It threatens to destroy our very culture, ripping us apart and disemboweling what our nation stands for. In the end, a HISSy defenestrates civic life and leaves our vital public realm nothing more than a head on a pike.

Sounds ridiculous? Sure it is. But I wanted to use a lot of big words for medieval torture, and what better place to do it than in describing a HISSy, or “Hyperbole Induced Silliness Syndrome”. This is the situation where people breathless reach for the very top, the worst thing they could possibly say to describe an otherwise rather ordinary situation. Consider this:

Vegetarians seem like decent people, but did you know that Hitler was a vegetarian? It’s true. He also hated Jews, so you know you can’t trust vegetarians.

I realize that there is a serious logical flaw in this argument, but my point is that anyone who would make such an argument is having a HISSy fit. Any time you see Hitler being raised, you know there’s a problem with hyperbole running wild and being just plain silly. Also, you have to remember that vegetarians are vicious killers.

There are better examples all around us. Recently Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman was arrested here in Saint Paul. Now, I realize that she shouldn’t have been arrested, but she wasn’t exactly behaving in a very smart way when she kept pestering the cop that asked her to get back on the sidewalk. The problem was that Goodman was nearly hysterical after her producers were arrested while caught up in a riot nearby, and I can understand why she was damned upset. So it was one of these things that happens in the middle of a riot, no one was harmed but everyone screwed up.

The next day, the twitter world started referring to her arrest as “brutal”. Well. I challenged that idea and was engaged by a number of people. I would up asking them if this “brutality” was exactly the same as what the kid who wound up bleeding experienced, or if it might be a good idea to have a different word for it. I was told this is a difference of semantics. I replied that is was as difference in appreciation for George Orwell, and so this conversation went down the toilet. I threw a HISSy and got out.

But there are other examples of someone throwing a HISSy:

Barack Obama’s excellent adventure to Europe took his campaign for change to hundreds of thousands of people who don’t even vote or pay taxes here. But let me hasten to say that it’s not what he took there that concerns me. It’s what he brought back: European ideas that give the government the chance to grab even more of our liberty and destroy our hard-earned livelihood.

This one came from Mike Huckabee. Funny, I remember this dude named Jefferson going over there and coming back with a few ideas like Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité. But not in this land of Freedom Fries. No, over here we all throw a HISSy once in a while, using the hardest rhetoric possible to describe people and situations. Europeans? Socialsts. Ev’r one of ‘em.

I did my best to give examples from both sides because the truth is that everyone throws a HISSy this time of year. One side are “fascists” and the other are “socialists”, one group are “abortionists” and the other “fundamentalists”. The useless labels go on and on.

My request to every one of you is that if you catch yourself throwing a HISSy fit, such as comparing Bush to Hitler, you apologize to everyone around you. If you could do this the whole world might gradually wean itself off of hyperbole and start speaking a little less breathlessly, to use a fave blog HISSy.

And if you’re unwilling to help, well, that’s just typical of people exactly like you. Did you know that you have a lot in common with Hitler?