Of all the things the Obama presidency has achieved, isolating the madness at the heart of America's psyche -- a madness knowingly cultivated and allowed to fester -- has been about the best.
Driving the right wing absolutely bat-shit nuts to the extent it has is one unforeseen benefit of having an intelligent, articulate person at the country's tiller, especially after the 8+ years of fumbling swagger and rampant booberie epitomized by the W presidency. The resultant fatigue and deeply lodged anxiety having exhausted all one's powers and skills justifying the onslaught of bad policies and inane utterances from that particular leader should have qualified all of us for much deserved sick leave.
But even more than just sounding good (and trying like hell to implement generally sound policy while having to compromise in order to do the business of government, and all while being assaulted night and day by his feral opposition) the presence of a black man in The White House has shaken opponents to their very cores and stripped any artifice that the right wing so feverishly depends upon to get their otherwise unpalatable message across. Now denuded, they cannot help but blurt out and embody their bitter racism, xenophobia and utterly profit-driven motivations for power, cannot help revealing the pathetic truth beneath their cloak of respectability and patriotism.
A traipse across the AM dial is a like a day-trip to an asylum, roars of paranoid outrage echoing through the corridors from behind padded doors; a look through the scuffed and smeared portholes reveal the screamers themselves, raving against the brown-skinned boogie man. The Rushes, the Seans, the Levins and all the rest of the inmates rattle their bars and spin lurid scenarios that were once relegated to the fringes of discourse but which have now found their way to the center of the town square, infecting and sickening all within earshot.
But that's a good thing. They can no longer successfully masquerade as good church-goers or patriotic congressmen or philanthropic CEO's as long as there's a glaringly contrasting example in an Obama presidency. Like Dorian Gray's portrait, the right wing's decay has been revealed for all to see and, slowly, people are stepping closer to view it in all its sad, shameful truth.
Because before you can operate to remove a tumor, you have to know where to make the incision.
And of all the cuts ever proposed, that would be the kindest.