Wing Nuts

This morning while driving I tuned in to one of talk stations I refer to as "right wing radio." The host today was a man named Bob Beauprez who two years ago was the Republican candidate for governor here in Colorado. I was deeply disappointed when he agreed with a caller who claimed the Obama campaign deliberately brought about the economic downturn of 2008 in order to win the election!

Here was a supposedly responsible politician accusing a member of the other party of wrecking the nation's economy on purpose, putting millions of people out of work, causing massive defaults on home loans and subsequent foreclosures, probably shortening many lives, to win an election. And all this, according to the caller, with the connivance of the (Republican) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen.

I bring it up as one more example of the insanity, the paranoid hatred that parts of our American population are exhibiting. The credulous are being driven by hate mongers who, for reasons known only to themselves, have adopted the old Bolshevik strategy for gaining political power: "The worse things are, the better they are for us." They are pursuing a deliberate course aimed not merely at defeating a president and his party but at dividing the nation into two warring camps. They will have a heavy reckoning before the bar of history.