We Steal More Intellectual Property: FOR HOW LONG??

In one of those Andrew Sullivan moves, TPM head honcho Josh Marshall picks a corresp. to glow in the reflection of Marshall's big brass ego. We'll grant that he usually picks a good one, but we just wanted to demonstrate as clearly as possible that we could be twice the ass Mr. Marshall is if anyone wanted to give us an on-line empire.

So. TPM reader [initials redacted] (Because WEB OF EVIL is soooo concerned about a stranger's privacy. Really, what could happen beyond some gun nut fuck losing what little sanity it has & stalking & killing [initials redacted] for the crime of anti-gun-speak?):

For how long do we as a society continue to sublimate the reality that (mostly) young people are being massacred every day in cities all over this country--a very concrete, visible, measurable disaster--to a romantic fantasy cherished by a minority of Americans about heroically fighting off some secret government army that is planning to move in and turn us into, oh I don't know, Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or who knows what inchoate mashup of bogeys that burns in their imaginations. [sic]

The United States still has the most powerful military in the world despite the damage done to it in recent years, so any action-movie scenario of rugged stubble-chinned men with their automatic weapons standing in front of the women-folk at the doors of their homes facing down the 1st Infantry is, of course, just that: a stale movie script.

The cherished terror of a great left-wing conspiracy and its secret army assumes that the hapless and hemorrhaging federal government, which could not keep Bradley Manning or Ed Snowden quiet, is capable of keeping this army and these plans secret. Another summer blockbuster.

I don't need to go on. Meanwhile, real Americans are bleeding and dying in their hundreds on our real streets due to real, uncontrolled gun violence. They don't get to pursue life, liberty, or happiness. But the rights of these dead kids, apparently, don't have much weight compared to some people's right to cherish hot fantasies of what it means to be an American.

Too damn bad the truth (Truth, hell, this is merely rational common sense.) is in one ear & out the other w/ the sheep. Let alone the scared sheep w/ all the guns.