The Gore Door

It's fair to say that this is not the very worst of times in American history.

The British are not marching through the homeland, burning down the White House. We are not murdering each other by the hundreds of thousands, as we did during our Civil War. A fourth of us are not unemployed, as was the case during the Great Depression. And Joseph McCarthy - though not necessarily his techniques and his amorality - seems safely ensconced in his grave, despite Ann Coulter's attempt to revive him (wow, how sick is that?).