I'll take Jerry's word for it that, behind the mask ** puts on here, there is something a lot better. But I feel that whoever it is would do better to abandon that mask and that persona and come back in with a fresh name, and make a fresh start.

For all but a tiny number of people, here on the Mudcat, and out in the outer world, what unites us is far more important than what divides us. It's only when we recognise that, and act according to it that we can even begin to explore the disagreements we have.

What bring us here in the first place, most of us anyway, is a love for certain types of music, and more than that, because love for folk music isn't just about the music as such, it has to be grounded in a certain attitude of mind towards the way music comes out of ordinary people.

It seems to me that, beneath the differences, especially the political differences, there is something which we tend to share, which we don't necessarily share with a lot of the people with whom we find ourselves aligned politically.

Looking at the issues which have dominated things a lot recently, I suspect that, a lot of the time, when people here despise Bush, they are despising him for a lot of the same reason other people dspise Kerry, and vice versa. If we're against the war, at some level it's for the very same kind of reasons other people are for the war.

And that means when we battle it out, it should be done with respect for the people we find oursleves at odds with, and that rules out certain types of insult - and when people ignore those kinds of limits, the disagreements turn into the kind of divisiveness tat wounds and damages individuals and the community.

It especially damages the individuals who fall into that trap, but it is catching, and every now and again it flares up in a way that really hurts. Good people have stopped visiting becuase they feel it just gives them a nasty taste in the mouth.

Somehow it always seems to get back after a little time, because there really are very few genuinely nasty people around. And teh amazing thing about the Mudcat is how much eagerness to help there is among us, which shows itself in so many ways. Except that isn't really amazing, because that's what most people are really like anyway.

I think the Mudcat allows us to be a bit more like we really are than the big world does. In some cases that's a chance to act nasty - and that's certainly how it looks on a lot of forums I've dropped in on - but I hope even then it's mostly just an act they'll get tired of.