Reflections on the shallow end of the pool

As with religion and its adherents, facts that should disqualify the legitimacy (for a lefty) of Obama and the Democrats will always be compartmentalized, delegitimized, minimized, etc., at least to the point where the legitimacy stands.

The parallels between loyalty to Obama and the Democrats and loyalty to religion are striking.

Such loyalty comes in many flavors. One thing that makes religion so resilient and pernicious is that a great many people support it with seemingly soft — and yet unbreakable — bonds.

The wild-eyed zealots occupy the deep end of the pool, but one can drown in an inch of water. And one can certainly drown as easily in 8 feet of water as in 80.

Perhaps the difference between a religion and a cult is that the latter lacks the shallow-enders, people who casually but all-but-irrevocably accept the tribe's legitimacy.

Most Democrats will go every which way but owning up to Obama's deep conservatism. He had to do what he did. It takes time. The Blue Dogs done him wrong. Look, over there, racists! Accepting that The First Black President is a child of Reagan is unthinkable, and thus must be unthought.

If one did dignify and accept that thought, too many other unsettling thoughts would follow. So, Dems of a more realistic stripe move ever-more toward the shallow end of the pool. But, in the manner of Zeno's paradox, they won't close the deal. They won't come out, even though the water is demonstrably very far from fine.

Thus it is with the most lukewarm religious apologists. They'll doubt, they'll criticize, but they won't renounce.

Well, I have renounced. Because the facts tell me that today's Democrats reliably blunt and misuse the energies of those Obama has called "liberal bleeding hearts," rather than using them to make this a better country.