No doubt a lot of good Southerners were killed during the Civil War, and no doubt many of the Yankees who survived were real scumbags, but that’s the nature of war, isn’t it? Its the good and the decent, and the civilians, who take the bulk of the casualties.

I used to pride myself for voting for the occasional Republican, even if it meant going against a popular and influential Democrat I felt was abandoning the principles of my ideology, or engaged in corrupt behavior. But that is a LIBERAL attitude we can no longer afford the luxury of indulging. This is war, and it was declared on Liberals. And it is now a war of survival, not a genteel high school debate. And Liberals are losing.

Look at the news, and listen to the rhetoric on the Right. And remember, we appear to be retreating on all fronts. Now is not the time to be fair.

My cousin Rudy and I talk about this often. He left Cuba as a teenager just a few years after Castro took power, fleeing the Red dictatorship. Initially his family supported the Revolution and opposed the fascist tyrant Batista. He has liberal political views, but has no illusions about Communism.

He tells me he has seen this all before, it is all hauntingly familiar to him. The Revolution never happens all at once, whether it be of Left or Right, it takes time to consolidate its position and purge its enemies and this is what he sees happening now in this country. I look to history, the rise of the Nazis in Germany for insight into the current political ecosphere. Rudy actually experienced his metaphor in real time, he lived through it as it unfolded. He doesn’t have to read Shirer, biographies of Hitler or histories of the Weimar Republic. He watched it at home, at school, on the street. And his highly refined sense of deja vu tells him America is running out of time. One day we will wake up and some invisible divide will have been crossed–and it will be too late to reverse the flow. The process may be slow and tortuous, but the actual transition is instantaneous.

I’m sorry if I appear to be abandoning even the pretense of moderation. that I am joining the chorus of the shrill, the intolerant, yes, the trolls. But I am scared shitless. And what really bothers me is that I keep catching myself telling myself (under my breath, so to speak); “Well, you’re just an old fart anyway. You’ll probably be dead by the time it gets really bad.”

No, the Zone isn’t what it used to be. We’ve lost far more than right wing trolls, we’ve lost all the right…the thoughtful as well as true believers. I don’t think that, in good conscience, I can call any of those who made most of the journey with us “trolls”.

I haven’t seen Rob in quite a while, and I miss him.