I feel like someone just used the tactics they ascribe to Bush. Once again, someone who felt they had a point couldn’t resist the temptation to abandon that mission in order to flex their bachelor’s degree in English. So yeah. Anger is something I’m fathoming right now.

There is no amount of chirping OR purging by the right or left, at this point, that will make the majority of the American people justify the Republican or Democratic parties in the results of the last (6) years. Period.

The fact is that people are angry – brain-boilingly, apoplectically, mind-bendingly so – at what has happened to this great country. I am, quite often, so angry that my hands shake. Yes, a former high school teacher from New England here, so filled with bile and rage that I sometimes don’t recognize my face in the mirror. [ . . . ]

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children’s future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into [ . . . ]

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

You cannot fathom anger arising from this? [ . . . ]

It isn’t an excess of outrage that plagues this nation today, but an abject lack of it.

That is at least an articulate expression of the point of view of those who genuinely believe that GWB is the worst president we’ve ever had and that he has lied to us, ruined the country and put us in grave danger.

Meanwhile, maybe McCain’s bulletproof or something.

And I don’t really see this characterization of Democrats as angry armchair emailers. Maybe I got distracted by some This Modern World strips.

And let’s be clear. E-mail has made it much easier for people to voice their opinion. People who would never have taken the time to write a letter can send a vitriolic screed to someone. One of the reliable talking points for the Right is to portray those people as representative of the Democratic Party. Someone gets a couple of hundred hateful e-mails. So what? That represents a couple of hundred people.

Consider recent reports of Bush’s job approval polls (and Congress’ even lower ratings) in light of this, and it makes you wonder what November will bring. If this Democrat purge is truly happening, then all those disaffected voters who voted Republican in 2004 aren’t necessarily going to just cross the aisle. Where will they go in 2006? …home?

Meanwhile – BrianOfAtlanta: I don’t see Democrats as any less able to see black and white than conservative Christians. At least, that’s not the impression I get from reading various left-wing screeds about the excesses of the Bush administration. I admit I kind of see your point about a cognitive disconnect, though; I get the impression I’m in the minority of people who believe the left can be just as zealous as the right. I’ve seen several left-wingers who consider themselves superior – on account of their tolerance of other points of view – to those backwater heartlanders.

Looks like the far left of the blogosphere has decided to start lynching everyone in the Democratic party who thinks differently from them including Joe Lieberman, Richard Cohen, Carl Pope, and Johnathan Chait just to name a few. Why? For thinking diff…

The Republican Party may get cut more slack than the Democrats on the subject of seeing things black and white, because they court groups like conservative christians who traditionally see things as right and wrong. Democrats purport to be more enlightened, progressive, etc. It’s more of a cognitive disconnect when the average voter sees the “kinder, gentler” party conducting inquisitions against what it sees as heretics in its ranks.

A validation of the importance for a successful Centrist Coalition!

You could argue that the strategy is to rachet up the anger level and the negativity till everyone but the GOP base is infuriated. Then you leave the nation an electoral choice between Dr. Frankenstein or the pitchfork-wielding, brand-bearing mob. Hardly Democracy at its finest.

Both parties are being stupid about this. But I think Cal’s point is that the Democrats are the more stupid because, as the party out of power, they really can’t afford to be kicking people out of the party.

This is the man who, in November 2000, said that if he could, he’d take his vote for Gore back and cast it for George Bush. If there’s a knife in his back, he should check it for his own six-year-old fingerprints.

Rob, the point is that the “right� doesn’t argue amongst itself to the point of subdividng the republican party.

Assuming for argument’s sake that this is true, this is a good thing?