Tom Tomorrow's colloquy between the right-wingnut and the penguin is spot on, and typical of many I've had over the last six years. Fortunately, I always play the part of the penguin.

Unfortunately, playing that part hasn't enabled me to understand how seemingly intelligent people can ignore the facts, or will deny what are clearly uncontroverted facts.

I remember a time when there would be no debate about a common set of facts. Today, however, our government and its lapdogs in the media persist in perpetuating the myth that everything is open to debate, from global warming to WMDs in Iraq to Bush's non-response to Katrina and 9/11.

I've given up trying to figure it out, however. So instead of banging my head on the wall, I just hand out bumper stickers that say this:

"IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, THEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION."

TMW must be somewhere in my neighborhood and know the same guy I know. As things get worse under Bush, my local cretin has stopped information from entering his brain unless it is first digested by Sean Hannity and fed to him in sound bites.

You'd think he would be happy. But as he must increase his dose of FOX 'news' each day to stave off reality encroachment, he has become more paranoid, sullen, and belligerant. I'm hoping he keeps it up. One of these days they are going to take him away in an ambulance, raving like a maniac. Or maybe he will just spontaneously combust. Or maybe his head will explode.

If you know and care about someone in his condition, get them some help. Cognitive dissonance kills! Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy the fun.

I'm about 80pgs into 'Conservatives Without Conscience'. It sheds light on people like this guy and the neighbor of the other letter writer. I feel better and a bit less frustrated after reading about all the research that illuminates the way these people 'think'. I don't have any more hope of 'reaching' them however.

Hi jett!

You're wrong, wrong, wrong, but you just don't know it.

Dense is as dense does!

Is it a blood sugar deficiency or something?

I would never demand that someone apologise for voting for Bush, because it was their vote to give away to Satan, and because I am not a jerk.

Is it just that Tom gets a regular place on Salon but Mallard Fillmore doesn't (to "balance it out")?

I suggest you eat more vegetables, or alternatively get bent.

I see that someone else has already recommended this book. But, the book's good enough to explain things that it deserves to be mentioned again.

I'll oversymplify what Dean has to say in the book but it does explain what TT is saying in his cartoon. Basically, there are about six different types of conservatives and one type is the "authoritarian conservative." Academic tests can, with high precision, identify them. And there are two types of authoritarians: leaders an followers. Thus, the authoritarian followers will believe authoritarian leaders even if they are saying, "The liberals have turned the moon into cream cheese." And it's the authoritarian conservatives who have taken over the government. It's also why you'll find some of the other types of conservatives Bill Buckley comes to mind)who don't like what the authoritarians are doing to this country.

According to Dean (and quoting academic authority) about 22% of the population is authoritarian. (That's one reason why Bush hasn't had any difficulty stocking his entire administration with other authoritarians.) And even the academics won't say that authoritarianism is a disease. (It's my guess that when 22% of the population suffers from it they either have to say that it's a normal variant or they have to start talking about putting something in the drinking water to cure it.)

As Dean points out, the current crop of people running the government are not any of the other types of conservatives but are authoritarian conservatives. And, what TT was showing in his cartoon is the typical authoritarian follower's reaction to an authoritarian leader's statements.

Dean is fairly blunt that the only cure is for people to work their tail ends off to defeat the current crop of people who run the federal government. And, he says, if that's not achieved in the next few election cycles, the US will be turned into nothing less than another facist state.

I used to wonder, as TT does in his cartoon, how these people could be so stupid as to believe all of the %^#*( stuff. But Dean shows that 22% are just like the character that believes anything that his authoritarian leader says.

I took my daughter to see her grandmother this past week, before my daughter goes off to college in August. After a week of avoiding politics with my conservative mother, she couldn't resist trying to raise my spirits about the Middle East by telling me what a grand success it was. I politely told her she's wrong, and went down the list of things she (and her conservative brethren) were wrong about. It was a little more detailed than the Penguin's, but basically the same. There was a pause. Then she said that Sean Hannity said they had found the WMDs, and the mainstream media wouldn't report it.

Imagine my surprise when I got home, read the comics, and found TT's to be exactly what had transpired earlier today, complete with my thinking (but not saying) "I don't know how much more of this I can take!"

nitestik said it- the american people are not paying attention.

or at least a large no. of them.

they are glued to TV entertainment and have no idea what is going on.

their mantra is- trust our Leader.

yeah, goodbye american democracy.

as Orwell said- when fascism comes to american, it will come with a smiling face.