"My words are 'Poison'?"
Words.
"The United States, like most countries, has long had a lunatic fringe who channel in the flotsam of delusion, half-facts and conspiracy theories. But now, with the light-speed and reach of the Web, “entire virtual crank communities,” as the conservative writer David Frum called them, have sprung up. They are fed, in the case of Sarah Palin, by people who should know better.
For a democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry to balance a permanent lobbying class, this is poison. And it’s one reason why town hall forums on health care, which should be sharp debates about something that affects all of us, have turned into town mauls.
The lies and shouts have had the effect that all crank speech has on free speech — stifling any real exchange.
...But is it any wonder that some are moved to violent threats, given the level of misinformation being injected into the system? If you really believed that Obama was going to kill your baby and euthanize your parents, well — why not act in self defense?
...Here’s what Palin said on her Facebook page Friday, in her first online comments since quitting as Alaska governor.
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society’ whether they are worthy of health care.”
This is pure fantasy, fact-free almost in its entirety.
...Palin, she should follow her own advice to the media of a few weeks ago — lay off the kids and “quit makin’ things up.”"
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