This is a fundamental part of America, folks. Those who like to babble shit about "it's just a few bad apples" are exposed as just plain liars. America is populated by millions upon millions of really shitty people. Until we start making better people, don't expect significantly better outcomes.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/going_to_extremes.html?hpid=opinionsbox1Today, we admire the American revolutionaries, and subsequent uncompromising movements. But don’t forget: The victors write history. If the South had won the Civil War, what would our schoolchildren be taught about the abolitionists today? Some in the antislavery movement were as extreme, in their way, as the Southern “fire-eaters.” We tend to think of the secessionists as resisting federal authority during the run-up to Fort Sumter. But the antislavery side had its moments of nullification as well. In 1851, a Boston crowd broke into a federal courthouse to free “Shadrach,” a black man being held there by U.S. marshals enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law. Abolitionist Theodore Parker declared this blatant defiance of Washington “the most noble deed done in Boston since the destruction of the tea in 1773.”
I am not suggesting a moral equivalency between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. But I am suggesting an attitudinal equivalency – one that has been played out repeatedly in our history, and that may play out again. If you think today’s discourse is vitriolic, open any history book and read the words – “Judas,” “Traitor,” “diabolical” -- that Americans hurled at one another in the past. Indeed, if you think there’s something uniquely ugly about the contemporary Tea Party’s abusive rhetoric toward President Obama, check out this compendium of violent language aimed at President Bush a few years ago.