The United States of America is all akilter.
The country once boasted a vast array of published and broadcasted opinion that existed in a healthy and vigorous atmosphere of polemical discourse. There was a general consensus that a true balance in dialogue was essential to democracy; that no single orientation, left or right, had a monopoly on truth.
But now, thanks to the Bush administration's constant onslaughts on any viewpoint that differs from its own, the light of genuine polemical discourse has been dimmed to near darkness.