More or less, along the right in the US there is general acceptance that the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, was beaten up by mobsters and is, as a result, leaving the Senate.

From the moment the story broke, many have been highly skeptical of Reid’s claim his injuries came from a home exercise accident. Most of this skepticism–based mostly on speculation and the gruesome nature of the injuries—led some to offer a version of an alternate theory that somebody beat up Senator Reid.

“It’s pretty obvious from the photographs that somebody beat the bejesus out of the soon-to-be former senator from Nevada. And yet the national media has uncritically swallowed the cover story that ‘exercise equipment’ was to blame for the loss of sight in the former majority leader’s right eye. Baloney,” Michael Walsh wrote at PJ Media.

Even Rush Limbaugh has bought into this:

Does anybody really believe that’s why Harry Reid is still bruised and is still wearing dark glasses, what, months after this accident with his exercise machine?

I don’t believe for a minute that whatever happened to Harry Reid has anything to do with an exercise machine unless somebody repeatedly threw him intoit. Harry Reid looks like and is acting like — and now with this announcement, behaving like — somebody who may have been beaten up. Nobody… I’ve never seen anybody have an accident with an exercise machine that ends up suffering symptoms much like Harry Reid’s for as long as Harry Reid has.

If it is generally believed that the Senate Majority Leader was hanging out with mobsters, who felt perfectly safe in beating him up with no consequences whatsoever, then the governance of the United States has fallen on some very dark times. This is not a cute bedtime tale, but a sordid and sinister story for which genuine answers ought to be sought.

Do Americans not worry about who is really running their country and on whose behalf? What parts of the way America is governed is governed to benefit people such as this? If there is serious truth to this rumour, you would think people would want to get to the bottom of it. That they do not, is more worrying than anything else, even the negotiating that is now going on in Iran.