When Your Opponents Are Insane

From CNN:

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea denied Thursday that it fired a torpedo that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

South Korean military officials on Thursday announced the results of an official investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan, prompting North Korea to accuse them of fabricating evidence.

"We had already warned the South Korean group of traitors not to make reckless remarks concerning the sinking of warship Cheonan of the puppet navy," North Korea's national defense commission said in a statement, according to the Korean Central News Agency. "Nevertheless, the group of traitors had far-fetchedly tried to link the case with us without offering any material evidence."

The 1,200 ton corvette sank after a mysterious explosion tore it into half near disputed waters off North Korea on March 26.
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Why does this kind of reflex-action, robotically-repeated, belligerent, hysterical, fact-free rhetoric sound so familiar?

From Politico:

In the months leading up to the release of his new book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine,” Gingrich has used almost every opportunity available to brand President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “secular socialists,” as if trying to coin the phrase.

But in his book, Gingrich went even farther than calling Democratic leaders socialist – a phrase used so often during the health care debate that it has almost lost its shock value – writing that they represent a threat just as dangerous as Nazi Germany.
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“I have asserted that the secular socialist machine is a mortal threat to the future of America as we have known it just as totalitarian regimes were mortal threats to the survival of America in the past,” he wrote. “In our generation the two mortal threats are radical Islam and secular socialism.”
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Oh yeah.


From CNN:

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South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to take "resolute countermeasures" against North Korea for its alleged attack, according to his office.

"The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine," said Dr Yoon Duk-yong, co-chair of a military group formed to investigate the incident.

The group comprises of experts from South Korea, Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. "There is no other plausible explanation," he said.

China asked both sides to stay calm to avoid an "escalation of the situation," said the country's foreign affairs ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
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Why does this kind of bullshit, establishmentarian Centrist fetish that demands that "both sides" be calm and reasonable, despite the fact that one side is clearly fucking insane sound so familiar?

From Time:

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The extreme right and left are fired up and ready to go — in directions quite different from those preferred by their parties' leaders. And, if both parties get dragged farther to the margins, which way will the center go?

Oh yeah.

The North Koreans believe a wholly fake history and worldview because they spend their whole lives completely isolated from the rest of the world by barbed wire and inward-pointing machine guns, with the Dear Leader's psychotic ravings ringing in their ears from cradle to grave.

So, Republicans, what's your excuse?