If there is such a faction, how big are they, how influential? What do you have to believe (or refuse to swallow unquestioningly) to qualify for membership in this misguided cabal? Or are they just a convenient fiction designed to discredit those who do not agree with you, or who refuse to accept your excuses for failure any longer?

Although it may seem from the pervasive political discussion that the world began in January of 2001, I am a bit older than that, and lived through a lot more years of Vietnam and the Cold War than I have Iraq. Nothing I'm talking about is new.

You may be getting tired of my bringing this subject up, but the group I am talking about infests a large segment of our entertainment and academic infrastructure, and has more political influence than their relatively small numbers would indicate.

For my part, I'm getting tired of people acting, at best, like this faction has no influence on anything in this country, and at worst, like the entire group is a figment of my imagination.

What "failure" are we talking about?