POLITICS: Tolerance and T-shirts

[Brer] It's an interesting experience, but I am not sure it says anything about tolerance. To GET tolerance, you have to GIVE it -- and right now this just says that a lot of people are work out from existing under one of the most intolerant regimes in OUR recent memory (short as that is).

There are not a lot of things more powerful, and more dangerous, than a group of people who have been abused for a long time and suddenly see a chance at real salvation. Anything standing in their way becomes an agent of the enemy.

Was the behavior on display here nice? Was it civil? Was it right? Of course not. But was it understandable? Absolutely. In the way that you understand a dog or a horse or any other animal operating from base instincts. This is what we had here.

And heck, I'd never go to this extreme, but I'm guilty of it too. For months now any time someone acted particularly pushy, self-obsessed, and arrogant around me I would immediately assume they were a Conservative watching their futures die. I laughed a little inside, admittedly. It feels good to win, finally.

But there is the biggest issue that Obama faces. We have existed under a regime for whom "bipartisan" meant "we will do what we are going to do and you will agree with us on it 100% or we will call you names". So, that perfectly valid and laudable term is now anathema to a whole lot of people. He needs to reclaim it and restore more than hope; he needs to restore civility.