Yesterday's news was an interesting contrast in the two dominant trends in our politics.  Iowa's high court nullified a gay-marriage ban, seemingly out of nowhere making it legal in the third state in the Union.  Meanwhile, another one of those lone gunman (which are becoming as ubiquitous as "Local Man") walked into an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, N.Y., during citizenship classes, and shot 13 people dead before killing himself.

If it bleeds it leads, but the killings so overshadowed the historic ruling in Iowa that the first I heard of the latter was in an email from The Spaniard, who'd read about it in El País online.  The contrast between yet another horrific instance of domestic terrorism — who says we don't have our own homegrown suicide bombers? — clearly inspired by the right-wing talk radio jihadists' unending stream of political hate speech that sanctions it, ending in utter nihilism, and the slow process of the rule of law in Iowa pointing to the possibility of a better future for more Americans, is a snapshot of two paths and where each leads.

On one path travel those who believe that some of us are more equal than others, even that some of us deserve to live and others deserve to die simply because of the color of our skin, or our nation of origin, the way we talk, or the way we're made.  On the other travel those who, however they might struggle with preconceptions and prejudices of their own (and they do), are committed to that fundamental truth enshrined in the Constitution*, that "all men are created equal", and that that requires of each of us that we overcome our own prejudice and fear and demand the rights for others that we ourselves enjoy.

I know it sounds hokey, but which road would you rather be on?  The one that leads off a cliff, or the one that actually goes somewhere?

Charles Blow's column in this morning's Times is about the perfect storm on the right.  The failure of their social, political, and economic agendas, and the triumph of The Other in the person of Obama, is leading them further down the path of nihilism.

[T]he unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period.

I would say let them go their own way and see how far they get before they go cannibal and turn on each other, but unfortunately, though the roads fork, I have a feeling they intersect again up ahead. 
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*This is actually a fundamental truth at the core of Christ's teachings as well, which lends another level of atrocity to the appropriation of what really is a revolutionary doctrine of radical equality by those who preach intolerance and hate but call themselves "Christians".