Idiots of the Week (and Next)

Here's to all the insane parents who feel a need to withhold their children from school out of terror at the prospect of their hearing an exhortation to study hard from the President of the United States. I don't usually like to play this game, but I have to register my grave doubt that Democratic or liberal parents would be in a similar panic had the last President Bush announced plans to give a similar talk to children. But there is something distinctively paranoid about 21st century Republicans. For such people, Barack Obama can't open his mouth without intending to brainwash the nation with "socialist" doctrine. Apparently a lot of adults are up in arms because a study guide invited kids to consider ways in which they could "help the President." To the pathological minds who increasingly typify the opposition, this can only mean "help him advance his socialist agenda." As usual, the White House has naively attempted to appease these lunatics by eliminating the offensive language from the study guide. But to compromise on that language at all is to let the idiots infer that their first paranoid reading of it was the right one. There is no need to compromise with the insane. There is no excuse for this latest, most insulting outburst from the reactionary heartland. People who live in such terror of the President or the Democratic Party or liberals, all of which are lumped together as "socialism" and made synonymous with satanism need to have their heads examined. I mean that literally. They are not sane.

"Yeah, the Communists thought the same way," someone might answer, "They put dissidents in insane asylums."

The way to deal with that response is to remind the person that you are not a Communist, if you aren't. If he tells you that you are, then he's insane. For such people, "Communism" and "socialism" are only synonyms for the great, vague THEY who are always out there waiting to take their guns, their property, their families, etc. It is not advisable to try to reason with them without proper professional training. You are only asking for frustration. The best you can hope for is that their families are aware of their conditions and taking steps to get help.