Almost Had a Wreck

I almost wrecked my car today. I was listening to the local Nova-M radio station on the drive home (1480 AM) when someone called in and said something so dumb I almost drove my car into a gas pump.

Most of the people I heard were bellyaching ferociously about Obama voting for the FISA bill, and claiming that this act of fascism was losing Obama their vote. Is that so? And who else do you propose to vote for? McCain? Nader? Or are you going to write in for Bozo the Clown? Come on, guys, it's okay to be disappointed and unhappy with the FISA bill - I certainly am - but it doesn't change by so much as an Angstrom unit the reality of the situation, which is that we've got a choice between McCain and Obama. Nobody else. You can stack up all the other independents and libertarians and Greens and whatnot and they still won't get more than a few percent of the vote, so please stop threatening to take your vote elsewhere - there's nowhere else to go with it, and all this wounded suffering isn't doing anyone any good.

But it was the guy talking about Hitler that really did the deed. He said, apropos of nothing and with apparent convinction, that "everything Hitler did was legal." I brayed something and in the process of of braying, I almost drove into a gas pump.

Do people actually believe that? Do people actually believe that the Reichstag Fire was legal? Come on; nobody could be that cynical, could they? I guess they could. Actually, I'm modestly surprised that more people don't see certain malign parallels between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11, but never mind that.

But my consternation with this was short-lived, because the guy then went on to say that the Nuremburg war crimes trials were "BS", and the host merely went "uh huh". How sad. One of the crowning achievements of international law brings the representatives of German government, military and industry to account for crimes against humanity, and some guy can dismiss it all by calling it "BS" without even having to say why he thinks it's BS.

I didn't know how to react to that for a while, but I think I've finally settled on feeling sad.