George Will has a fascinating article that suggests that General Petraeus’s September Congressional testimony related to the progress of the “Surge” in Iraq could produce a “ Weimar ” moment in America .  This refers to the post- World War I myth in then democratic Germany (the Weimar Republic) that the German military had never been defeated in World War I but was betrayed by the weak into an ignominious political loss.  This myth was the foundation upon which Hitler built the political machine that would eventually bring to life the Third Reich.  Will does not suggest anything nearly so dramatic since American institutions are strong vs. a weak Weimar Republic (which had until World War I been run by the autocratic Kaiser of the Prussian House of Hohenzollern).  However, acrimony leads to poison in the body politic and given the level of vitriol already present in current American discourse, additional levels of that poison will do no good.