I, too, have found that most people are perfectly normal when I meet them. They have normal lives and are worried about the same sort of things the rest of us are worried about. I have to admit, however, that when I find out that someone voted for the George Bush, and by extension his war and his other theocratic and sexually perverted policies, I have a hard time not feeling pretty intolerant toward them. I mean, really, how could anyone be so bloodthirsty as to vote for an international bully/terrorist like George Bush? How is it that so many people are willing to vote to impose their religious values on other folks in a country that prides itself of religous freedom?

I used to hear lots of conservatives saying that the left was offensive because we kept calling them stupid. But when I see things like "Creationism" being put forward as real science, and the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi and Afghan civilians passed off with a shrug as the natural result of the 3400 killed on 9/11, and gay bashing successfully used as a tool to win an election, and hundreds of thousands of Americans still believing that Iraq bombed the World Trade Center and that we found WMDs there when we invaded, it's hard to not think that most of the people in the US really are pretty stupid.

They may be perfectly nice folks with perfectly normal real-world concerns, but they are also incredibly and dangerously ignorant and stupid.

John Peekstok