No no, thank you! Thanks for the kind words and the vision to understand where I was coming from very precisely. That's a rare sort of insight and it makes me feel good just reading it.

You're 110 per cent correct: it really is about being human and being real. And that's the best any of us can do at the top of our game. The rest is just self-congratulatory bullshit.

But my god, that moniker is irresistable anyway...

OK, first I take issue with your assumptions that 1) I'm not a student of history. I am; 2) that facism inevitably follows populism. It's not even a rational proposition, unless perhaps you meant the way Reagan followed Carter (a facist following a populist). I don't think that was it though, was it? But on to 3) which is all those things you seem to think you know about me. Please allow me to introduce myself: Never met a poor person? I grew up poor, scion of a branch of a clan of very poor and undereducated people (Scots-Irish, American Indian and, yes, black, too), and followed my father out of that poverty and into the lower middle class, all the while kicking and screaming. My primary care physician and good friend is an Iraqi, and my daughter speaks fluent Arabic, so you can deduce the rest of that particular rebuttal; I've worked with the homeless in Washington, DC, and that means I've met crackhead moms and mental defectives and manic street preachers (and am even related to one or two of the latter); Having lived for five years in Orange County, California, I have set foot in Saddleback Church, the standard by which all megachurches are measured, and of course living there makes it impossibe to not know someone who attends that franchise.

I've also done my time as a volunteer firefighter, EMT, spent a good decade involved in the Civil Rights Movement (and I mean actually in it, up to my eyes, not just talking about it at some coffeehouse); I've helped people die and I've helped them live. I've talked people out of suicide and I've cleaned up after those who didn't bother to let anyone know they were going to pull the trigger. I've washed grey matter off living room walls. I've worked for 40 years in emergency medicine/critical care; I've helped heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers and yes, on occasion even cast out demons. I've been politically active since 1960, which was the year I found myself sucked into The Movement. I currently live in a suburban barrio, which suits me just fine, since it reminds me a lot of the lunatic slum I grew up in as a child, but with air conditioning and a patio -- a significant step up. I was weaned on Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" and "The Sane Society", on Tillich's "Love, Power and Justice" and Twelve Southerners' "I'll Take My Stand." I've been attacked by a leghorn rooster and I've wandered the streets of Trent Lott's home town, filled with dread. I was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and to borrow from the "Johnny" character in "Arsenic and Old Lace", "I've lived a strange life, Mortimer."

It is a testiment to my earlier observation about the failure to understand and respect others, that you conclude, without the first hint of evidence, that I don't get out much and am clueless about history. As much as I'd rather not think so, I realize that I am, in fact, a part of history. I don't think I saw you at the Great March on Washington.

Other than those points I'd have to say I agree with everything else you said.

Your validation of my feelings on this means a great deal. Now if only a few others will manage to get past my identity and look at the words...

We will continue to obsess over Mrs. Palin, who is nothing more than a symbol and a tool for McCain and the truly sick opposition. Meanwhile the joint goes up in flames and all the Greek choir here can do is bemoan the fact that this particular woman is really screwed up -- although, if she's just stayed home and been humble enough to say No thanks to McCain's offer, she'd never have drawn a moment's worth of national attention.

And again, meanwhile, thanks to the politics of identity, we'll wail, moan and gnash our teeth even as we rearrange deck chairs of this here Titanic.

Lord help us.