Dig up a copy of Future Shock – there’s too much coming at these people too fast, too much change, too much disruption. The brain goes into a kind of survival-mode where all that infomation overload is dumped in favor of simple direct uncomplicated un-nuanced explanations. These people are being led by clowns and charlatans, and some of them are saying evil stupid things, but they are mostly not evil stupid people. They are drowning in an ocean of Future and Change and, oh yeah, this terrible Reagan/Bush Economy. Stupid-simple ideas are their life preserver and willful ignorance is them holding their breath when the waves push them under.
Glenn Beck needs to be mocked (and Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter need a meaningful discussion with the business end of a Louisville Slugger) but the Teabaggers are mostly their victims. Anyone who can figure out how to rescue them back to sanity and the American Conversation will be a hero.
This could be the iceberg that sinks the printed standard textbook business. Not right away, but when it does finally sink, this could be the collision they look back to. Thousands of disgusted history and social studies teachers around the country tell their principals, “forget the tex(as)tbook, let’s use the funds to compile our own materials from online sources.”
William Safire was a pretentious turd with a superb vocabulary. YYYY AD has been a widely-accepted usage, in English, for centuries. Deferring to the 2000-year-old Latin usage is extreme, even for a congenital Conservative.
I’m looking for the Calvin&Hobbes crossover stuff. I thought it would be on these dates. Confused.