You ever get the impression that some nights its just us talking to each other? I'm working late cranking out a Powerpoint presentation.

The irony with McCarthy is that when you get past his mishandling of the situation and allowing his power to get the best of him, it was actually true that our government, media, and film industry were infested with active communists, many of which were being funded and controlled by the Soviet Union. Information on this has been trickling out of the former Soviet Union and from other sources. McCarthy, instead of helping to rationally expose this, actually wound up making things worse. For decades, communists could deflect almost any debate or criticism by playing the "McCarthyism" card.

Or as one famous radical said, there really were communists under the bed.

The line about the "morons" was a swipe from "Blazing Saddles." Not a personal opinion of mine.

You make a good point that I hadn't thought of before, when you brought up Japanese imperialism. It's not always simple anger and envy that drive aggression and terrorism, although that drives a lot of it. There are also some bad guys who want to, well, to put it simply, rule the world.

Imperial Japan was one example. The idea that their people were destined to rule the world drove them more than envy did, although a case can also be made that they were hungry for resources. This would also certainly apply to Nazi Germany, which was following a manifest destiny in their own minds that went far beyond simple nihilism. Some Arab leaders also fall into this category--Saddam seems to visualize himself as the leader of great Arabian empire.