I Didn't Fully Explore This ...

... in my recent op-ed on the American right (last Monday also in the Amsterdam daily Het Parool), but Frank Rich and Paul Krugman in the New York Times do: the sizable extremist, violent, right-wing minority in the U.S., and the way so-called respectable news outlets, celebrities, and politicians feed their mania. Of course, in addition to the killings at the Washington Holocaust Museum and the church of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller--used, appropriately, as evidence to underscore the seriousness of the anti-Obama frenzy on the right-- there was another politically motivated murder recently, that of an American soldier outside a recruiting station in Arkansas. It got much less press than the Kansas and D.C. shootings, probably because most would not see it as part of a larger, left-wing anti-military frezy. And that's probably correct.