Politics Is History In The Present Tense.

Whats Different Now Is That While Political Leaders Used To Give Talking Points To Talk Radio, Now Talk-radio Hosts Are Giving Talking Points To Political Leaders. Its All Part Of The Suffocating Spin Cycle Were In. In Media, Politics And Publishing, The Conventional Wisdom Is To Play To This Base.

Politics Follows The Lines Of Physics: Every Action Creates An Equal And Opposite Reaction.

By Pumping Up Hyper-partisanship, Our Country (america) Is Playing With Forces That Can Easily Get Out Of Control. We Are Giving Purpose And Cover - And Sometimes A Sense Of Purpose - To The Crazy Among Us. We Are Encouraging A Culture Of Extremism

We Cannot Hope To Change Human Nature. There Will Always Be Cranks And Conspiracy Theorists Among Us. But We Can Try To Improve Things - We Don't Have To Accept The Debasement Of Civil Discourse Or Civic Decline. We Can Take Steps To Ensure That The Lunatic Fringe Remains On The Fringe And Stops Bleeding Into The Base And Then Poisoning The Mainstream

I Believe That The Far-right And The Far-left Can Be Equally Insane - But There's No Question That In The First Years Of The Obama Administration, The Far-right Has Been Far Crazier. In Part, This Comes From Parties Being Out Of Power - Without The Responsibility Of Governing To Ground Them, The Activists And The Ideologues Take Over.