Lies can be criticized, but I don't see how they can be discussed. I think a main purpose of the tactic is to prevent discussion, which might lead voters to "undesirable" conclusions.

I've written lately about how Americans seem to have lost the will for self-government; and how the modern nation-state may have run its course.

So maybe I just shouldn't worry about what's happening now in America. Maybe the die is cast, and the coriolis force as America circles the drain is too powerful to escape the whirlpool. Maybe what we're going through now are the necessary birth pangs of the world to come.

Maybe you're right that it will be a world of kleptocracies and thugocracies; hell, we're halfway there already. But maybe not. I know for sure that on the present course all that's ahead of us is idiocracy and squalor, so why not roll the dice and let the change happen?

The Right's poison has had the effect of destroying any sense of optimism about America's future; we're far more compliant in a defensive crouch. We've forgotten what it's like to imagine a positive future, and that makes a negative future a self-fulfilling prophecy. For me, resistance takes the form of hanging on to optimism by looking beyond America's fate to imagine something better beyond it. I can't stop a majority of Americans from choosing to dissolve the country through their actions, so I may as well make the best of it.