Would You Like Wingnuts With That?

I'll be getting off the national political stuff soon, because my sanity demands it. But in the meantime, a couple of good pieces from today.

Over at Patterico's Pontifications, Patterico has been having an interesting dialogue with his readers over his contention that, policy differences aside, Barack Obama is fundamentally a good and decent man. As one can see from the comments, many readers disagree, and on numerous occasions in somewhat horrifying terms. I rarely find myself agreeing with Patterico, but I read him on a regular basis, because his work is focused on issues. I can strongly disagree with his characterization of Obama's policies as horrible, but at the same time I want to know why he thinks they are horrible, both to test my own assumptions and to try and develop better arguments in favor of my own notions. But the comments as a whole are somewhat horrifying. "Evil" is a term thrown around a lot in them. Overall, they don't bode well for a rational conversation about the future of this country.

And I've been linking to her a lot lately, but Michele Catalano has another good piece today. The focus is on wingnuts, both of the left and right variety. The comments in reaction to Michele's post are also interesting, with some suggesting in effect that "their" (the left's) wingnuttery was much, much worse than ours, which is deep and thoughtful.

Yeah, right. Head over to Patterico and read those comments, and tell me those are deep and thoughtful. They're hateful, plain and simple. And the point is not to hold some ridiculous debate over whose fools are more foolish. The point is to marginalize these people to the degree where they no longer have any standing in this debate.