A mass nervous breakdown
by David Atkins
I started writing a post earlier on the "Gateway Sex" bill in Tennessee, but Digby already did a great job with it.
I would add only this: even fifty years ago, no one would have dreamed of enacting a bill banning teenagers from kissing or holding hands. It would have been deemed too bizarre even back then. But then, there's a lot of bizarre behavior going around, whether it be defending torture or a group of people wearing tri-corner hats demanding that the rich pay less than a 35% tax rate.
Modern conservatism isn't just irrational because its policies don't work, or because its base is beset by ignorance of basic realities. It's not even a movement based on a specific set of irrational policy desires.
It's a full-scale collective nervous breakdown of an ideological and demographic faction of America, lashing out in ever more extreme ways simply to get attention and attempt to crack down on behaviors of individuals of which it is losing control.
It would be worth a laugh, except for the fact that the most dangerous animal is a cornered one.
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