The serious wackos, the obsessive-compulsive absurdists, may be beyond therapy. But the rest of us could use some serious adult counseling. We’ve forgotten many of the fundamentals: how to live within our means, the benefits of shared sacrifice, the responsibilities that go with citizenship, the importance of a well-rounded education and tolerance.
As much as I'd like to agree with Herbert here, I can't. I'm just as sick of the birthers, the death-panel Palinistas, and the Obama as Mao/Hitler/Stalin/Marx/bin Laden wackos for whom the difference between fascist and communist is as vast as the space between their ears as the next guy. Giving up on these people, however, would be like giving up on the segregationists, the pro-slavery southerners, the laissez-faire capitalists who nearly bankrupted our economy. These people don't need pats on the head and daily medicine in the form of two hours of Fox/Fix/Faux News. They need real truth, real reality, real facts, and real understanding.
I can remember drinking up at least enough liberal Kool-Aid in the past eight years to give serious consideration to the notion that GW Bush was about to pull a Musharaf, an Idi Amin, and declare martial law in October 2008, suspending the Constitution so that he and Cheney could remain in power for life. What cured me was the presidential campaign last summer, as I witnessed a man of stellar intellect, judgment, and temperament run a campaign that celebrated healthy debate, facts, and sanity while the world around it blew its collective shpadoinkle over a meeting he'd had with a 1960s radical in some dark apartment in Chicago, and a fist-bump he shared with his wife.
Time healed wounds that existed in my own family for years. Time will also heal the wounds that have split our country. I don't believe that anyone except the truly insane on the lunatic right would seriously consider an armed insurrection against our president or our government. And I don't think anyone on the left would consider a China- or Soviet-style communist, collectivist regime to replace the representative government that has served us, for better or worse, for over 220 years.
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