Do you really believe all that?

[sawyl]

Trying to read on the bus in to work this morning, I was systematically distracted by the bizarre reactionary paranoia of a couple of my fellow passengers. After one of them opened with some comment about something they'd happened to see a drunken student do the previous evening, they were off and flying, blaming the world's ills on: students, immigrants, the unemployed, cyclists, feminists, the young, the old, and, it seemed, anyone who wasn't them. As an example of empathic failure, it was nothing if not comprehensive.