although I was considerably more terse when I did it.

I remember the sheer nuttiness on the youthful left in the mid 70s, wild eyed suburban kids preaching revolution while the majority, for whom the system was still mostly working, looked on aghast at the thought of its overthrow.

The tables are turned this time, with senescent people being the ones to be wild eyed and preaching violent revolution to maintain a senescent movement, radical reactionary conservatism. In addition, they're defending a system that is working for no one, not even them.

While the right never gets hammered down to the extent the left has been, we can expect media and state to put out some half hearted attempts at doing so unless these loons manage to assassinate a high profile target. In that case, maybe we'll see a real crackdown on the sheer lunacy and Beck and the rest of the blowhards getting their overdue pink slips.

Still, for those of us more sanguine movement types of the 60s and 70s, the parallels of a dying paradigm breeding fanaticism and threats of violence among the diehard adherents are very telling.

Stick a fork in the conservatives, they're done. Oh, they'll hang on grimly as long as they can and there will always be a few buffoons out there to keep us entertained, but their original thinkers (who were able to dress up a warmed over mercantilism and make it sound fresh and new) are all ancient or dead and there are no new voices to take their places, their ideas have suffered greatly from being tried and having failed, and the religious soldiers for Jesus are just pissing people off, their power to affect the superstitious decreased by the fact that they're assholes and nobody wants to listen to them any more.

Soon they'll just be an ugly and embarrassing memory, it's the way this country has always been, the pendulum creaking back and forth. However, they'll be back a generation or two from now, new smart boys repackaging Reaganism for a new crop of suckers.

Maybe next time we'll be ready for them.