McFly, if I'm on the left then I feel no real animosity towards someone on the right if that means they're just to the other side of the true ideological middle. However the danger in your conclusion is assuming that the left and right in America actually straddle a middle line. A decade or so that would have been a correct assumption.

The bastardization of our politics that happened over the last decade, actually since Reagan came into office, moved that centerline drastically to the right so that many that considered themselves conservative were actually dangling their toes in the outskirts of fascism. The moderate left, progressives, and center never really changed. They just found themselves not only out of political power but often the target of slander and treasonous accusations.

I actually find it refreshing now that the animosity has reached the pitch it has because it means Howard Beale's call for people to go to their windows and scream "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" is becoming a reality.

We were on a precipice here much like the citizens of Germany in the 1930's. Many of us felt that a continuation of a Republican administration would have pushed us further down the path that they eventually took as the rift between the haves and have nots widened more.

During all of this though, true conservatives that still understood what it meant to be an honorable Republican in the vein of Teddy Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater were probably the true victims of all of this because, had they stood up to their party and not supported the rise to power of the extremists, they would have been targets of the smears of their own party as well, a system that showed they handled disloyalty in brutal fashion. Unfortunately, since they sat silent at this abuse of power, they were also in the cross hairs of all the rest of us. Although I feel some empathy for them, I'm also disturbed that more of them didn't speak out earlier.

I think you're right to be alarmed here. Things were and are very dicey between the political extremes here but I hope you put the blame squarely where it belongs this time. The Republican Party wasn't satisfied with power. It wanted it all. It wasn't merely happy with taking power away from anyone on the left. It wanted to completely silence their voices and also that of the center as well. People that left the administration such as Scott McClellan talked of how decisions were made not to solve crisis or advance the country but purely for political gain.

I don't see us as doomed now. We were perilously close to that in the past few years but a great deal of the country woke up. The danger is not over. The people that brought us here don't like giving up power and have a ruthless side in their quest to get it back. What actually might save us though is that these very individuals that did the most harm profited immensely during their reign. They may actually not care as much about the political power loss because their financial futures are secure.

Art