Footnote to the preceding

You know, about three weeks ago I wrote that because I was in a safe state, I was going to vote for an actually progressive candidate rather than John Kerry. I did say, however, that if I lived in a tossup state, I'd be tempted to vote for him.

I'd actually have to flip the lever with my tongue, because I'd be holding my nose with one hand and covering my eyes with the other. I'd be doing it in the hope to gain a pause in the decline with no expectation of thereby ending or reversing it; to try to gain some time, knowing this is no win - but, hopefully, it can be a sort of time out.

Okay, well, the truth is, I would do it. No maybe about it. This is from an excerpt from Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America into a One-Party State, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, editors of PRWatch.

If, however, a single viewpoint or party is able to drown out or suppress the views of others, a different dynamic sets in. One-party dominated states and hierarchical, command-driven social systems are notorious for their tendency to make disastrous decisions, in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy. ...

The U.S. military has a term for this type of information system: "incestuous amplification," which Jane's Defense Weekly defines as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." Psychologists have a similar term: "group polarization," which describes the tendency for like-minded people, talking only with one another, to end up believing a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk.

The Republican Party's philosophy and political organizing strategies have been remarkably successful at helping the party achieve and consolidate power in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Simultaneously, however, they have created conditions that make incestuous amplification and group polarization more likely in disparate areas of America's political arena.

What gave that special emphasis was that I read it the same day I came across this from the Washington Times:

This is the first of three reports based on the new book "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters" by Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent for The Washington Times.

President Bush is resolved not to repeat what he thinks were the two fundamental blunders of his father's one-term presidency: abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.

"Vanquish, tr.v., to win a decisive victory over; to bring about the downfall of. Syn: defeat, clobber, cream, crush, drub, make mincemeat of, rout, thrash, trounce, whip, wipe the floor with, bring down, conquer."

Apparently victory isn't enough. It's not enough to overcome the opposition, the goal is to eliminate opposition.

They are sociopaths.