Slow fuse burning.

It no longer seems radical to say this: There's a crash coming. All manner of behavior is getting excused by the widening political schism in our fair land, and most of it goes without any official censure.

When I first learned to drive, I was terrified of freeways. One of the very first times I attempted to merge into traffic, the driver to my left wouldn't give way. I still remember the crunch of gravel under the tires as my lane gave out and I rolled onto the shoulder, guardrail looming ahead as I got on the brakes. This is the real reason I've always driven fast cars since then; not because I'm some cool speed demon, but because I was never going to get trapped like that again.

It may happen to some kid today because she has the wrong bumper sticker.

Christian Trejbal of the Roanoke Times, whose best-known gaffe thus far was comparing me to a convicted sex offender, has now surpassed himself. In a recent editorial he confessed to a laundry list of mental disorders: passive-aggressive behavior, projection, and serious anger issues among them. You see, that teenage girl grinding to a halt in a spray of gravel on the shoulder of a Virginia highway today may be doing so because the hilariously misnomered "Christian" didn't like her choice of bumperstickers,

If a vehicle sports one of those ironically misguided fish-eating-the-fish-with-feet, forget it.

or maybe he doesn't like the Explorer her parents bought her for graduation because they thought their daughter might be safer in a larger vehicle,

I treat them just like the gas-guzzling, road-hogging sport utility vehicles I find equally morally bankrupt: I don't yield to them.

When a grown man can, in public, describe his snits of politically-motivated road rage and remain not only employed, but insured, then the crack in the body politic is past the fix-it-with-Krazy-Glue stage. The best part is where he states "I assume people of all political persuasions follow similar driving maxims, even if subconsciously." No, Christian, only crazy people do that. Crazy Democrats, crazy Republicans, crazy Greens, crazy Libertarians: If you're out there taking out your political frustrations by playing tag with total strangers in two tons of high-speed steel your sanity is, to put it bluntly, highly questionable.

At least there's one silver lining in this dark cloud: Just remember, Mr. Trejbal, during your next joust with some "morally-bankrupt" SUV, the following bit of doggerel I learned in driver's ed. Maybe they never taught it to you. It goes like this,

"Here lies the body of old John J.
Who died maintaining his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong."

(H/T to Ravenwood.)