At one point I think I had some subconscious hope that by explicitly stating what's so absurd about a given position or policy it might expose it in the way Camilla described. I think I had the naive idea that shame might change minds where logic failed. But since reading the article posted here about peoples willingness to form opinions on arbitrary or even random bases, and the one about our tendency to be more rather than less intractable when we've done so, I've seen too many examples to deny it. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, but what he left out is that each of those individual opinions is largely impervious to fact.

So now I guess it's catharsis more than anything, which is probably why it comes out so bitterly. Sorry 'bout that; believe it or not, I AM working on it. But patriotism isn't a dirty word in this country yet, and I'm appalled at what I see being done to my country by people to whose votes I don't begrudge, but whom I wish would bother to know wtf they're talking about before they start talking.