, hell houses focus on real-life situations and the effects of sin or the fate of unrepentant sinners in the afterlife.

... Hell houses frequently feature exhibits depicting Christian interpretations of sin and its consequences. Common examples include abortion, suicide, use of alcoholic beverages and other recreational drugs, adultery, occultism, and Satanic ritual abuse....

Churches have been putting up hell houses for more than forty years, and now no young person in America ever drinks, does drugs, or has premarital sex of either the heterosexual or homosexual variety. Right?

That's Generation Opportunity's latest genius idea for defeating Obamacare. (And it's coming to your town soon!)

I keep warning that Koch-friendly lawyers, judges, pols, and other operatives might very well kill Obamacare by brute force. I still think that's true. Brute force is something the well-funded right is good at.

Persuasion, especially aimed at young people? Er, not so much.