Mr. Greenwald's latest is of course on the money as far as it goes. However, the missing link that he's seeking and not finding is that the problem is not, as he says 8 years old, but at least 28 years old. In America, the Right is assumed to be right unless proven wrong. It's just a native assumption, grounded in rhetoric and not fact, and it goes deep into the past of this country. Just as FDR struggled to overcome the conservatism and assumptions of his Supreme Court in responding to unprecendented events, we're faced with a total melt-down of the Right and the same old assumptions, that things used to be better, that Conservatives represent the moral majority, that anyone advocating change is one of "dem dere communists" at worst and misguided at best.

Americans imbibe conservative rhetoric with their mother's milk, and the American school system is obsessed with perpetuating the idea that the Right represents normal, safe,"Good" thinking, that the pursuit of wealth by any means necessary is the primary value. Fundamentalist religion assumes that wealth is a sign of God's favor. It's built into our system from the ground up.

The periodic rise of "liberal" thought represents exceptions among an intellectual few and not any sort of trend in our culture. Kennedy and McGovern, the "welfare state" and proportional taxation, those are abberant people and notions, not "good old fashioned American values".

Of course the media trends to the right. The notion that it didn't was never more than Coulter and Limbaugh bitching because someone pointed out their esssential lunacy. It's worth remarking that while American history is full of left wing figures who were executed for their thinking, the current president's grandfather participated in an attempt to overthrow the duly elected FDR government. Not only was he not prosecuted, his son and grandson were handed power that made FDR look like a moderate. Right wing insanity is defined as the very nature of patriotism, left wing dissent is punished more often than not as radical and dangerous.

Okay, I admit it, I trained as a behavioral psychologist. Not trendy, not sexy, but mine own way of thinking. and I can asssure you, the stories and anecdotes about mutilated girlfriend dolls should frighten the crap out of everybody.

One certainty has emerged in the battleground of conflicting psychologies, and that is that most sexual behavior is learned. Human sexuality is plastic, it isn't fixed by instinct. What we're exposed to in the company of pleasurable stimuli is what we learn to respond to sexually.

It's just a fact that men who masturbate to violent stimuli, or treat their plastic girlfreinds roughly, are MUCH more likely to treat real women in the same way. The combination of an internal dialogue along the lines of "You like that, don't you, bitch?", the sight of a female in violently oriented sexual situations, and the knocking around of a love doll, while they seem to be harmless because no one is getting hurt, are in fact teaching and reinforcing a misogynistic and harmful attitude towards women that will come out in interaction with real life partners.

Traditional psychotherapists will talk of catharsis, getting it out of your system, etc, but the undisputed fact is just that sexual behavior is mostly learned, and if violence is what you learn, violence is what you do when given the chance.

Okay, a large percentage of men will fail to develop criminally problematical behaviors, but if, say, just 10 percent of those who view violent porn and abuse their plastic girlfriends go on to do the same to real women, you're still dealing with a LOT of people.

That doesn't even consider the consequences of the lack of real human interaction on people who respond to these dolls.

My point is, simply, yes, be afraid, be very afraid. We won't see the totality of consequences from these things for years down the line, but it's pretty easy to predict that violence towards women will continue to rise because of this crap. How many Bundys or Dahmers does it take to make it a real problem?