A culture cannot lie down with dogs and not become utterly infested with fleas. The dogs, in this case, are the mongrel media and the corporate overlords who have grown fat on manufactured controversy and fear mongering.

Fantasy-based ideologies invariably have neat happy endings where all the bad people and all the bad behavior goes away when the volume is turned up and enough force is applied.

We have as a nation been duped by those who use our guilt about how we treated the innocent pawns in the Vietnam War game - the soldiers - into missing the point once again about the utter senselessness that is war.

The fact is, presidential politics has become a game of inches.

Right-wing extremism is all about patience. That is, until it makes its move, and then it is sudden and explosive.

What's hard, it seems, is living up to the expectations Democracy imposes upon those who would participate in society.

It's easy to break things. Much, much easier, it seems, than building them.