Sometimes, people make me tired.

One of the things I’ve been watching that makes me really, really tired is the level of fear-mongering and deliberate misinformation being spread around in an effort to defeat the current proposals to reform the health care system.

As much as I generally enjoy political theater, this stuff is just no fun at all to watch.

That is especially true when anti-reform protesters yell racial epithets and homosexual slurs at members of Congress, and even spit on them as they walk to a meeting at the White House.

The disrespect is bad enough. But the hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Just imagine how that crowd would react if matters were reversed, and members of their party were subjected to that sort of treatment by protesters.

The worst feature of the business is two-fold.

First, that those on Capitol Hill who are opposed to the proposal won’t come clean and tell us what they really object to about the bill, without all the histrionics. If your substantive objections are compelling, just tell us what they are.

Of course, if your principle objection is that you don’t want this President to score this sort of legislative victory and that you want this Presidency to fail, no matter what … well, it’s not likely that leveling with us will work well for you.

Which leads me to point number two: in stirring up as much fear and loathing as possible, opponents of health care reform are appealing to the basest impulses that still live in the deepest tar pits in their followers’ hearts, impulses that most Americans comfortably believed we had put behind us with the election of an African-American President.

The results have not been pretty.

I bring all this up because the results of the NASE survey covered in this week’s microbusiness news demonstrate that not even microbusiness owners (who are generally believed to be smarter than the average bear) are immune to this campaign of misinformation.

So, microbusiness owners, let the current episode of manipulative politics be a lesson to you.

Viewed historically, how likely is it, really, that lawmakers of either party are guilty of the more terrifying excesses of which they are accused by their political opponents?

Nobody, from either side of the aisle, would knowingly and willfully craft a bill that would instigate the end of the world or even The End of America As We Know It. I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that.

So, when it comes to forming opinions about public policy — especially issues that inspire great passion from opponents or proponents or both — use your head.