blind threats.

a moment of clarity. 

words. 

"...For years, ideological extremism fuelled by organized money has degraded our political system, and that brings troubles as serious and lasting as external threats—which are serious enough, and all the harder to confront intelligently in an atmosphere like the one that prevails in Washington. These internal forces have steadily weakened the defenses of the body politic, leaving a demoralized federal work force, a routinization of poor working conditions and inadequate services, a strategy of total war on every issue that comes before Congress, and a national government that is the last place you’d look to for solutions to the country’s most corrosive problems.

...McConnell appears to be looking for an escape from his own trap. So are some of the leading Republican Presidential contenders. But it won’t be easy for even the most moderate of them to find a way out of their party’s forty-year journey into the badlands of the extreme right. They’ve found power there for so long, in so many elections, that when the time comes the riders might discover that their horses are unwilling to turn back. You can’t spend decades encouraging irrationality and ignorance, then declare a return to sanity when it’s convenient. The price lasts longer than an election cycle."

THE NEW YORKER: Threats to Homeland Security