It's crazy out there

The last time I saw (Deleted), it was 1978, and we were on the staff of Campus Currents, the student newspaper at Baton Rouge High.

Nowadays, (Deleted) is running for legislature in an upper-Midwestern state -- and he was a tea partier on Capitol Hill this weekend protesting against the health-care bill. This is what he put on his Facebook profile today:

“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism and the goal of socialism is communism.” - Lenin 'Nuff said?

WHERE DOES one start in confronting such as this? When people can believe this of their fellow Americans -- when a debate over health-care reform turns into a referendum on Americanism vs. the Red Menace, it seems to me someone has created an atmosphere conducive to somebody ending up dead.

Or to lots of somebodies ending up dead. Remember Oklahoma City? I think the toxic politics leading to that 1995 act of domestic terrorism was nothing compared to today. For one thing, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy.

For another thing, Glenn Beck was still a shock jock in New Haven, Conn., making fun of Asian callers to his radio show.

BUT BACK to medicine being the keystone of socialism, yadda, yadda, yadda. . . . Here is what I wrote in the comments for my old schoolmate's Facebook post:

Too much said.

(Deleted), people can disagree profoundly, but that doesn't mean what you disagree with is some kind of bolshevik putsch.

Do you really think countries with far more ambitious health-care plans than the one passed last night are REALLY commie? Do you REALLY think Canada is a communist country? France? Great Britain? Switzerland? Taiwan, for God's sake?

You think they're REALLY all red enclaves?

You REALLY think the president of the United States is a communist? That Bart Stupak is, like the congressman from Texas yelled, a "baby killer"?

You REALLY think that?

And do you REALLY think a bunch of tea partiers going on and on like that in the Internet Age -- and a few real whack jobs perhaps acting on their paranoia -- wouldn't have the potential to blow this country apart in a way that wasn't possible in 1968?

(Deleted), we're armed to the teeth -- regular folk have automatic weapons and regular idiots can figure out out to build Oklahoma City-style bombs. Do you REALLY think all the inflammatory, and patently irresponsible, rhetoric won't lead, with just the smallest amount of bad luck, to a frickin' bloodbath in this angry and divided country?

There is madness afoot. Avoid it at all costs.

OH . . . and on another post, he had linked to that Phyllis Schlafly press release -- the one saying it was impossible to be pro-life and a Democrat.

Madness envelops our land. Sheer madness.