Bringing guns to the tea party

While the drama of the hostage-taking tea party may be on the wane, and we might like to believe that the country is moving toward a sane center, I feel a little like the parent who waits for her children to return late at night and, when they do, still stays up worrying about what they might have done. Experienced parents know how to temper that fleeting sense of relief, to anticipate that you're never really out of shark-infested waters.

Terry McAuliffe may have "run against the NRA," but we've already equipped most of the country with a small arsenal, guns we would have to "pry out of their cold, dead fingers" to stop. More importantly, the people with guns are mad, real mad. And if we think a small setback is going to make the extreme right go away, we should remember the formidable, disciplined infrastructure they've already set up. They have infiltrated schools, rewriting textbooks and history, and privatizing education. They have found deep pockets, turning our democracy into a plutocracy. They know how to stay on message, to fuel the fires that deprive reason of oxygen. The world looks very different to people who have a great deal of anger, a great need to fight to right wrong.

If you're tempted to be encouraged, pay attention. We may not need another civil war to divide our country. We may have already done it with words, money, and cynicism. As Yeats predicted, the center did not hold. The worst are full of passionate intensity, while the best lack all conviction.