The tenor of political discourse among Americans

It's reflected in Panama's American community too

The tenor of US political discourse

Yes, a certain person from whom many of the readers might suspect such behavior has demanded that an English-language Panama email group to which he does not belong --- indeed, which was founded for the very purpose of getting away from this individual --- censor the editor of The Panama News for publishing a warning about the predations of one Mary Sloane. Ever the little copycat, he's got a long way to go, considering that nowadays the heir to Phyllis Schlafly's misery is promoting a conservative censored edition of the Holy Bible itself. (Due to alleged "liberal influences," the King James Version --- among other horrible offenses --- undermines law and order with its alleged false insertion of the story of the adulteress that the good citizens wanted to stone to death, Mr. Schlafly argues.)

It's not really a matter of back-biting small town feuds among Americans abroad. It's party of a much larger phenomenon. Consider the following two videos, to get the full flavor of the right-wing attack on health care reform and its supporters in the USA:

No, this is not all there is to the health care reform debate. But it's a very good reflection of one of its principal dynamics, the ugly attempt to shout down all other voices. Like the Ku Klux Klan violence against voter registrars who were signing up African-American voters back in the 1960s, this is about an ideological presumption of an exclusionary "right" to power. They don't expect that a black man can be elected president, they don't accept that anyone other than themselves ought to be able to have health care, they don't accept that a naturalized US citizen has any rights and in Panama, they don't accept that anyone has a right to challenge the investment scam artists whom they endorse.

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