If there is any indication how militarized and annihilationist American politics has become, it’s Hillary Clinton’s casual observation in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week that she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel during her prospective presidency.

The Boston Globe, brain-dead after a savage takeover by the New Yotk Times company transformed an historically weak paper into a dreary shopper, noted correctly that this kind of crazy talk fuels rage against the US abroad and actually helps the Iranian crazies make their case for arming up.

The editorial, Hillary Strangelove, concludes: “A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.”

What’s creepier, still, is how mainstream all this has become. Nuke ‘em! All of them! Who? Just anyone who fucks with us or what’s ours, that’s who! What are you, an asshole? Who’d ask a questions like that but a terrorist-hugger? You fuck! I’ll rip your arms off and beat you to death with the wet ends!

We were reminded how casually apocalyptic politics in America has become in a televised Democratic debate last year when former Alaskan Senator, 1950s Army veteran and then presidential candidate Mike Gravel, probably the elder in the field at the time, said the Democratic candidates scared him for their uniform devotion to annihilationist policies, expressed as a refusal to renounce nukes as anything but a last-resort, self-defense option.

Gravel was dismissed as a crank but he was nutty in a useful way at least in pointing out that there is no candidate today who advocates a durable peace in our time. Eisenhower left office praying for an enduring peace built on mutual respect and love. I shit you not. You can look it up.

Can anyone seriously imagine any presidential candidate showing up for a debate today saying stuff like this and not being attacked for weeks on Fox News?