[Xantar]

What's gotten into you, Strangler? Now, apparently, a conservative can't support Obama because he thinks Obama would make a better president (or because he thinks McCain would make a worse one). To do so must mean that they have been blinded by Obama's cult of personality and lost their claim to being "rational" and "intellectual." At least according to you, and you apparently are the final arbiter of what constitutes rationality.

And I'm supposed to be the arrogant one on this forum?

Is there no room in your intellect to contemplate the idea that other people might think just as long and hard about a subject as you and then come to a different conclusion? Do you honestly believe that Chuck Hagel, Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell (to name a few) have so profoundly dislocated their reasoning that they've managed to make the wrong decision for the right reasons?

I'm no admirer of Bond or TheGame, as you well know. Hell, I used to call TheGame willfully blind and ignorant to his face, and I tend to think Bond's decision to vote Obama sort of gives the lie to his stated support for split government (which I never believed anyway, but that's another post). Believe me, I'm not stepping in here because those two are suddenly my best buddies. I'm posting this because of what I see as a disturbing tendency for you to turn everything into a ranting, personally-insulting tirade against everyone who disagrees with you.

Do you not understand how this contributes to the polarization of this forum? Why should anyone bother debating anything with you when they can be sure that at some point, you will probably belittle their intelligence, call them a coward/fool/socialist and probably imply that they just aren't thinking right? What kind of discourse do you believe this promotes? Why should anyone consider your ideas when they know that you're going to browbeat them until they see it your way, which you also seem to believe is the only objectively true and rational way?

Frankly, you sound like you're deathly afraid of something. What that might be I don't know, but it seems to me that you could benefit from Obama's example in one way if nothing else: the way to persuade people to your point of view is to listen to them seriously, acknowledge them and then try to find some common ground. Ok, you'll probably say that Obama hasn't lived up to that principle, but that doesn't make it any less valid an idea. If nothing else, even if you don't convince the person you're talking to, you'll have an impact on other people who are just watching from the sidelines.

Or you can just carry on the way you're doing. You may have noticed that you're now alone in a forum where several people used to fundamentally agree with you. Continue to alienate them and you'll quickly become the lonely man ranting in a corner whom everyone ignores. And frankly, that would be pretty sad. You're better than that.