Fear and Loathing in Las Mecca

So, I frequent a couple of chatboards here in the Ess Tee Ell, all of them centered around political debate (or what passes for it today, anyway) and current affairs in the region, state, nation, and world.

And it seems that there are two groups of people on these internet chat boards:
The first are reasonable, from all sides of the political spectrum, who are willing to admit to being wrong, but are also willing to defend those points they believe to be right through thoughtful, cohesive, fact-based argumentation.

Then there are the lunatics and general jerkwads who base everything the say off of talking points distributed by political operatives like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or whoever is assigned to be the Democratic media darling of the week.

Earlier today someone posted on the STLToday boards a story purportedly written by an Egyptian woman (which, actually, isn't entirely correct) and, of course, became convinced that all of the terrible things that happen to a minority of people in a minority of majority-muslim nations are coming soon to a street corner near you.

My response, of which I am quite proud:

Why do people continually post things that happen in other theocratic countries as if they have any bearing on what will happen here in the US, or that in fact they should have any bearing at all on what happens here?

Here's a hint: at MOST there are three million muslims living in the United States. At no point has any federally-elected official, or any Missouri state official, suggested condoning, accepting, or adopting any of the actions that are going on at Saudi girls' schools, Iranian courthouses, Iraqi churches, or Pakistani maddrassas. And to claim that anyone here - liberal, conservative, libertarian, whatever - could ever want such things to happen, or could in any way relativize or minimize the evil that some very small-minded minority of peope commit, is an outright lie perpetrated by fear, loathing, and sheer idiocy.

I swear by all that is holy and good that some of you are by far the most paranoid, unreasonable, easily-frightened ship rats I have ever seen.

Have a nice evening. And don't let the boogyman du jour get you.