The sheer absurdity of Salon is astounding. She must have done something right Thursday. The crazies are attacking her again. I suppose Alaskans are just as stupid as flyover country for electing her to be the governor, with a high a approval rating to boot. You don't get it. You sit in your little bubble of supposed intellectual superiority and think too highly of yourselves. Not only is it pathetic, it is sad that the media has shown their a**. You have let the American people down with your bias. You should hang your head in shame.

The dumbing down of the Republican Party started with Ronald Reagan and his faux-folksy script readings and appeals to people's worst instincts (violence, bigotry, religious intolerance, anti-intellectualism). It's only gotten worse since then, and has coincided with increasingly sleazy and dishonest and hateful campaigning of the Lee Atwater-Karl Rove strain.

The Republicans are the party of hate and ignorance, and unfortunately, they appeal to a large portion of Americans. As John Stuart Mill observed, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

But let's not kid ourselves. The Republicans are the party of the rich and powerful, and that is the real reason they've had such great success in elections. That small but powerful elite controls the dissemination of information in this country, as they use that control to their advantage. However, after eight years of the worst Presidency in our history, the rich are poised to lose some of their grip on power, despite having nominated an aggressively ignorant and cruel Barbie doll for Vice President.

You are so far out in...left field? right field? center? outside the park? Define what you mean by "the Real American" as a starting point for honest debate. I believe if you truly read, absorbed, and contemplated the various vantage points represented on this site, you'd find a broad spectrum of Real Americans (by my definition), hoping to further our country. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly, but the broad brush stroke of whatever "elitism" means to you is not even close to being accurate.

I think someone with a technocratic frame of reference would say that it doesn't matter whether Global Warming has an anthropogenic or geogenic cause. We have some esstimate of the degree of greenhouse gas buildup, and we have some testable hypotheses as to how we can eliminate them. To the technocrat, and even to many nontechnocrats, eliminating that buildup would be just as worthwhile if the warming was Earth-caused.

I would also say that it's ironic that George Bush should pose as anti-elitist. The most elitist act of the post-Reagan era is his drive to eliminate the Estate Tax.

Here's the picture: Conrad Hilton has a great idea. He's going to build a chain of hotels. He does so, earns a lot of money and pays his taxes. He puts some of his aftertax income into building more hotels, hires construction workers to build them and desk clerks and maids to run them; and they pay their taxes.

If I may telescope a generation or two, Paris Hilton inherits some of that money. (Although her grandfather, Barron Hilton, is leaving most of his money to charity, there are enough other relatives who could leave her enough money for the tax to apply to her.) The Republicans want us to believe that assessing her inherited income on the same scale as the earnings of the desk clerks is "double taxation."

It's about time that someone is finally bravely standing up to face down the idiots! I am a teacher and it horrifies me the way in which our country has slipped into the state of mind in which anyone who speaks well or thinks beyond platitudes is considered an "elitist". It makes me sick.

Please urge everyone you know to keep speaking out about this and putting the numbskulls back into the closet. See, these idiots didn't used to vote until FOX News gave them talking points to argue back to their "liberal" friends.

I myself have never nor will ever dumb myself down. When someone becomes "annoyed" when I just don't stop at one point, I keep going.

We need to stop going along with the notion that "talking stupid" somehow makes you a "real person" with common sense. At least we made fun of Dan Quayle!

...I'd like to add one teensy piece to your most excellent and insightful post:

Marketing 101

The GOP, being the party of business, after all, understand how marketing works, and use it better than anyone. It's in their DNA.

Think about it- Marketers have succeeded in getting the sheep to buy mountains of useless shit they don't need and can't afford by managing to tie their already tenuous sense of self-worth to how many shiny baubles they own. That's how the whole country went broke while eating themselves stupid.

The whole enterprise works below the concious- the messages go straight to the Lizard Brain.

Now, most people with a functioning frontal cortex are, in varying degrees, able to distinguish naked manipulation from a presentation of actual substance and facts. Furthermore, people with a concience, in varying degrees, regard the marketer's profession with a certain amount of disdain and disgust- as an unsavory way to make a living.

Now you can see where that has gotten progressives- who, by definition, regularly excercise their frontal cortex AND concience. When I think of a progressive pol trying to sell their message using the tricks of modern marketing, I throw up in my mouth a little. What to do?

My wish for America is to see the return of the kinds of teachers I had in public school (Long Island, NY 1966 - 1979).

I remember how one in particular (an english teacher who also taught a video production class) attempted to illustrate how advertising works. He gave us an assignment to watch a television commercial- preferably one for a soft drink. Our task was to analyze it and report back everything that was said about the product, itself. The look on his face was priceless as we all came back the next day with empty sheets of paper, wondering if maybe we missed something.

My fondest memories of my greatest teachers are of the ways in which they challenged us to think for ourselves.

Does anyone do that anymore?

Sigh...