The Pathological Right

There's no other way to describe it.

Gateway Pundit's jihad against Palin protester Kathleen Gustafson has been discussed a-plenty by the likes of Sully, but it's one thing to read about it second-hand, and quite another to read the post itself and the comments below it.

Every single claim Jim Hoft makes about Gustafson is a lie.

Every. Single. One.

Hoft claims she's not a teacher. That's a lie.

He claims she's a singer in a "drag band" (whatever that's supposed to be). That, too, is a lie.

He claims that the existence of a high school class called "theater tech" is just liberal spin. That is also is a lie.

There's not even an attempt by Hoft to correct himself when his lies are exposed. He's not trying to educate his readers, he's deliberately lying to them about Gustafson because Gustafson plays for the other team.

And the comments section is just more of the same. You're either for Palin, or you're agin her, and everyone else on the other side of the divide is evil and/or stupid.

Now, this is the point in the post where I'm supposed to go all Anderson Cooper and say, "Oh, they all do it, libs and cons, a pox on both their houses." But it just ain't so. There's simply nothing on a mainstream lefty blog to compare to something this blatantly dishonest, nor is this a particularly isolated example on the right.

American politics is designed to be a conversation between the left and the right, with the middle effectively acting as referee. Only now, the right is increasingly no longer interested in participating in an honest discussion with the left.

I'm not even going to try and predict what the long-term consequences of that are, but they aren't likely to be pretty.