...I'll clean it up myself, I guess

Matthew Guerrieri, responding to my post responding to his post responding, in part, to another post of mine, had this to say,

My suspicion is that the modern iteration of the unwashable stain is a hangover from the rise of Nazi Germany. Many decent people chose to take a charitable view of Hitler for too long, with disastrous results—as a result, our reflex is to believe the worst of any even mildly evil figure, and morally quarantine ourselves.

I recommend the whole post, since it seems to be a respite from the stridency and sort of frantic rhetoric that taints pretty much every side of this debate. Myself included.