the only thrust of a thousand attempts to explain the rage that drives the tea party etc.: no one can rationally disagree with me, the leftist commentator. obviously, what i believe is true. obviously, all people of good will and rudimentary intelligence agree with me. now on that basis let's investigate the apparently incomprehensible phenomenon of people who do apparently disagree with me. well, they believe what they believe because they are incapable of rational thought, being swamped by emotions. they believe what they believe because they are inhabited by demons - glenn beck, for instance. all i can say about a book like that is that not a word of it is about tea party. it's about the author and his friends, and this kind of incessant self-congratulation and complete failure of understanding or connection is about the overwhelming weakness of the author's actual convictions, or his faculty of conviction: his need for a thousand props, for everyone always to be saying he's right, his horrendous fear that he may be wrong, which expresses itself in an absolute assumption that he can't be wrong: a completely irrational sheer faith, a sheer kierkegaardian leap presented as empirical research.... i can't imagine being so insecure in my beliefs that i need the kind of unanimity of rational beings that will bunch and all y'all need. and you write from that need, not from some sort of facts, to which you are far more indifferent than the people you oppose.