The WashPost's Dana Milbank gives us a whimsical, light-hearted look into the angry, virulent, hate-filled ball of incoherent psychobabble that is the comment section of online newspaper articles. Regardless of what you take out of Milbank's attitude, the content certainly reveals the dehumanizing effect Internet media can have on people. Things that people wouldn't say to our politically opposing friends and neighbors can be lobbed out across the Interwebs under the cover of anonymity. It's gotten so bad I've reached a point where I only read newspaper comments just to see which side is astroturfing better than the other.

But in the process, I find myself lamenting how desensitized some people are and so taken to repeating the most recent talking points they heard on their favored media outlets of choice. As a proud Republican, I've recognized that our party is paying a steep price for the "divide and conquer" electoral model than won us elections but failed to give our party credibility in the realm of governing. Unfortunately, the model continues to be practiced by both parties and by far too many of their most rabid partisans, and the Internet provides those partisans with an outlet to let loose their deepest rage against other people simply for identifying with another group of people.

It's a shame that the comment sections of America's most reliable news sources have degraded into a haven for rhetoric you could find on web sites for hate groups. But as many a wise person once said, all great innovations have potential for great and terrible uses. The Internet has allowed us to create and share more information better and faster than ever before, to create or maintain working relationships across borders and coordinate entire movements of people to make others' lives better. Yet it has also allowed other people to abuse those same powers that enable us to use the Internet for good to do wicked things like harass and assault kids, destroy the financial security of millions of Americans, or most relevant here, dumb down our nation's political discourse into nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Milbank's article is good, insightful, and definitely good for a chuckle. But the reality of the subject matter he covers is certainly no laughing matter. Or at least it shouldn't be.