Related: My Family, Our Cancer, and the Murderous Cruelty of Conservatives

What is it about Obamacare that compels seemingly intelligent people to explode in bubbling spasms of stupid? Are they misinformed? Unable to see past the rage-fueled partisan sweat dripping into their eyes? Or just plain dishonest?

No matter. At this point, it has become obvious that history will look back on the four-year war on Obamacare as one of the saddest, most bizarre, and most dishonestly embarrassing episodes of our time. I have given up trying to understand the vehement opposition of so many who cannot offer up truthful reasons for their objections, and instead fuel the hatred and fears of the uninformed with the most illogical, mendacious, and fundamentally bizarre arguments that have ever been marshaled. By comparison, Joe McCarthy’s McCarthyistic McCarthyism was an exercise in reason.

Let’s start with the obvious. We are three years into the adoption of Obamacare, with a few months to go before the next big step, when people are required to have health insurance. But no one has killed my mother yet. In fact, my wife—who is a geriatrician—is not preparing for her patient base to be wiped out in a series of “death panel” sessions. She *has,*however, been forced to assure patient after patient that they are not about to be murdered by Washington.

Not only that, but I’m allowed to see my own doctor—and that is not going to change. In fact, everyone who has the same insurance now that they had before won’t see any narrowing or revisions in their doctors available to them unless the insurance companies decide to make them. And guess what—that was always true.

I don’t have to contact the Oval Office to have a medical procedure. While the price of my family insurance has gone up—just like it does every year—the rate of annual increase has been lower than it has been for as long as we have had our policy.

None of this is to say there aren’t growing pains associated with Obamacare. But my question is: Where is the Armageddon that the G.O.P. has been promising will descend every year for the last few years?

Remember when Rick Santorum and his wife said they feared Americans with special needs—like their daughter—would suffer once Obama began rationing health care based on the “usefulness” of people? Does anyone believe that, now that Obama has been re-elected and Obamacare is about to take the next big step, Santorum is fleeing the country with his daughter to make sure she won’t be euthanized? Of course not—he was lying. Then again, this was the same fellow who, in one of his jeremiads against Obamacare, falsely proclaimed that 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are from euthanasia and elderly folks there wear bracelets saying they do not want to be euthanized—two statements of “fact” that were simply made up. (Rick—for someone who proclaims his fidelity to the Bible, you sure do lie a lot. Perhaps you should read Psalm 101:7. “No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.”)

For heaven’s sake, even the supposed “filibuster” of Ted Cruz this week was a falsehood. It was no such thing—his speaking won’t stop the continuing resolution to keep the government running from being picked up by the Senate. He engaged in just a form of verbal masturbation, a performance piece to make the legions already fooled into believing in the evils of Obamacare cheer him on—and maybe even sending him money for his campaign.