The more things change... By Marianne Peracchio

We could analyze and condemn the tendency to villainize a man to the point of wishing him dead for its sheer illogic. Attacking the man instead of his policies and ideas halts intelligent debate. From the perspective of pure logic, our political culture has become thoroughly infantilized. And, much like debating a child's bedtime with her is wearying, I find myself quickly tiring of discussing anything political with those on the hardcore Left. The newest and the most depressingly effective tactic (if one wants to be so generous as to attribute anything so strategic as a "tactic" to the practitioners of this new rhetorical style) is the habit of taking my every critique of the President-elect's policy plans as "proof" of my dislike of him as a person. "Ah ha!" they actually say, "you're just saying that because you don't like him." In one surreal move, they've checkmated me. To answer their bizarre claim is to dignify it and to allow the argument to be derailed from policy to personality (yet again). To ignore it is to passively accept it. No matter my response they've stymied me. Yet, I cannot send them to their rooms without dessert. But there's a much darker side to this trend; an eerily mindless tendency has emerged. Having closed the debate with violent epithets or character assassination, those who accuse their opponents of being "every inch as bigoted and ignorant as their white Christian right wing counterparts" for disagreeing on the definition of marriage (where is the love, after all?) have committed the first step in accepting totalitarian controls over speech and political dissent. Without our noticing, a significant percentage of our society has tacitly accepted the viewpoint that those who disagree with them should be silenced or even...die? When one segment of the population wishes another segment of the population were dead rather than listen to a different viewpoint, we have progressed dangerously far from a society in which liberties are protected. We are dancing on the edge of despotism. ~ Continue reading digg story, submitted by readwriteblue