Political schizophrenia, Part Two

The sort of people who think it isn't rape for a man to have sex with a woman against her wishes are also the ones convinced that Julian Assange is a threat to our way of life.
So while they would have been foaming at the mouth in defence of anyone else who was threatened with extradition for what the WikiLeaks founder is supposed to have done, in his case they are prepared to make an exception, revel in his incarceration in Wandsworth nick, pray that he will be shipped off to Sweden from where he will be taken in leg irons to America, and there to be jailed for 99 years or, with luck, executed.
That would teach a lesson to those who believe it is OK to shine a searchlight on the sewer of "diplomacy".
On the other hand, the sort of people who want to see any man who forces himself on a woman dragged through the courts are those who would elevate Assange and WikiLeaks to hero status. I am in that camp.
The way out for our double-think is to believe that the charges against him are completely trumped up, that he did nothing at all and the black hand of the US secret services are behind the whole thing. Though personally I think they are too incompetent to have done that.
It isn't possible to separate the sex charges from the accused, although the judge at the extradition hearing pretended it was. It is all about Julian Assange and what he has been doing.
Surely not even his most rabid right-wing opponent could pretend that any other itinerant accused on such flimsy evidence - one person's word against another's, the curse of all charges like this - would face deportation.
The aim is to smear, neutralise and punish him. They have got to be stopped.