THEY'RE MUCH MORE USEFUL AS FIGURES OF FUN.

Donald Trump might be up in the presidential preference polls, and that's scaring the usual suspects.  Rachel Maddow recently appeared as guest on "The View" and the fear-fest began.

RACHEL MADDOW: Well, so, I was asked, “Am I worried about me?” And my answer was I'm worried about all of us. I'm no worried about me than I am worried about everybody in the country. I think it's bad to have somebody saying give me as much power as you can in this country so I can use it to go after other Americans, so I can use it to go after these subhuman internal enemies and I will destroy them. That's just not a good system for anybody and I don't think anybody is safe if that's the sort of basis on which he wants to get more power.

BEHAR: Well remember when Nixon had an enemy's list, that was a proud moment when they were on the enemies list. That was a proud moment for a lot of people if they made it onto the enemies list. Maybe we have to turn it around like that.

MADDOW: I mean I don't – if he decides to go after you or me or anybody who is well-known, you know, we have resources, we will likely be fine, but I think there's a pattern where he picks out individual people and effectively terrorizes them. I mean, there's Stormy Daniels wearing a bulletproof vest to get into the courthouse.

BEHAR: Once you have political violence you have fascism following that. So you've characterized some of Trump's rhetoric as being pornographically violent. That's a good phrase, I like it. In just the last weeks he's joked about his supporters committing suicide, listen to this, did you catch this, he tells them wouldn't it be bet tore commit suicide than to vote for Biden? He's going full Jim Jones now, you know? It's like the Kool-Aid thing. Is he losing it or what? Do they think he's kidding when he says that? What?

There must be a corollary to "your social standing varies inversely to your familiarity with Las Vegas" that governs where "The View" is concerned, and yet, the whiff of fascism drives ratings, doesn't it?

News Busters writers predictably get into the both-sides-what-about markers of the ongoing punishment cycles.  But why?  Rush Limbaugh used to crack wise about the future victory of the Militant Normals (he called his show "conservative" but that was for convenience, not for logic) and yet he was fine with conserving the institutions of liberalism (in the museum, not the political, sense) so as to give people a chance to see how foolish they were when they were in power: and they would predictably behave even more foolishly out of power.  "Liberals are really funny when they’re out of power because that’s when they get wacky and stupid."  So let it be with the cast of "The View" and all the talking heads on the cable opinion channels, opining all the time.  They're much more useful alive and carrying on than as martyrs for their fan bases.

None of which rules out responding to their nastiness in kind.  The only way out of the punishment cycles is through them.