There's something happening, but you don't know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Now that we've had our requisite Bob Dylan reference, let's get down to brass tacks (or, as the anti-tax zealots would have it, "brass tax").

This guy is a nut. A Right-Whinge nut, but a nut. Less a nut than the guy who shot Dr. Tiller, and also less likely part of a conspiracy than that one, but still a nut.

But to see how this is playing out, all the Right-whingers on the air are claiming that he's a lefty, and that all the hate speech you hear is lefty in origin. Hell, they even have a book out, "Liberal Fascism," which claims that Nazi Germany was essentially liberal (after all, the party is "National Socialist," right)? Believe it or don't, but that's what is being peddled. Not many takers, of course, but the more they make those claims, the more they muddy the waters, and the more they are able to do that "dog whistle" thing, where key words are signals to those "in the know," but inaudible to the average Joe. The atmosphere is polluted with ad hominem attacks and skewed logic (liberal fascism?) and the society is lessened, made more toxic, with their poison.

And "you best double-plus right-think" is an example I had hoped I wouldn't see here.

I've had enough. I'm not going to leave or anything, but I won't take part in a discussion where people jump to conclusions or make off-hand belittling comments of the sort we've seen here.

Now that I've said that, it occurs to me that there are few other kinds of discussion when politics is involved. Sigh.

Bob