---I'll take it point by point. This one's for you, baby!

Though it is unlikely someone writing something in the style above could be helped to recognize their denied, disowned and projected aggression, aggression that is only too evident to an observer, one sometimes has the duty to try to assist anyway. This is generally a Fool's Errand and not without some risk since helping individuals in such a state often incites attack against the Good Samaritan.

---I haven't "disowned" my aggression. The aggression is owned and acknowledged. When someone calls you an idiot, you can go ahead and assume that they're aware they're being aggressive.

1. The sophomoric puns upon the aliases of those the poster disagrees with are clearly intended to be (humorously) insulting.

---Look, it's an alias right? The fact is you trolls love hiding behind faux-clever aliases that are themselves puns meant to clue us in to either your intellectual stature or political stance or both. When someone turns it against you, you call it sophomoric. I call it poking fun at your fake cleverness.

2. Racist and sexist ("white guys")ad hominems.

---I'm a white guy; takes one to know one.

3. People who disagree are "deliberately" missing the point, i.e. are unethical and dishonest and have no valid basis for their stated opinions.

---What's there to disagree with? Are people or are they not shouting racial epithets, threats, and hate speech at repub rallies? To compare that to people here expressing disgust / concern about them is apples and oranges, "my friend." A thought experiment: imagine an Obama rally where people work themselves into a froth yelling out "kill the geezer!" and "burn the twat!" the media / repub supporters would be up in arms. and rightly so.

4. No comment would seem to be required regarding the connection between violent, hateful, angry speech that demonizes opponents and the liability to violent acts and civil discord. Salon posters appear genuinely oblivious to their own faults -which are legion- in this venue while eager to seize and capitalize upon similar faults in their opponents.

----if that's the case, i'll expect to see you at the next mccain rally working to temper racist and violent speech. In the meantime, I'm relieved that you're here bravely speaking out...

5. I'm not sure who has been defending someone else but my efforts have been and continue to be directed to the thus far entirely vain attempt to direct attention to how critics of certain behaviors themselves behave. This is no academic exercise but the root and fundament of every human conflict great and small. Salonists love to talk of how their political opponents have constructed an Other to project upon and rail against - but they fail to see that they, too, have built their Other and are competing with each other to make it yet more monstrous and inhuman and a fit target for derision and hateful speech.

---people are angry. they have a right to be angry. we've been listening to nothing but lies from this administration for the past eight years, we're bogged down in two wars, nothing's been done about the environment / alternative fuel / the deficit / and now our whole economy's crashing. this particular admin has delighted in playing to the "base" by appealing to the lowest sorts of fears, smears, gay-baiting and racial politics. now they're reaping the whirlwind. i'm angry not just at them but at the people who've enabled them. if that's creating an "other" and projecting, then i guess i need to go back to therapy.

6. No one I am aware of has dismissed racial, religious and other considerations in this or any other campaign. That such concerns are ipso facto irrational and wicked remains to be demonstrated. Platitudes are not proofs. In any case the way to combat such things is certainly not by anger, hatred, absurdly over-exaggerated caricatures of political adversaries, dehumanizing and demonizing whole groups(Republicans, males, whites, etc.)and similar excesses flowing from the selfsame headwaters of passion and prejudice.

---"flowing from the selfsame headwaters".... i mean, wow! really? this is a veritable mobius strip of logic, wrapped up in some of the most sanctimonious rhetoric i ever did see! first you declare that it might be all right to base your vote on religion / racial identity -- in this case, and this is the point of joan's article and the discussion that's followed, an extremely vitriolic and hate-filled strain of religion and identity politics. then you declare that it's wrong to "demonize whole groups (repubs, whites, males)." "Demonizing" is exactly the issue of what's going on here.

7. The advice to go back to our caves is of course another humorous(sophormoric) insult against individuals with whom the poster disagrees. This is the invariable pattern of petty personalization on Salon and similar forums and indicates a gross failure of abstract and disciplined thinking. It is far easier and simply as well as more immediately emotionally gratifying to attack PEOPLE instead of IDEAS. It is thus the rara avis here and elsewhere who is able or willing to refrain from generally tasteless and seldom adequately justified PERSONAL attacks against those who think differently.

---go back and read elephantman's whiny, childish "fuck you" post a few days ago from when corsi got popped in kenya. i've seldom seen a more infantile, personal meltdown on a letters thread. i'm capable of abstract, disciplined thinking -- i'm also capable of calling something idiotic when it is so. i'll repeat, from my original response: the contortions you guys are willing to go through to defend the racist hate speech coming from repub rallies is truly idiotic.