My work in politics has taught me that limbically speaking, people are almost all cowards. They avoid conflict, because typically in conflict, both parties lose.

The middle/progressive class has taken this and incorporated it into its ostensibly communitarian perspective -- that if we want to win, we must avoid conflict -- and ostracized those that don't go along with this ridiculous nonsense.

What the progressive community DOES NOT realize is that when leaders step out with bold statements that are directed at protecting the more cowardly members of the tribe, it gives the people behind them more room to maneuver and declare their allegiance. Strong leadership make their followers less afraid that they will be hurt by the other side's attacks, and enables followers to take stronger positions themselves.

Don't believe it? How many of you have felt comfortable walking around with any kind of 'Democrat' button on your lapel for the last 8 years? I'm sure there are some, but they would resoundingly be in the minority. How many are even comfortable criticizing GWB, arguably one of the worst presidents in history? Scanning the op-ed pages over the last eight years is basically a desert of criticism. There isn't any.

And how many progressives even come to the defense of other progressives when they are attacked? Once again, using the op-ed pages as a metric, precious few.

Our leaders need to understand that regardless of communitarian protests to the contrary, not attacking viciously back sends bad emotional messages to our tribe -- that they won't be protected. And we need to get over this -- fast. Because this election, and the Presidency, is for real. If we think we're going to get any communitarian/people-oriented policies out of McCain/Palin, we're wildly delusional.

That's the thing that most lefty/communitarian types do not realize, because of not enough contact/not enough front-line experience.

The other side would just as soon kill us. Not wildly, but dispassionately as a necessary evil.

Don't believe me? Then get out front on a left/right issue, like the environment, and see what happens, when the right actually knows who you are. And watch the types of comments you'll get.

One of the worst things that the Right has hoisted on us in the last 18 years is the erasure of the line between legitimate free speech and fighting words. Telling someone to write about 'spreading their legs', if said in the hillbilly community where I grew up, was an obvious invitation to fight.

I think that Salon is absolutely right to remove personal obscene attacks. They don't add anything to the debate, and you only find the cretins popping up to defend them as 'free speech'. They're fighting words, pure and simple.

Garrison,

I want you to know that I've enjoyed PHC for a long time. PHC was one of the shows that put on bluegrass, and introduced me to a whole lot of alternate country that has definitely enriched my life and my culture.

At the same time, pal, you've been going on with some kind of weird ennui about all this Old-Timey Gospel shit forever. I believe what you have said about your background -- that you grew up with those kinds of people.

But here's the rub, G -- I did too. I grew up with the kooks screaming in tongues, and dunking their loved ones in the creek in white gowns in the middle of winter. I had to deal with the constant pamphleting about the coming apocalypse. So even though I've turned into the intellectual class, my cracker background kept me grounded that you were peddling some fantasy.

That's not true for the rest of the NPR Middle-Class that we desperately need to wake up and campaign like HELL itself for the O-man. You've been part of the sedative. Add that the constant ostensibly self-deprecating humor about every liberal cause, and over time, I've become convinced that if you're not a mole or an agent provocateur for the other side, you're the best dupe they could ever have had.

I don't know what to tell you. Fifteen years ago (I'm now on the Idaho/WA border, and used to live in Idaho) I started talking to other normal people about how kooky people like Sarah Palin was, and no one believed me. You helped mainstream them. Now we're about to get the hugest wake-up call in the world. Let's hope that it doesn't end in Palin-willed Pentecostal nuclear fire.

I don't know what you can do to make up for this. Your whole schtick has been making fun of liberals in a gentle way, while mainstreaming the idea of these kooks. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

What are you going to do?

It makes me gag for anyone to feel sorrow for Sarah Palin. The stakes are real in this election -- literally millions of lives could be at stake, and the misery or success of the world will in part reside on who is President of the U.S. For some weird reason, we seem to miss this.

What is going on is a juvenilization of women that has been a hallmark of the anti-feminist backlash starting back with Monica Lewinsky. Monica, when she committed all her ostensible transgressions, was 21 -- more than legal age to determine her own fate, sexual or otherwise. Palin is 44, fer chrissake. Feeling sorry for her in the way that the current zeitgeist does sets all women back -- especially for someone that has such an absolutely vicious backstory, even in the smaller circles that she has moved in.

All this talk of Palin Bingo wears me out. Means you gotta make up a card, and pay attention.

Here's a simpler one, guaranteed to get you snockered.

Have a shot every time either McCain or Palin says the word 'maverick'.

Make sure it's good whiskey that you like!