shamans of the GOP

via FB, josh pointed me to this post. it begins with a question that a lot of us have probably been asking:

As the tide of frothing-at-the-mouth anti-health-care-reform whack-jobs begins to recede a bit, many of us in the not-entirely-irrational community find ourselves asking questions that are, in one way or another, versions of "What the hell was that?" How, after all, could so many people have so much passionate intensity about a reform bill about which they clearly know next to nothing?

i don't completely agree with what follows from there. (isn't political analysis a kind of anthropology? plus nazi comparisons are usually a bad idea) but to the extent that robert is talking about fear-mongering more than logical debate, i think that's pretty much on target.