In today’s politico-media sphere it is easier than ever to define some evil Other and blame “them” for the problems “we” face. The right-wing attacks on teachers and other public servants are the most recent example of a pernicious human habit that is now and always has been a real threat to a civilization’s social, political and economic viability.

Well, now it seems that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been attacked by one coyote and three “anarchists.” Quite the inspiring credentials for a presidential run, I’d say.

This false claim that all the terrorists indicted in the last two years are allegedly motivated by Islamic extremism is not just sloppy. It serves to excuse one of the biggest problems of Rep. Peter King’s fear-mongering: the way it tautologically focuses on Islamic extremism and ignores other terrorists that pose an important threat to this country.

There was a frightening heaviness to the days following the Tucson shootings. Some years ago, Italo Calvino perfectly described the feeling I had last week: At certain moments I felt that the entire world was turning into stone: a slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spared no [...]

The efforts we’ve seen in recent years by Democrats to placate the other side, through weakening of that moral imperative, only serve to weaken the public policy goal.

This democracy isn’t broken at all, nosiree.

Sarah Palin’s political value isn’t as shiny as it was three days ago.

So many American bodies are sprayed with blood, their own, their lover’s, their mother’s and father’s, their brother’s and sister’s. Oh we are so certain of our innocence, but we are a nation tattooed in crimson, eyes to belly, with Jackson Pollock’s The Deep

An article in Wednesday’s New York Times noted how residents of Seoul are taking Tuesday’s artillery shelling of a South Korean island by North Korea in stride, viewing that event as “largely contained and unthreatening.” How different that is from the panic-driven banning of toner shipments to the US after the failed attempt to bring down airplanes with toner-bombs. Using the toner-bombs as buildup, TSA now is forced to “justify” its eight month delay in its over-response to the failed Mighty Underpants Eagle bomb. Oh, and returning to the Korean situation, the Times notes that the Korean attitude is “We don’t want war.” That’s not quite the position of prominent right-wing nutjob Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, whose response to the shelling was “I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs.” The calm resolve of our Founding Fathers has given way to panic driven by hate and fear, producing a nation of xenophobic cowards. Enemies of the US need not even be successful in killing a single person to be able to drive us into hate-filled screeds and billions of dollars in useless “security” measures.

What is it about my politics the Right hates so much? It’s a question I kept asking myself as the election returns rained down last Tuesday. How do they convince themselves that my vision of America’s future is somehow un-American,  a threat that will somehow make their lives intolerable? I’m speaking in the first person [...]