> Perhaps only the loudest, craziest and least
> emotionally mature feel a compelling need to patrol
> the planet's blogs and chat forums in search of people
> besmirching the good name of their beloved nation
> state. Perhaps many more people couldn't care less
> and instead of visiting iraqwar.ru et. al. to, once
> again, call that guy in Finland a "wingnut", spend
> time with friends and family, watch tv, play computer
> games, worry about their marriages and children and
> how they're going to make the mortgage/rent...
That crossed my mind too - but still, why does the US have a larger share of such wingnuts. In other words, where are the wingnuts from Russia? I can see that language can be a barrier to some of them, but that is not the case for Canada, the UK, Australia, or NZ.
Stated differently, the phenomenon under investigation does not indicate that most US-sers are wingnuts - that would be a fallacious conclusion indeed. But it certainly can indicate that the US has a larger population of wingnuts than other English speaking countries do. Or perhaps that the US wingnuts feel more compelled to "patrol the planet's blogs" than wingnuts elsewhere.
I noted a similar tendency in one study conducted by the UCSC criminologist Dane Archer who studied British and US teenagers. The responses to his survey provided by the US-ers contained much more self-righteous violence and gore than those coming from the other side of the pond.
Wojtek