In 1973, employees held hostage for six days in a Swedish bank vault refused police help and emerged to defend their captors. Such bonding between captives and their takers became known as the Stockholm Syndrome, and there as signs that Americans are succumbing to it now.

A new CNN poll shows 63 percent angry at Republicans for the government shutdown, but 57 percent are also angry with Democrats and 53 percent with President Obama as well.

Is insanity contagious or is there another explanation? In the 24/7 news cycle, a simple truth is not enough for the voracious media maw: The fact that Tea Party fanatics in the House, spurred on by Ted Cruz, are holding the nation hostage to their irrational rage is just not enough to feed the beast.

In a welter of truths, half-truths and lies being spread as the shutdown clock clicks on, all kinds of rationalizations take root about the motives of the captors and their cause. In this steamy atmosphere of tracking their tactics, the simple truth is easily lost.

It doesn’t help that the President has stepped back, allowing hoof-in-mouth HarryReid to do the talking. Railing at House conservatives as “anarchists” with a “Banana Republican mindset,” the Senate Majority Leader betrays his early days as a boxer not gifted at gab.

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