Let me finish tonight with the dance of death we’ve been witnessing these past 24 hours.
Want to know the precise location of this country’s political zaniness? Just pay close attention on-line or on-air to the clenched-teeth seething from the right — from Limbaugh to Savage to Brent Bozell, the fury that knows how to get heard is screaming in pain and rampage.
It wants blood — the Chief Justice’s to start with, then onto the Supreme Court itself, then onto the President, and all those people who agreed with him that what he did was not only constitutional, but deeply American.
This much we know right now. A new poll shows that the Supreme Court decision of yesterday is building the case for the Affordable Care Act. There’s now an even balance of view on the plan, a dramatic upsurge from before. People are beginning to open their minds about the bill, ready to take a look at the features that affect them, earnest in understanding the before and after of this matter — how things will be for the better and at what cost.
The question right now concerns the politics. Why were the liberals, the Democrats, the reasonable people able to look forward to this decision by the Supreme Court with some kind of equanimity, able to say to themselves, “Let’s see how this goes,” preparing themselves to live with the results.
It’s called rule by law: don’t have to like the law, just have to obey it. Then came the thunder from the right last night — the lightning of outrage, the charges of treason and calls for defiance, all the notes beloved by the crazies. Don’t like something? Blast away at it as if it’s time to hit the barricades. Yell, “Treason!” Charge all who disagree with you as traitors. Call for massive resistance. It’s what we saw in the civil rights movement, what we saw throughout our history when progress came: outrage, calamitous outrage, warnings of the worst to come. Don’t ask who’s causing this country’s poisonous political discourse. You can hear it screaming and screeching from the right.
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