Devolution

[A] Lone Star patriot favored me with a bunch of insulting messages premised upon the widely believed fiction that [Gov. Rick] Perry refused federal stimulus funds, resulting in an economic boom.

In fact, Texas financed $6.4 billion of its $6.6 billion budget shortfall in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 with cash from President Obama's 2009 Recovery Act. On the same day Perry accepted the funds, he set up an online petition titled "No Government Bailouts." Pure Texanism in action.

Alas, I couldn't persuade my correspondent to read news stories documenting those facts.

  Salon

So often people are not interested in facts. That’s where the GOP approach has it in spades over the Demwits. They play to that characteristic while Dems just mock it. And the more you mock it, the more the emotions-based population digs in.

Having recently written that many Republicans yearn for a tough-guy presidential candidate because they yearn to punish somebody, I knew what to expect: a barrage of insulting emails from anonymous tough guys yearning to punish me personally.

[...]

But there's more to it than that. Hard times and fear lead to black and white thinking and a hatred of "the Other."

Precisely, and it’s only going to get worse. The angry citizens who would like to see Rick Perry become president are the very citizens who would suffer the most if he did. Theirs are the small minds and large emotions that believe (egged on by people like Rick Perry who know better) their problems are the result of being regulated and taxed and denied opportunity in favor of “the Other.”

I was wishing that America could crumble in the fashion of England and not Germany, but I’m expecting it will be the latter. A lot of our southern heritage is German, which may give us the attitudes reflected in this post. On the other hand, Germany did not have an empire when it crumbled. I suppose we will have a unique fall, but one thing I’m sure of: it will be ugly and it will be mean.