So apparently our President gave a speech last night. I was asleep, paying what I believe that was the proper amount of attention, but a lot of people actually watched the thing. And then they started talking about it and writing about it. So far this morning I've heard and read reactions of two distinct flavors:

1. Oh noes! The death camps are going to get me!

2. All hail Barack Obama!

And then people on both sides call the people on the other side a bunch of poopie-heads.

In other words, nothing has changed. Despite the fact that we've got a young, charismatic, and black man for a President, we're still just as polarized as ever.

On the one side, we have the cautionaries. This camp subscribes to the Slippery Slope Theory of Everything, and a typical argument from them might be, If stem cell research is allowed to continue, before too long abortions will be mandatory so the labs can meet their quotas.

And then we have the reactionaries. To them, everything is broken, and so everything needs fixing. Oh, and it needs to be fixed the right way, which just happens to be their way. A typical statement from a reactionary might be, Blah Obama blah blah change blah hope blah Bush sucks blah.

I bet most of us would like to see ourselves as standing somewhere between these two extremes. And maybe we do, most of the time, but there are issues for each of us that force us to one side or the other. What bothers me is that some people become so firmly entrenched in their camp that it becomes useless to talk to them at all. I call these people assholes.

Don't get me wrong, though; some of my best friends are assholes.