So, what did you expect?

I have written in this forum about the content and level of rhetoric against President Obama presented and tolerated by the Right. The affects of that continue to reverberate less on the surface yet in a societal subconscious that has cured and hardened over time. The editor of an Atlanta weekly, "Atlanta Jewish Times," proposed a scenario suggesting Israel kill the President. http://www.military.com/news/article/editor-killing-obama-an-option-for-israel.html?ESRC=eb.nl ; I wonder how many Americans may read of this and accept the premise as rational without distinguishing the fundamental evil in it because of their own predisposition against a non-citizen, Muslim, "colored," socialist, "pathetic" person in the office who wants to abandon Israel and destroy America.

An Israeli correspondent is quoted at the end of the article: "I know, and most of you know, that [the editor's] crazy and criminal suggestions are not the ranting of some loony-tune individual and were not taken out of thin air -- but are the inevitable result of the inordinate volume of repugnant venom that some of Obama's political rivals, Jews and non-Jews included, have been spewing for the last three years," I couldn't have said it any better. To be sure, the comments of this editor in Atlanta have been publicly condemned and he has resigned but, we may ask ourselves what the reaction would have been had comparable comments been written and published by the "Atlanta Muslim Times."

As before, I am not speaking of politics, political parties or issues but of the degradation of our culture. There are hundreds of emails floating within the internet that decry the loss of respect of citizen to flag, child to adult, son to father, youth to ambition, etc. within our culture. A good number of those who forward these emails to me, however, follow them with monkey images, "birther" fabrications, and baseless fear-mongering about the man and not his politics. Heck, even "spell-check," while recognizing Reagan, Roosevelt, Clinton, and Bush does not acknowledge "Obama." (No, this is humor and not conspiracy.)