Your daily dose of dismay

Blogs aren't inherently mean, malicious, and scurrilous. But sometimes the stuff that appears on them casts a perspective on the human race that makes one neither proud or encouraged.



If you need a reality check about what kind of thought is motivating a segment from the political spectrum, read this post and its comments from South Dakota War College. It is a prime example of the ad hominem attitude, and while partisans hurl charges of hatred at each other, you can see true hatefulness boiling in this verbal pot.



The commenters do not mention a policy vote or political stance with which they disagree. They dredge up the inane matter of Tom Daschle owning a house in D.C. as a reason to vent their personal hatred. They cannot simply disagree; they have to defame the character and intellect of the person. These are precisely the kind of hate tactics that are the history of regimes in Germany, the old Soviet Union, Rwanda, and Darfur. It is not politics. It is the expression of the most perverse, demented--and dangerous--part of human nature.



It is precisely what our democracy was at one time devoted to surmounting.