The longer the Republicans put off actually examining what happened in 2008, the better things are for Democrats.

I often find myself wondering why some progressive and moderate Democrats spend so much time trying to explain this to the Republicans right now, practically pleading for them to understand.

The justification is often that "having two healthy viable parties is good for Democracy". While this may be true, there's absolutely nothing in the statement that says that Republicans have to be one of them.

Historic parallels are often floated to "prove" that parties always come back. Except that it's not true, they don't always. Whigs, anyone? Our binary party system settling on that particular pair was just one possible outcome, and it could certainly change completely.

One of the main reasons that Republicans ever had competitive levels of support at all despite being considerably to the right of most voters is the propaganda machine called "the news media". Which called itself "the liberal media" but then it would, as part of the propaganda.

Now that that edifice is actually showing cracks, anything could happen.

Because the more Democrats do it, the more Republicans will refuse to do it.

That is why.

Do you actually think that this is why most Democrats and/or progressives wring their hands about this and make so many online comments saying "God, can't these Republicans just face it that they're too far to the right?" and etc? That it's all done with this kind of scheming reverse psychology in mind?

Not likely.

I think the Democratic operatives who are actually that Machiavellian are the ones mostly leaving that subject alone. Which of course is the smartest thing to do. Their statements are more limited to "Wow, the Republicans certainly do seem to be extremists" and just letting that sink in. Pleading with Republicans to change is mostly the rest of us.

I don't think it really matters what anyone else says, the Republicans aren't listening at this point. That's the whole point.

I don't think the point of the cartoon is to be mainly, or even much at all, a critique of the quality of the TV show.

The "Ticking bomg scenario" has entered the national debate as a full-fledged meme only somewhat related to how it's portrayed simplistically on some TV drama that was popular.

The using of that argument and pretending that it has much to do with real life is the target of the satire. Not whether the show is dumb or fun to watch or not.

Case in point: me. I've never seen the show and I get the satirical point perfectly nonetheless.

Pssst, Camille: Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.

That's it. It's that easy. Your admission that you listened to right wing radio "all day long" was at least honest, but it goes a long way to explaining this most recent dribbling insanity appearing in your columns, swinging from the previous "Rush Limbaugh is a brilliant important American" to now this paranoid "OMG they're all coming to get us" thing.

These extremists are loud, but tiny. Every time someone says that Rush or Glenn Beck or even FOX News has these "huge" ratings, you have to ask yourself what that means in terms of actual citizenry. A million, even twenty million? So what? The percentage of people who will even call themselves Republicans is down to 20 percent, and while we know that contains these core extremists (where else would they go? They're not the indepedents, who approve of Obama in high numbers, so we know that's not them) it also contains just die hard Republicans who won't abandon it, so the real Dittohead crazies are probably something like 15 or even 10 percent.

That's it.

While I'm not at all confident that some crazed Timothy McViegh type might emerge again and do something horrible, the idea that some massive revolution is coming is, well, the usual tripe from people like you.

I'm not saying that you'd stop being the same "twit" that Molly Ivins described in the early 90s, as you always have been. I'm just saying for your own sanity, turn off the right wing extremists and you'll realize you were unduly influenced by them, one day prasing them, the next afraid that they're all chasing you, whatever. The truth is, they're not very important, just loud.

It's a little bit like saying in the early 70s that radical leftist extremists were going to cause a violent revolution, I mean a real one. While certainly some of THEM thought that this was true, most people didn't think so. And most people were right.

When I used to play with other jazz musicians at clubs or private affairs to make an income to supplement the real gigs, we'd have to field requests from people to play pop music, which was to be expected. While playing something off the radio wasn't neccesarily bad -- hell, give me an Earth Wind and Fire tune or anything by Stevie Wonder any day -- the worst, absolute worst thing you could hear was "Can you play some Madonna?" This was in the 80s and her music was the worst, most vapid dance-flavored disco around, just the most pale, weak, teeny-bopper stuff with no soul whatsoever. Having to even play it as covers, without Madonna's insufferably insipid vocals, was still excrutiating. And more important, it was boring.

It just occured to me that people who think Paglia is a stimulating and intellectual writer are very similar to those who think Madonna is an interesting and important musical artist.