Yeah, moderates are being squeezed out by the wingers on both sides right now, which happened the last few times the world economy tanked, too. When the chips are down, history says that people tend to flock to personality cults (like the '08 Obama campaign) and to authoritarians who make sunny promises about the future, and then issue rants against everyone's favorite scapegoats when the world continues to rocket straight to Hell. For instance, in the bottomless debt-pit of Greece, the fastest growing parties are the Nazis and the Communists. Just like the consulate being attacked on 9/11 in Libya, it's sad but entirely predictable.

I guess that's why I think the "why" is important, especially to people who don't seem to have a clue as to how we got here. Is it going to stop the same bad ideas from taking root again somewhere down the line? Well, no, probably not in a free society (the only kind I want to live in). But if enough people know the cause of a problem, I think we'll be able to defend against it better the next time it comes around.