Internet offers voice, power to the ill-willed

The Republican Party's childish project to obstruct health care and environmental improvements makes me long for majority rule.

Does everyone who disagrees, no matter how harmful his or her view is to the majority, have the right to prevent progress?

Part of the problem is the demise of church-state separation. Too many self-righteous religious folks know they are right only because their preacher tells them so. Sadly, many politicians fall in this group or rely on religious voters, dismissing honest science in favor of untestable dogma.

Technology worsens things. Before the Internet, family and friends let people know how crazy or selfish their ideas were in direct conversations. Now you can believe in something that only one in a million do and still connect with enough people to convince you that everyone thinks like you! Then automated e-mails let people spread lies and bully leaders, while ideologically driven entertainers such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh broadcast lies as facts.

Given the power of minority naysayers to corrupt the debate, how can we be optimistic?

Republicans accept the noise as proof that Americans want them to continue messing up things as they did during the Bush years. Principled leaders with better ideas are driven away and soon, the insane will end up running the asylum.

Rob Johnson

Cedar Rapids