I have been reluctant to post these ideas though I have harbored them for some time.  Recent events have only confirmed their continued applicability, however, and a post yesterday on Truthout.com by Eric Boehlert, "A President Was Killed the Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This," prompted me to respond to Boehlert with the below thoughts, and to submit them for the consideration of this community.

Basically, I thanked Boehlert "for catching up."  The rest of my statement follows:

"I've watched people I thought I knew well, including Republicans of seemingly high intellect, buy into the radical insanity, fearing -- and this is a direct quote - 'the end of representative democracy under Obama.'  Making sweeping generalizations goes against everything I believe in, but the sheer amount and intensity of irrational behavior leads me to conclude there is a pathological level of paranoia among the right wing and a huge amount of racism and 'christianized' extremism.  This is a Deep South, Great Plains, High Rockies movement -- regions that are historically the least open, the least tolerant, and the most xenophobic in the country.  Make no mistake: This country's 'Civil War' started with the '3/5ths Rule' in the Constitution, became a shooting war in the 1860s (when the radical Right claimed another President), a covert war until the Civil Rights Act, and has continued today under the guise of neo-conservativism, for whose adherents Muslims, the Taliban, and Iranian 'insurgents' provided a useful proxy for unification through violence.  The deep red converts are scary and dangerous, and they are seducers of many people we all know and, in some cases, even love."

Whether witch doctor, Stalin, Hitler, secret Muslim, or any other ludicrous comparison the Right wants to launch, the opposition to President Obama has completely lost its moorings from any reasoned political or social theory.  Radical federalists, neo-imperialists, or simply the super-rich hoping to avoid a fair tax share are all among those who freely exploit the paranoid as muscle against social progress.  The health care "debate" only confirmed for me the lunacy of the "other side" and demonstrated the willingness of empowered interests, this time in the form of the insurance lobby, to leverage blind hatred for narrow, parochial purposes. 

What I once wanted to tell a former friend whom I have lost in the course of this debate, a Republican I once held in some esteem, is that the intensity of the opposition that he emphasized on our past discussions does not equate to validity.  It is my experience that the most intense "believers" in any line of thinking operate detached from all facts and rely exclusively on faith in a special, shared truth that unites them and their fellow believers no matter how destructive that belief may be to the common welfare.  It's not the product of rational thought, it is the behavior of a cult and it defies logical discourse.  This was most evident previously in the Evangelism that propelled Republicans to power in the 90s until recently despite the fact that the Republicans so ensconced demonstrated a level of avarice, mendacity and immorality more befitting decadent Rome than seats of American government.  Now, we see this cultism in a Fox-fueled radical right that would, indeed, cheer at the death of a President they hate unreasoningly even though his policies (continuing some of the policies of his Republican predecessor) saved the world from a devastating Second Great Depression and certain economic anarchy.  Go figure.

I was hopeful that policy successes under President Obama, the best leader for our times, would cement a pragmatic government under Progressives for the remainder of my life (who, after all would turn down affordable health care?!).  That outcome is now at great risk.  Progressives are going to have to mobilize and defend their recent gains until the radicals are finally forced into permanent minority status and a more rational opposition emerges.  Do they have the will when there is no grand, unifying crisis at hand, only a low-level counter-revolution driven by hate, shaped by lies and energized by unthinking fear?  Time will tell whether we will participate in the next great victory over the forces of repression in America, or suffer yet another reversal that further delays our emergence as a truly rational society. 

God Bless the United States of America.