Ann Coulter and the like simply dismiss everything on the left as aligned with an evil to be eradicated. They're not interested in debate, tolerance, truth ostensbily emerging from an agonistic public life. Thus, they feel no need to pretend to respect their opponents.
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Years ago, when I was younger and more foolish, I tried to debate with-- via the comments section -- the participants in a popular right-wing blog.
One day, the blogger posted an entry (what seemed at the time to be about the billioneth example of this topic) about how utterly useless, clueless, traitorous, foul smelling and generally awful liberals were.
I posted a comment pointing out that since about half the US population seemed to identify, to one extent or another, with various, traditionally 'liberal' ideas she was saying that tens of millions of her fellow citizens were too stupid to live.
The replies were instructive ranging from 'don't you know sarcasm when you read it asshat?' to 'yes, that's right, all liberals should be arrested.' Most leaned towards the 'guards, seize them!' side of the aisle.
I tried for a time to rationally argue this out but it soon became exhaustingly clear my debating adversaries were only interested in the complete disappearance of competition -- if only by getting them to shut up (though some seemed eager, at least behind the safety of a keyboard, to advocate all sorts of violence).
Because I don't listen to talk radio where, I'm told, this 'destroy all monsters!' style of debate by assault is common, I was completely unprepared for the bizarrely free-floating anger I encountered.
I wondered: why are a bunch of smacked asses with enough time and capital to chat on the net angry about the simple existence of people who disagree with them politically? There was zero tolerance for any deviation.
On the surface this seems like a trivial question but I think we're beginning -- slowly -- to come to grips with the very profound fact that millions of Americans are extraordinarily angry. I suspect they're angry because their lives suck IN SPITE OF THE FACT they're supposed to be the citizens of the mightiest, most advanced, freest, most splendid portion of old Earth.
How to explain your sucky situation if you're trying your best, live in the best place and reportedly have access to the best of everything?
A while ago someone (Doug I think) posted an essay by Zizek in which he stated that Nazism (it wouldn't be an Internet discussion unless the Nazis raised their helmeted heads) was a destructive response to a legitimate lament. That is, the German working class of the 1920's and 30's, impoverished and alienated, longed for lost community. The Nazis, by providing an ersatz family, filled this need in a bloody fashion.
As I recall, a predicatable hue and cry arose that Zizek was apologizing for Nazism but I believe I understand his meaning which is that the left needs to deal with the real pain their right-wing opponents are falsely addressing and harnessing for their own ends.
A similar analysis can be applied to Islamic fundamentalism and the jihadist response to imperialism: yes, your complaints are often legitimate, but your methods and beliefs to address those complaints are often reprehensible.
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It may be there's a component of human character that makes it easier to rally people around the negative (external enemies, strength against weakness, virtue against debauchery, other oppositional pairs) instead of the story of building an egalitarian future the left often presents.
To put it another way...
Deceased American comic Sam Kinnison used to tell a joke about sitting at home, watching televised images of starving Africans: "you see this? he'd gesture, as if he was talking to a clueless Sundanese, "it's sand." "You know what it'll be in the future? Still sand. You want to eat? Move!!!"
The audience would howl. I used to wonder why people (including some of my young, dumb and full of cum friends) believed that the problem of hunger was the result of the afflicted being too stupid to realize they were living on non arable land. Killer jokes depend upon audience buy-in of their core concepts. Why was this cruel joke so funny to so many?
I discovered it was simply easier for many to believe starvation to be the result of cultural, racial and/or personal negatives that kept the starving from 'bettering themselves'. It was easier, in short, to believe the worst (they're stupid) rather than investigate the full situation. Investigation is often very hard. Dismissal is always easy.
Sam could kill with this joke because his audience already believed, at some level, that starving people were probably not doing enough to save themselves.
The negation of their basic human competence was already established in the audience's mind before he said a word.
This is the sort of reflex the right-wing can almost effortlessly exploit once the communication apparatus is in place. Which, of course, it is.
.d.
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