Goldilocks and Pericles, among others, have asked the question:

Why am I so obsessed with wingers?

Simple question, simple answer:

I think wingers are destroying the country.

First, though, we ought to get a clear definition of “winger.” Not all Republicans are wingers - though virtually all wingers are Republican.

“Winger” is, of course, short for right-winger. But what it means is extreme right-winger, far right winger. But, a true hallmark of the winger is that he - and most true wingers are male - don’t perceive themselves to be as extremist as they are. They think of themselves as mainstream; it doesn’t quite occur to them that a broader swath of the country than they could ever hope to represent would fail to see the humor in, say, Ann Coulter’s suggestion that the best way to talk to a liberal is to take a baseball bat upside said liberal’s head.

It’s just a joke, they say. But most people get that, down deep, they’re not really joking.

Indeed, a strain of muted violence runs through winger dialogue. We’ve gotten into this here before - how wingers like to portray their opponents as weak, feminine. They think of themselves as real He-Men, who know that violence is often necessary; for the winger, at least in international affairs, it tends to be the first resort, or the first choice.

But it goes further than that. If you’ve ever wondered why so many winger pundits write books that accuse liberals of treason, it is this subtext of violence. For - what’s the penalty for traitors?

Why - isn’t it death?

That is the sentiment that lies at the heart of winger “thought,” if such a thing can be said to exist. It is indeed a Brownshirt mentality, and for many years in this country - essentially, the entirety of the 1990s - it was permitted to run amok. And make no mistake: That hardcore style was extraordinarily successful; it won wingers and the party which they oh-so-loyally served many battles. The pull-no-punches rhetoric had much to do with the Republican Revolution, really the Republican dominance of politics this last generation. They were tough - and it worked.

But it triggered the inevitable backlash. Now - via outlets like Media Matters, which does for the left what Newsbusters did for the right; via George Soros, who does for the left what Richard Mellon Scaife did for the right - now the left gives as good as it gets.

And it is driving the wingers crazy.

And it has led much of the nation to conclude that the political atmosphere is entirely too partisan. But while that conclusion may have finally come about because the left finally stood up and started punching back, the reality is that this harsh partisan environment is almost entirely the fault of the wingers - of the conservative movement, of Rush and Hannity and Coulter and the like.

But the wingers aren’t merely responsible for this ultra-partisanship. The country has come to identify the war in Iraq with the wingers, and rightly so. This was an ideological war - at least from the view of the movement conservative - and staying in Iraq “until the job is finished” remains an ideological imperative.

If you know your history you may recall the SS units that roamed Berlin as the Russians were closing in, the young fanatics who hung old men and children from the lampposts for daring to display “defeatism” - which meant they refused to take potshots at advancing columns of T34s. There is an absolute historic parallel between that fanaticism and the right-wing fanaticism we see now.

Being fanatics, they are are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the war effort; then, and now as in Iraq. There is a bigger reason why wingers don’t want to “cut and run” from Iraq: It is not merely that “the terrorists will win,” but that they will have lost; it would be an admission that they were wrong.

And wingers are constitutionally incapable of admitting that they have ever been wrong.

And because of this - so long as the wingers are running the show, we are fated to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. And it is for this reason that wingers must be opposed. And why I do so here.