The depth of the GOP's ignorance, combined with the breadth of the lack of contact between the GOP and the rest of the world is, I confess, breath-taking.

Though I've long said here that they don't get it; and included in some post or another something about communication;I really had no idea how extensive, even all-encompassing, their ignorance and lack of contact are.

It's like they are a child, found in a basement after years of imprisonment, knowing only the company of animals, attempting to sniff the butt of his rescuer. They really cannot be blamed for behaving inappropriately. Can they? Read on.

Or it's like they've been recently released from a prison they constructed for their own selves; and, possessed by inappropriate feelings of betrayal, sally forth in Lady Vengeance mode. The only problem here is that they've only their selves to blame....and it's at this point one encounters The Pity Party Meme in the recent Twitter posts about Iran.

In my febrile imaginings, I expect some enterprising Young Republican to begin tentatively moving toward a National Reconciliation by opining "Like the Russians in 1991, our Party post-Reagan and post-Bush was just not prepared for Democracy. We blame our moms."

Here they are, actually: living in what they describe as the world's greatest democracy; a global example of how to correctly implement capitalism; surrounded by (for much of the planet's population) unimaginable wealth; saturated with marketing for tech wonders and gee-gaws bordering on kitsch; in a nation long past re-construction....acting like they've been exiled to a cave on Deprivation Archipelago in the year dot.

When the problem is really their ignorance flowing from an obstreperous, self-imposed exile from the civil, secular, commons that is our Republic.