There are certainly times when people in Seattle act exactly like you are describing here, and I just need to shake my head in wonder. A good example is when anyone brings up the topic of Texas. Almost without fail, people will tend to groan, and start talking about broad stereotypes that inevitably include conservatives with big Stetson hats and bigger belt buckles. (Except if you bring up Austin, that is.) While I certainly don’t mind poking a bit of fun at my friend Dave (who is originally from Texas), this goes well beyond that. Considering that this is seen as a socially “progressive” area, I am amazed that people are acutally so closed-minded and somewhat hypocritical.

And yes, the Bush-bashing here is constant. People were throwing rotten fruit at posters of Bush et al., and passing out “Send Bush to Mars” bumper stickers at the Fremont Fair yesterday. While I don’t necessarily disagree with some of their reasons, it does tend to get a little tiring after a while.

But both liberals and conservatives are prone to this, and I’ve been in plenty of situations before where I’ve had to deal with stupid conservative statements as well as some stupid liberal ones. I can’t count the number of times that I have had to bite my tongue when people have made very unsubstantiated and unfair comments about Bill Clinton, or about gay marriage, or whatever. And while these articles seem to be horrified that people are raging on about Bush’s motives in Iraq, it doesn’t seem like that same author would be as up in arms about my friend’s opinion that Hillary Clinton is a murderer.

So my perspective is that there are a lot of people that are really lacking in tact and respect across the ideological spectrum. As much as the authors that you point out would like to think that they are the poor conservatives that are being persecuted by ignorant liberals, this type of behavior goes on *everywhere*. But what can you do? It just seems like the only option for sane people is to judge people more on their own personality and character than their political party, and be open-minded about differences in these kinds of beliefs. As much as we’d like to think that politics are everything, it can really cloud a lot of the issues, and prevent us from seeing what’s important.