re: #465 yma o hyd

I’ve been following your charting of the progress of this craziness for a while now, Charles.

I am amazed and stupefied, because after the similar landslide victory of Tony Blair twelve years ago something like that simply has not happened in the UK. What did happen was a vicious, internecine bloodletting within the Tory Party and the comservatives, but such craziness?

Why is it occurring now, in the USA of all places?
It can’t be simply due to a few foaming-at-the-mouth TV people and bloggers - why are normal people so eager to link into this?
I really do not understand this.

Quite a bit of it has to do with the vilification of the ‘other side’. This causes a similar reaction and then counter-reaction and so forth. Some samples of this approach are (no sides specified here):

“The other side is stupid!”

“The other side stole the election”

“The other side hates America!”

“The other side is evil!”

And so on. I think the best thing Obama could have done is ignore the reaction entirely. As we can see, the mere fact that they changed the lesson plan is being attacked as if it is proof of guilt (guilt of what, who knows - oh yeah, the INITIAL speech!) The lesson plan was not controversial in a vacuum - it only would be disturbing if there was a partisan speech to go along with it. I guess the only thing to object to really was the fact that the Department of Education sent it out, and there are some that don’t think the feds should be involved with education at all. That’s a completely separate issue for another time - the fact is that it DOES exist and it is part of the Executive Branch of the government, so no one should be freaking out about the President speaking to school kids.