'More and more frightening'

Congrats to Shep Smith for putting this together.

The guy who's not Shep Smith leads Shep Smith over to the blogosphere, and Shep Smith follows him, but he's already connected the dots. Sure, bloggers have said some crazy shit, and I don't restrict that to right-wing crazyblogs. But 'socialist' -- that didn't start on the Net. That started with McCain, and Palin, and Bachmann. Certain politicians acted in concert with the crazyblogs to whip people into a frenzy, and by the time McCain looked startled at his rallies and scolded his supporters that no, Barack Obama was a good man who happened to disagree with him, it was too late. Seemingly normal people were already yelling 'Kill him!' at the rallies of the Republican candidate for President of the United States. And the lunatic fringe was way too far out there to reel back.

I am not blaming any politicians directly for the madness at the Holocaust Museum, or the shooting of Dr. Tiller at church. Neither of those guys was a sane and rational man expressing his views coherently. (Although if you wanted to blame Bachmann, I'd probably hear you out for a while.) And I don't want to politicize this too much, not today. But McCain and Palin, they pandered to people like this. The last president, he spoke in code to people like this. I take no issue with serious criticism of liberal or Democratic politicians, and I don't claim that the right has a monopoly on the unserious criticism. But the unserious criticism of Republicans doesn't get people killed. Al Gore and John Kerry were far from inspirational in their campaigns, but they weren't going for a frenzy of hatred. If Bachmann and the others get what they want, there will be a great, great deal to mourn on that day.