Reply #18: I only want to respond to one thing:

[Political Heretic]

"Firstly, the way you characterized the former group, in such a derisive manner, while respectfully characterizing the latter group sets up your strawman. And please don't do like everyone else does when they are accused of setting up a strawman... deny it. A strawman is a fragile and often overly simplistic construct of the opponent's position in an argument meant to be easier to tear down than one that was fairly observed. Strawman. You have it."

If you want to talk about strawmen fine, but we're going to do it in an accurate way, rather than just throw around the term as a popular catch phrase.

There IS a group of people accurately characterized my my first description. If you do not find yourself in that group then thats good for you. There IS a group of people accurately characterized by the second description. If you don't find yourself in that group, that's fine. Then as Jon Stewart, quoting Simon said, "this song aint about you."

This is not a strawman argument, this is an argument in which you don't identify with the two groups presented. But they both exist. Group one treats group two exactly the same way they would those who are nothing but "Obama haters" - they make no distinction between responsible criticism or pure opposition. And I have personally seen more than a few posts from group one types failing to make that distinction in the last 24 hours.

So I posted.

If this doesn't apply to you, swell. But a strawman would be if I imply that this binary categorization I set up were the ONLY two "crowds" that existed. I did not. They do, however exist along with other crowds.