Serious Wonkette

I've been in some FaceBook fights over the last year or so with some "friends" who have ended up calling me "the enemy".  Some of these guys are standard-issue wingnuts and they're pretty wacky and kookie and I tend to see them as little more than a fringe-y and colorful thing that serves as a distraction for the Press Poodles, but doesn't represent anything of substance.

I really hope that's the case, but when Wonkette has a hard time smiling about it, there may be real cause for worry.

A man advocating executing journalists for treason in honor of Free Speech Week for being too supportive of the American president just described other people as “Orwellian.”

This week marks the 50th anniversary of The Cuban Missile Crisis.  I bring that up because in the middle of all the shit, JFK managed to remember history, and specifically recalled the warnings from The Guns of August. ie: everybody has a plan; everybody follows their plan; and the whole thing becomes a matter of an If/Then Algorithm that always ends in a shooting war.  Having been burned once (Bay of Pigs), Kennedy broke with tradition, refusing to allow "the plan" to take precedence over actual in-the-moment reasoning.

With all the banter and bickering over Red Team vs Blue Team that's gone on for as long as there's been places on the internet to go and engage in the fiercest flame wars you can imagine, we've gotten to a place (I think) where the fight will no longer be confined to cyberspace.  Each "side" knows most of what the other side has to say; and each side recognizes the style and substance of the other side's rhetoric; so it becomes "if Attack 238, then Counter Attack G; unless Attack 238 is combined with Straw Man Gamma, in which case, deploy Parry & Riposte Yellow yada yada yada".

Unfortunately, there's always a very dark and dangerous aspect of things like Populism and Partisanship and Regional Chauvinism etc.  There's always somebody hangin' out in the bar (or the park or wherever) just itchin' for a fight to break out.  Doesn't matter what the fight's about, they're just looking to mix it up with somebody, and all they need is a decent-sounding excuse.

Now consider the sheer numbers of combat veterans we've been minting lately, and put that together with the fact that we have as many guns in this country as we have humans; plus the widening of permissive gun laws; and then take a long look at the style of recreation favored by a very important slice of the American Male Demographic: Video War Gaming, Paintball, Combat-style Shooting Sports (with real guns and live ammo).

Step by step; in small degrees; inching forward; If. Then. Boom.

Doesn't have to be that way.  It just happens to be the trend.