I told this story once before in a comment. I'll tell it again, because it relates to sanity, which is becoming a precious commodity in this country.
There was once a king who was told by his court soothsayer that a strong poison was about to be introduced into the kingdom's drinking water. Armed with this intelligence the king prepared himself for this calamity by using a different water soure. Sure enough the poison did manifest in the kingdom's water and all the king's subjects drank it and went crazy.
Much more after the fold...
Now as time passed these subjects, each one batshit/Bachman crazy, began to suspect that it was the king who had gone crazy because he didn't behave like everyone one else. He was out of step, out of the (new) normal.
As his subject's confidence continued to deteriorate the king finally decided there was only one thing to do to stay in power. He drank the poisoned water too...and they all lived crazily ever after in bizarro land.
Think about this story as it relates to the hoops that many Dems feel obliged to jump through these recent days on the campaign trail. Dems are saying things now that would have seemed totally insane in 2001...things like being willing to support tax relief for billionaires when the Bush Gov givaway to the rich expires. They've been forced to drink the poison; they're saying things they know are harmful to all of us.
We need people like Stewart and Colbert and Maher, even, to remind us how insane things have gotten because of the toxic memes introduced into our news cycle. Because there's no adult discussion of what course is the most reasonable and prudent to restore a moribund economy. Because there's no interest in looking for sane solutions, only in magnifying and legitimatizing the hyperbolic & demagogue-ic and treating it, for example, the shrill rantings of Sarah Palin---who clearly drank the water at birth, as the pronouncement of a great sage.
Stewart is right on in his assessment of the MSM over the past few years. Their focus has radically changed. Perception and process trump substance by a mile. No one wants to calmly discuss what economists think about how to solve our current economic woes. It's all about who can most effectively blame the other. Who's winning, who's whining, who's lost the news cycle that day/week. Instead of hiring pundits who've demonstrated at least some real grasp of political events (such as Chuck Todd, for example) we're getting Breitbart and Erickson)
And, in the end...unless there's a veritable lightning bolt striking every demoralized registered Dem we'll have a 232/203 Republican majority in the House come January and a complete quagmire in the Senate, and there will be nothing anyone can do except marvel at the compete abdication of sanity of every committee chair, as they fail to pass a single piece of legislation to help the country, all while "lawyering up" and sending out waves of subpoenas to hold hearings on the 2-3 existing New Black Panthers or perhaps the defunct Acorn and their danger to peace-loving Rand Paul volunteers, or Climatologists and their plot to destroy Republican's big business overlords.
Sorry for the increasingly rant-y tone; I'm going to exit stage right and let others rant/soothe/encourage. Only one more thing that needs to be said again and again
Please vote and encourage your family and friends and anyone else who will listen to do the same, because it's the very last sane thing anyone can do at this moment. Doing nothing when we have that tiny bit of power remaining in our own hands is the act of an insane person.