Sobering

Sean Penn writes eloquently about the complete and utter bankruptcy that characterizes the Republican ticket. In so doing, he observes (emphasis mine):

Despite recent boasts to the contrary, by the Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, (Bush's key bumbler of the Katrina debacle) our country is not safer. It is not safer from without, and it is not safer from within. The divisiveness brought on by the policies of George W. Bush and John McCain has created an emotional civil war. We have to ask ourselves, at what point emotions may even turn to violence here at home.

I have heard the term "culture war," but it does not ring with as much urgency as "emotional civil war." But that's what it is.

All day today, I have been sparring with a reader about the McCain/Palin ticket. We have, I guess, come to an uneasy truce for now, but I wrote some pretty heavy shit in response to some of his replies to my posts:

Your conversion [to] McCain due to the Palin selection reveals that you care nothing about cutting spending (she increased spending and taxes in her city AND ate at the federal pig trough as governor), fighting gov't corruption (which she recreated with her own grade school chums and adopted the use of personal email for state business to avoid subpoenas), or winning the war (which she hadn't even thought about beyond what she'd seen on the news and who believed in an exit strategy in opposition to McCain). You are excited for Palin because she is an evangelical Christian who shares your views on outlawing reproductive freedom, her love of guns, and her hatred of gays.

You're smarter than that.

In some ways, I see this as a "civil" war, a war of ideas, of ideals, and of conflicting visions for what makes America great. We all celebrate the fact that we can disagree like this and not come to blows or gunshots (usually). But some celebrate from a position of superiority that negates the patriotism, the commitment, or the ideals of the other. I applaud differing views, and I don't think the reader I wrote to above would characterize me as intolerant of his views. I just see things differently. As Harvey Feirstein would have said, "Is that so wrawung?"