avocadia: Why?: Why? Why do they do this? What does it say about us as a people, as a civilisation, that we are constantly doing this? Depictions of those we disagree with as traitors, as evil, as nazis. Those that disagree with the course of action are fifth columnists?

Is it that we must dehumanise our political opponents because we are cowards? Are we too afraid to interact with them for fear that our own positions will be exposed as flawed? Or are we simply so certain we are correct that disagreement is painful to us. What else can compel us to the invective displayed by Piers and his ilk, and lets face it, anybody who has ever used the abbreviation RWDB.

I know I have been trolled ,Cam, but if this is the yardstick, then I am trolled almost every time I open a political blog. My wife wants to know why I am voting for the Shooters Party, a swith from my lesser of two evils voting pattern of the last half-a-dozen years. Because I am Mercutio, I tell her. A plague on both their houses. I hope to see the end of LP as much as I do of Tim Blair.

cam: The WaPo trolled me on its front page today: Its editorial headlines made out that the population of Nth Virginia has been living in fear since the attacks on the Pentagon. Which is obviously not true. I have several anecdotal examples disproving it. Just to make sure you got the point they had a picture of a mother with her two children in bed reading nighttime books and the quote underneath; \"but she feels less safe, \'I think of how to prepare myself, how to prepare my family\'\"

That nearly inspired a rant. Usually the paper only trolls me on the op-ed pages, but they have moved to the front page now.

I was in a local Border\'s book store the other day and wandered through the political section. The titles were all like, \"How to kill a liberal and get away with it.\" or \"Taking a chainsaw to a conservative body and hiding it\". It was pretty disheartening really.

Except, buried in amongst them were Thomas Paine\'s \"The Rights of Man\" and Hamilton/Madison\'s \"Federalist Papers\". So there is hope.

For all the recent focus on history, our current politicians are not conservatives or liberals, they are trying to survive on fear and feelgood. They are probably good-eggs among them, but the constant campaign style which preys on fears and uncertainty appears dominant. Part of that seems to be demonising and sub-humanising your opponent(s) as traitors to their country and culture.

I saw an article on ABC News the other day that had links to more information. Keelty said we are more safe since Sept 11th, while Beazley said we are less safe. One of them must be wrong but there was no critical reporting in either of the articles, just he said, she said.

cam

Guy: It\'s only natural: It is a rare proponent of any argument, I think, that stops themselves from denigrating their intellectual opposition to argue their case. When we argue we want to win. When basic logic or emotion-free arguments fail to get through to people, it is only natural to try the illogical or emotional.

I don\'t think humans cope particularly well in a world of millions of conflicting partial truths.