If defriending someone on Facebook can cause someone to commit suicide, can we REALLY handle the responsibility of our internet actions? I think not. The internet vultures only have to stay one step ahead of the naive. This is their livelihood….and it is recreation for the likes of us.

We are at the mercy of instant gratification…scams…faux tirades, false personas, deviance, perversions of every kind, petitions and petitions against petitions.

We can stalk. We can be stalked. We can hack. We can be hacked. This technology is a game changer of all that we knew….and common place and almost mundane for the young. We are pre schoolers and we need to grow up fast, but it will never be fast enough.

And I don’t buy this equivalency theory, or this idea of symmetry, either. The Right is worse, and they’re getting even more worse every day. And they’re getting worse faster. The whole GOP is locked in a death spiral to fascist Gotterdammerung. The Democrats are merely corrupt and incompetent.

I don’t think all Republicans or Conservatives deserve to get tarred with that brush, in fact, I’m convinced most are well aware of the catastrophe and terrified it is happening. But the GOP has been taken over by this TParty faction and they are ruthless with their own when they don’t fall into line. The Conservatives who are not directly infected with the virus are too intimidated and bullied to do anything about it. Or have paid a stiff price for trying. Only a handful have had the balls to stand up to the thugs and they have been driven out of their political careers.

Sorry, but that’s the way I see it. I used to disagree with people like the Elder Bush, Or John McCain, or Bob Dole, but I was never scared of them, and I was confident the country would survive them without permanent damage. In the last election, only two of the potential Republican candidates were even remotely acceptable as human beings, Romney and Huntsman.

THe rest were grotesque caricatures, either batshit crazy or downright evil. No, not “too far right”, I mean really crazy or evil. In fact, several of them were both.

You saw the list, for crying out loud: Cain, Perry, Bachman, Huckabee, Palin, Trump, Santorum, Paul and Gingrich (with people like Alan West and Joe Walsh and that I-am-not-a-witch lady lurking in the shadows). I realize most thoughtful Conservatives regard this posse of haploid misfits and walking undead with total astonishment and disbelief, but this is what the Party is now considering a fair and representative cross-section of the Right! And those same thoughtful Conservatives are too afraid to speak out…not a peep.

What hath GOP wrought?

If that is what you believe, it is what I might expect but not what I wanted. It is a clear example of the problem.

The government is mired by incompetence while the motoring public simmers toward a low boil. The right is seen by the left as insensitive, ignorant cretins and the left is seen by the right as self-absorbed, elitist, morons.

In an environment of mutual, and complete disrespect, the outlook is not good.

I thought you had a new quote “below” the main text in the second post.