Commentary: America on a collision course

(CNN) -- There's a standard scene in old movies about young hotheads behind the wheels of fast cars.
It's the scene where the two lead actors play chicken.Each wants to prove that he's the one who won't back down. So they aim their cars at each other head-on and step on the gas, wanting to find out who will be the first to swerve. The climax is almost always disastrous. The moral of the story is that the carnage could have been avoided.

Which brings us to our current ugly political atmosphere.

Who would ever have guessed that we would be looking back at the presidential campaign of 2008 as a time of relative tranquillity and good fellowship? It sure didn't seem like that while it was going on. The campaign felt rough, mean, take-no-prisoners. <snip>

At the height of the Barack Obama-John McCain race last fall, I decided to conduct an experiment as I traveled around the nation.As I met people, I would ask them which candidate they were for. Then I would request of them:"Say something good about the other guy." <snip>

more... (Interesting responses and some good advice from Nixon that we could take to heart!)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/20/greene.political.anger/index.html

we were told to STFU. Protesters were arrested en masse consistently for moving outside 'Free Speech Zones'.

So now the right is babbling incessantly about who-knows-what-all, and NOW we're supposed to lower our voices and listen to the RW babble in a whisper, I guess.

This is crap. And the analogy of two drivers playing chicken implies that progressives are driven towards some agenda (re: socialism) with the same hell-bent loon-crazy look in their eyes as the illiterate protesters who pranced about DC protesting... something.

* Challenged the legitimacy of Bush's election, not the legitimacy of his citizenship.
* Did not wonder aloud if it was time to secede.
* Pointed out where Bush policies were fascist, not socialist/communist/fascist/totalitarian/ovolactovegetarian all at once.

I get tired of press hacks equating the right and the left, when simple observation shows:
* The right wingers call for or threaten violence
* The right wingers make up their facts
* The right wingers show ignorance of the dictionary as well
* where the funding for the right wing comes.

anything to offer of substance in the first place? For the last 40 years they have been the main problem.

:puke: