Alright. It’s official. Dialogue is on its deathbed.

It had a grand mal seizure during the rise up to the fiery, factious ‘04 elections and now is dwindling quickly, unable to sustain so much as a whimper without words being snarled into flaccid, sensationalist nonsense.

This aside has been brought to you by the recent comments of Senator Clinton that her rival for the spot of chief Democratic Presidential contender, Barack Obama, called her names. “Well, this is getting kind of silly.” Clinton lamented like the school teacher she has of late tried to come off as, “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life but I’ve never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney certainly. We have to ask what’s ever happened to the politics of hope?”

What indeed? And surely, this message touches a raw nerve with the American public who, by and large, feel injured and humiliated by the inertia and disillusionment that over a decade of increasingly vicious partisan rancor have developed into. Citizens of all stripe are sore after the dramatic move to shift power in the Congress in order to change the disastrous course of the Administration has earned less than dramatic results. In short, people are dead sick of infighting. The last thing they want is name-calling.

Of course, the only one lowering the tone to that petty level is Clinton herself.

The comments she refers to are as follows, and were issued in light of another extremely stupid tempest in a teapot that Clinton has been trying to inspire - that over Obama’s comments on whether to talk to the leaders of rival nations:

“The notion that I was somehow going to be inviting them over for tea next week without having initial envoys meet is ridiculous,” he said in an interview outside his Senate office. “But the general principle is one that I think Senator Clinton is wrong on, and that is if we are laying out preconditions that prevent us from speaking frankly to these folks, then we are continuing with Bush-Cheney policies.”

So did he call her an insipid, empty-suited martinet? No. Did he call her Bush or Cheney even, as she claimed? No. He didn’t even comment on her specific policies! All he does is equate hypothetical policies with those employed by Bush and Cheney. And now it has officially become “name-calling”. I say “officially”, because it is characterized as such by practically every blogger and journo out there, if the rotten lizard brain of the media’s collective consciousness, The Drudge Report, is any indication.

Obama has countered, and adeptly. It is, after all, why he can speak about communicating with rival heads of state with substance and intent, rather than as just a reactionary political ploy to unseat domestic competitors like Clinton does.

Still, the damage is being done. By politicians devoid of integrity such as Romney and Clinton, and by the media that thrives on scandal, even when it is only show. If we have come to a point where name-calling is a grave concern, that is one thing - that is, indeed, a problem. Invective solves little. But comparison is necessary. And if we have come to the point where even equating another politician’s prospective policies to that of a party, of a statesperson, or of an ideology is considered an irritant, we have truly gone dumb.

The old adage that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is absolutely true. But this is not just a call to gather trivia. It is a warning that one has to apply the patterns of cause and effect that the experiments of history have yielded in order to make better future judgments. It is, in essence, a duty to compare. If we can no longer compare what is potential to what is proven, we lose the foundation of judgment.

And if we do not judge Clinton’s comments as to be alarmingly rancorous and suggestive of an attitude that she believes she cannot win by other than this strategy of senseless negativity, we stand to inherit only more of the same.