I haven't felt much like blogging lately. Don't know why exactly; maybe it's because I've been spending so much time in Yahoo Politics Lobby 4 and getting too depressed to blog. I go in there because I want to debate conservatives, not a bunch of people who think the same way as I do, but then I get overwhelmed by their cruelty, meanness, ignorance, xenophobia, and violent tendencies. These people worship violence. They put all their faith in war. To them, war is the answer to everything. When Mark Twain wrote the War Prayer, he probably couldn't have imagined how literally Americans would pray to the gods of war over a century later.

A lot of things get to me about the people in this room. First is their extreme hypocrisy. They rail at liberals and Democrats for their "hate-mongering," and yet they are capable of saying things like, "Okay, how many of you wished that Clinton would die?" after the news that he was having heart bypass surgery. I would never wish for Bush to die. I don't want him to die. I want him out of office; I don't want him dead. Another example: PL4 regulars are always talking about how Islamic fundamentalists (which to them is every Arab in the Middle East) preach hatred of anyone who isn't Muslim--and then they turn around and call Arabs "ragheads" and talk about how their wives are making pork for dinner as a dig at Muslim dietary restrictions. They talk about how "Islamic fundamentalists" want to invade our country, take over the world, and destroy all our freedoms; and in the next breath they are saying that the U.S. should nuke the entire Middle East. Who is taking over whom?

Then there is the myopia. The PL4 right-wingers would have us believe that the U.S. military is the protector and preserver of all of our freedoms; and that the only thing standing in the way of Americans and tyranny are the men and women dying in Iraq. But when John Ashcroft and George W. Bush shred the Constitution with the Patriot Act, they don't blink an eye. They don't care if the FBI makes librarians hand over user lists; they don't care if the government breaks into their homes and inspects everything they own, and never lets them know; they don't care if thousands of immigrants have been detained for two years with no charges, no trials, and no legal representation. They don't care if antiwar protesters are herded into "free speech zones." It doesn't register with them that the very idea of a "free speech zone" is antithetical to the First Amendment: America is supposed to be a free-speech zone.

The lack of even rudimentary logic drives me up the wall also. These people are absolutely obsessed with abortion. They will weep and wail and rant and rave about how abortion is murder, and how unborn "babies" have a right to life, but their concern for human life ends at the moment of birth. Cold-blooded, premeditated murder of a living human being by injecting him (and sometimes her) with poison, or by electrocution? No problem. Tearing apart the bodies of living babies, children, and their mothers with bombs dropped from airplanes 20,000 feet in the air? That's collateral damage, and besides, mistakes happen.

Here's something interesting. The United States is one of only two advanced industrial nations that still executes people. According to Encarta, "Dictatorships and other forms of totalitarian governments tend to be highly active in conducting executions." The countries that have the death penalty and use it most enthusiastically are all in Asia, Africa, and the Islamic countries. Isn't it nice to know that we have something in common with our enemies in the "war on terrorism"?