As usual, dead-on and depressing. But the most striking thing about the sorry place we have reached is only implied in your post.

You write:

This doesn't mean there is a complete erosion of freedom equal to all of those societies. Free speech still basically thrives; we elect our leaders; and individuals retain a fair amount of autonomy in their personal choices.

In the bogeyman totalitarian states of yore, the kind of wholesale dismantling of the rule of law that took place would have been impossible absent the muzzling of the intelligentsia. Stalin and Hitler and Mao had to jail or threaten to jail folks like you in order to bully everyone into obedience.

I would argue that we are now in a far more dangerous place: they don't have to threaten any of us, because hoi polloi are so opiated by Britney's knickers and America's Next Top Bimbo and the other inanity that makes up our REAL national dialog that the theft of our Constitution (and of fair elections) can be pulled off in broad daylight.

In short, the dazzling feat the Bush team has accomplished is the creation of an autocracy in which free speech exists, but is without consequence. We shout and scream and beg our fellow citizens to give a damn about the end of the rule of law -- actions that would have sent us all to the Gulag or worse in past surveillance states. But they need not bother with jailing you or any of the rest of us. They can let us pull the fire alarm, because they have so numbed and dumbed down the nation that they are confident that no one will respond.

In the dystopia of Fahrenheit 451, books had to be burned. In ours, they can be safely ignored, because the citizenry is functionally (and willfully) illiterate.

Glenn, you suggested that we set Lieberman's narcissism to the side. For purposes of studying Chris Matthews' own glaring pathologies, that makes sense. But my first reaction when this story broke was that Joe's decision to endorse McCain was virtually pure narcissism.

We have seen, over and over again, that for Lieberman the political is personal, and that it is always all about Joe. His love is for sale, given in happy exchange for attention. (His jingoistic warmongering is offered free of charge, though.) And so the candidate that best flatters Joe with attention is perforce the most qualified candidate. 'Course it turned out that McCain won that horse race by being the only nag to enter, but still. It must have been a good decision, because it got him back on "Hardball." Q.E.D.

Groucho Marx said he would refuse to join any club that would have him as a member. That is a far more principled stand than the puffed-ego nonsense we get from Lieberman, who gleefully supports the ONLY club that would have him.

There is much to shake one's head over in Ezra's misguided hit piece. (Key lesson: don't mess with Glennzilla unless you are damned sure you have the goods.)

But what really saddens me is that his post seems to evidence a key aspect of the pathology behind so much right wing nonsense -- the inability to comprehend complexity. Glenn's position was perfectly clear to me: "Ron Paul's position on X is good; his position on Y is bad. And nobody else seems to be carrying water on X, so here's a spotlight on X."

In Glenn's world, and in mine, such conflict and ambiguity are constant. Purity and perfection are simply not available options most of the time. But Ezra's reaction seems to be of a piece with the dissent=treason mindset that has taken us so far wrong: it seems outside his range of perception that one can agree with or even admire one attribute of a person while simultaneously abhoring another.

I ranted about the problem back in October (click on sig). It hurts to see it manifested on our side of the asylum wall.

Catfood @ 6:39 touches on what is, for me, the most chilling aspect of Romney's unabashed totalitarian responses.

What we know best about Mitt Romney is that he will say just about anything, and spend huge amounts of his own cash to get elected. So we have to assume that the answers he gave were calculated to enhance his numbers with likely Republican voters. And when I say "calculated," I mean somebody in his campaign has almost certainly polled these issues with primary voters. Which means that Romney's people have concluded that Republicans WANT tyranny. That puts Willard's will to power in a different and ominous context.

You can shine the spotlight on evil, Glenn. But evil seems to thrive on the publicity.