I'm not slamming poor Rob, who I have corresponded with often independently of the Zone, and who has always struck me as a decent and reasonable fellow--the proverbial "I'd love to sit down with you and share a couple of beers" kind of dude.

So that rant was not addressed to him personally, but to the generic Right winger that he sometimes overlaps with. He is not responsible for Trump. I suspect he can't even stand Trump. But he still feels compelled to make excuses for that turd because Trump is the Conservative standard bearer and he (they) don't want the Libs to get a free ride off the Donald's grotesqueries.

And of course, RL is a bit over the top, and a bit unfair, and has atrocious manners, and flaunts an insufferable I-told-you-so attitude. But having said that, the man is right, and maybe he's entitled to be obnoxious, just this once.

I've always considered myself "left-of-center", a "New Deal Democrat", a hippy-dippy flower child, a "wine and cheese neoliberal", and (oh yes!) a pinko intellectual and elitist.
And proud of it. But I've always known that Lenin and Mao and Castro were all in their own way just as bad as Hitler. If I were a British subject I would probably vote Tory. But that's not enough for the Righties. With them, its their way or the highway. They don't want compromise, they demand whimpering submission and nothing less. Fuck 'em.

Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative, are relative terms like hot and cold, or up and down. They are directions, not points, on the political spectrum, and in different political environments they mean different things, are actually pretty meaningless terms. I've mentioned my cousin, Bolshie Bob, who makes excuses for Putin and Che Guevara and thinks Obama was a capitalist tool in the employ of George Soros and Warren Buffett. Of course, some Conservatives believe that too, which just goes to show you there's not much difference between them two.

Anyway, I'm tired of explaining my politics to people who have already decided how I think and what I believe because I don't subscribe unquestioningly to their bullshit. But in America, I see an arc that goes back to before Reconstruction and the Civil War, that found itself again with Joe McCarthy, the John Birchers, then Barry Goldwater and George Wallace It came of age with Nixon, and fully matured with Reagan and Gingrich. And now it is rampaging across the nation, a foul and toxic pestilence growing daily indistinguishable from fascism, and feeding off the wreckage of the working class it has systematically conned out of the American Dream.

Historically speaking, the defining characteristic of a yawl (as opposed to the similar ketch rig) is not just the shorter mast aft of the main, but that the mizzen is stepped aft of the rudder post.