Besides, having an opposition is healthy. It’s when that opposition becomes so extremist that Nazi comparisons can reasonably be applied is when I become worried.

And tas, as one of those who regularly jumps on Nazi comparisons, I think you’re in clear waters with this one. You’re not saying they *are* Nazis. You’re saying that, given the right enabling political and historical circumstances, they could have been. And I agree. And I think it’s true as a larger statement that the *only* thing that keeps people like Malkin and Geller from actually participating in or supporting a political movement like Nazism is the fact that they live in a time and place where their inclinations are restrained by a democratic constitutional structure.

I haven’t been a regular reader of LGF, lately or ever. But having Geller go after Charles Johnson kinda humanizes him.. heh. LFG has always been a cesspool of the worst of the worst, though, so both Johnson reaching his limit with rightwing craziness — and people like Geller turning on him — surprised me. Though the former surprises me more than the latter.

I know many would accuse me of an unnecessary reach for saying this, but honestly.. People like Geller and Malkin would have made great Nazis in the 1930s. They really would have. That’s kinda why I find them scary.

One quick point LGF has been doing a great job lately in not falling into the great big pool of crazy so many seem to have fallen into.

Continuum and merl, I know how you feel.. Politics is an off-limits topic with some of my relatives now. I also never tell them about my blogging habits anymore.

zhak — It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t sit here and say that blind partisanship doesn’t grip both sides, and many people involved with political parties adhere to grand ideological points without making contingency plans. Immigration is one of my favorite issues for this. If we send’em all back to Mexico, what happens when the pressure of so many jobless south of the border causes a civil war there? Nobody’s been able to answer that question when I’ve asked them.

Republicans just seem to be a special case with this, though. Like you pointed out on tax cuts and such, for the modern Republican party not only is there no empirical evidence to prove that their ideas work, there’s a boatload of empirical evidence proving that none of it works — and they choose to ignore all of it. What kills me the most is their refusal to take any fiscal responsibility whatsoever — simply blaming Obama for everything. How these people can blame a new president for the shitty state of the economy is beyond comprehension. For 8 years, these very same people told us to vote for Bush and their congressional candidates, show obedience towards them, not complain about their policies, etc. After those 8 years are over and we’re mired in one of the world’s biggest fiscal crises ever, they’re trying to pin it all on Obama? Really? Are you kidding me? I’m never seen anything more disingenuous than this.

Maria Elena: Uh, what?

I understand all that stuff, though I find it baffling that these people seem to want nothing more than to drag us all kicking & screaming several centuries backward to a simpler time when white men ruled, dammit, and women & minorities knew their damn place.

Ahem.

What I don’t understand is this: folks on the right can have an opinion — say, that the Iraq war is a glorious success & we’ve won (yes we have!). Now, this opinion flies in the face of, well, just about any possible measuring unit. Same thing with tax cuts — folks on the right claim they’re just the thing to fix the deficit, despite there being no data to back that up in the least. But they’ll say such things, make these claims — “they’ll force your daughter to not just get an abortion but to marry her best girlfriend!!!” — and they’re divorced from any iota of reality. It does make it very hard to talk to them — I mean, where to start? But despite lots of facts — real true actual FACTS — that fly in the face of just about every one of their desperately held canards, nobody on the right actually listens to a bunch of facts & figures about whatever and says, “well, okay, that’s correct, but you’re failing to consider this, this and this.” They just scream “tax cuts” or “FASCISM” (or “SOCIALISM” of course) or whatever the outrage du jour is. And I just can’t understand the mentality behind that. I’d love to see these folks confronted with facts and have to actually answer to them. I’d like to think it’d help move their out-of-control rhetoric to something bounded by reality.