the fringe wings of the political bell curve make the most noise, leaving everyone else in the middle a little dizzy and scratching their heads.
i remember that after 9/11, many people lost their shit. well, that's understandable. it was very traumatic. many of my friends ran shrieking into the "blame amuriKKKa! it was our fault! we suck!" camp, and others ran into the "islam is evil! bomb mecca! ragheads! fuck yeah!" camp. these were intelligent people. it was disorienting. lunchtime "debates" ended up close to physical violence. there was no middle ground. and then, eventually, things calmed down.
however, some people have not yet come back to reality. little green footballs, before 9/11, was a more or less apolitical (or mildly liberal-centrist) geek blog. i based my referrer script off of the webmaster's code. when i went back a while after 9/11 and was shocked to find that the blog had turned into a collection of rants on one topic and one topic only: "islam is evil and unless we crush it to smithereens, we will all DIE!!!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!!" the comments section consisted of a shrieking chorus of "fuck yeah! kill the ragheads!" any attempts at rational debate were quashed - authors of dissenting opinions were banned. it was disconcerting. poor guy just couldn't handle it.
this country survived the CIVIL WAR for fuck's sake. get some perspective.
a few people are just inherently hypersensitive, insane and/or attention hungry and must cry wolf at anything that moves - they are the ones in union square shrieking through megaphones that the government was behind 9/11 or that gays caused god's wrath against new orleans. some blindly follow those who scream the loudest (confusing them with those that shine the brightest). and others, like the webmaster of LGF, are still PTSDing.
the majority, however, don't really have much to say except that shit happens and losing our shit is counterproductive. and so, we're not the ones with the megaphones, and even those of us who do have megaphones, our words simply don't have the same emotional and froth-inducing effect as those of the far right or the far left.
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