You feel so certain of this that you think that any action required to set things straight is acceptable, justifiable, even imperative. And you are convinced that you, and people who share your moral and intellectual gifts, have an obligation, even a duty to make this happen. And those who oppose you must be stopped, and punished.

That is narcissism and paranoia. I’m better than they are, and they are out to get me. It is the source, the fountainhead of fascism. When the bourgeoise doesn’t get what it wants, when it feels what it has earned is being taken from them, it throws a tantrum and goes on a rampage. It goes looking for a scapegoat because it cannot accept that its misfortunes are due to its own shortcomings, the very people they emulate, or perhaps just the Brownian shuffle of history. Those who don’t find that grim view of the world self-evident must clearly be a part of the evil conspiracy behind it.

And you my friend, are a classic case. Get you off politics, and you are a charming, clever, likeable fellow, a person anyone would be proud and happy to have as a neighbor or friend. But when you start brooding about why the world has gone to shit, you metamorphose into someone very different.

There’s a pop psychology term for that, too. Schizophrenia.

No, that’s the Tea Party, who up until now have bullied the GOP into following their lead. But no longer it seems to appear.

Which way are you going to go Tom? To a more center right GOP or the Tea Party?

Who knows? Where I live, I haven’t had a national vote that counted for a quarter century now. Recently, even local elections are mostly for show. A few places on my ballot last time had only two Democrats for California offices. This trend will increase.

This thread has been very instructive. The idea that this current conflict is unprecedented is apparently unassailable.

So is the idea that the current opposition to the Democrats presents an equally-unprecedented clear and present danger to the nation, if not the economy of the whole planet.

Republicans, in the national debate, are “terrorists,” “arsonists,” “anarchists,” and worse. Much worse. Hell, I’m just a guy in a garage, and you can see what I’m being called on this board. Half this thread alone is incoherent, furious raving.

The other shoe in this country hasn’t dropped yet, but sometimes I think it’s hanging by a lace.

“This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.” – Andrew Sullivan

It’s not about GOP policies or philosophies, it’s about their deplorable, undemocratic and unpatriotic tactics.

We are the subhuman, degenerate race that has somehow still managed to outsmart and outmaneuver you and stolen from you what is yours by divine right.

das ewige liberal