I'm sure this will frustrate you, since you see what you see as clearly as I see what I see (or don't see, in this case). But I gotta say, that doesn't come off as "mockery" to me, or even condescension. Perhaps there's a bit of frustration in Glenn's tone, since he's working so hard to make a difference, and some are indeed defeatist. A guy who's bailing water out of a sinking boat as fast as he can with the bucket he's got, isn't going to want to hear "We're all gonna die!" from someone who isn't bailing at all. But that said, I think Glenn's tone is civil and his words very much in direct response to what the poster(s) said.

Notice I said, "I think..." You're welcome to your interpretation. Just don't imagine it's the only viable one.

The poster who advocated a total revolution -- and that's what he/she said -- did deserve to be reminded that some of us see the edifice of government as salvageable, and that some of us are working hard to turn things around, and that those people working hard would be interested to know what exactly those who are saying all is lost and that only total revolution will save us are doing about that, and that if they're not doing anything about it would they please shut up and let those who are working to save ALL of us get on with their work.

You can write ten pages and I'm still not convinced. Which I'm sure worries you to death, right?

Your posts are far more nasty, profane, mocking and arrogant than anything I've ever seen from Glenn or most of the people posting here. You kinda shoot yourself in the foot, there, whether you have a point or not. Seems almost like you call Glenn a mocker so as to give yourself license to vent your own brand of spleen.

One of the reasons we all keep coming here is because Glenn is even-handed, relies on hard evidence before calling people on their shit, and invites the kind of sane, informed discussion that is often lacking at other blogs. At the moment, IMO, you are not contributing to that ambiance, but detracting from it. And all that over a point that is barely worth making even if it were true.

There are many ways in which demonstrations, i.e. people making their physical bodies noisily visible in support or protest, can be more effective than "the pen," especially the electronic pen. Bush has been effectively shielded from protest because a) his handlers determine what he sees and reads and b) the crowds that have tried to confront him, to tell him how intensely they disagree with him have been too small, have been manageable by some pretty Mickey-Mouse techniques. No Chicago 1968 needed. Yes, if large crowds had showed up everywhere Bush showed up and refused to disperse or be silent, we might live in a different world today than we do.

Does anyone disagree with this, even Glenn?

But what little access to the facts of Craig's arrest I have had leads me to feel that this could actually have been a matter of one overzealous cop working on his quota of entrapments for the day. What are we paying cops to lurk in bathrooms for, anyway? Unless children are involved, that is.

If I had a lawyer who spoke that sloppily, I'd fire him, too!

How could he have voted for the anti-gay legislation he did (as I understand it)? Being gay and Republican can work just fine, why not? But being gay and a Republican senator is by difinition highly problematic.

They certainly don't seem to think that Craig's behavior is so irrelevant any more, do they? As always, it is astonishing to observe how the same human brain can accommodate those two opposite thoughts only a few months apart without even realizing that it is doing so.

Just as generals tend to fight the last war instead of the present one, these "journalists" and "pundits" are still living, mentally, in a time when the only way to recall what they said three months ago was to stockpile your newspapers and be prepared to dig through them manually to research the writings of yester-month. Their little pea-brains haven't caught up with the fact that what they said last year they might as well have said today. It's a bitch, ain't it?