Do you also feel that way about people who attend and support Tea Party rallies?
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I have an opinion on it so I'm gonna go ahead and jump in.
To answer your question, yes, I do feel that way about people who attend Tea Party rallies. And about people who consider themselves anarchists, and about socialists, and about Navy vets (I'm Army), and about WVU grads (I'm Rutgers), and about... well, you get the idea.
I have friends, real life friends, who come from all kinds of different backgrounds, subscribe to different ideologies, attend all kinds of different churches, vote differently than I do, support "the war" or don't support "the war", share hobbies with me and even some who think my hobbies are downright ridiculous.
I'm exposed to people in my daily life (coworkers, acquaintances, people I just happen to run into on the street or in the grocery store or at my kid's Little League games, etc...) who broaden that circle I travel in expotentially.
I can't think of any time that I've verbally attacked any of them in the manner that we commonly see on the Internet (I've heard it called "flaming").
Beyond that, I've never just seen it spontaneously and randomly happen between two other people, so I know that y'all aren't doing it either.
I've never seen a conservative Marine Corp. veteran Tea Partier thoroughly tongue-lash a teenager in a "Che" Guevara tee-shirt, and likewise I've never seen a liberal hemp-wearing hippy 99%er start calling someone names because he drove up in a car that had a "Bush/Cheney 2004" sticker on the bumper.
That said, MANY folks online would have no compunction whatsoever about running their mouth like they're afflicted with Tourette Syndrome if they saw that someone else had a "Che" Guevara or "Bush/Cheney 2004" avatar or sig pic.
The reason people act like douchebags on the Internet is because there are no (what I've heard described as) "geographically induced consequences".
You're anonymous on the Internet, you're likely 1000 miles away from the person you're insulting, and your childish behavior is never going to come back to you (either from the target of your insulting comment punching you in the face, or your wife slapping you upside the head, or from your boss firing you, or from the neighbors thinking you're an a$$hole, or whatever).
People, essentially, are animals, and they behave with whatever degree of civility only because they've been acculturated to do so. Take away society, or change the rules of society (such that being a douchebag is accepted), and that veneer of civility falls away pretty quickly.
Unless, of course, you make a concerted effort to not behave like savage just because you can.
You (YOU) would never consider going off on someone and calling them a pinko-liberal-pu$$y or a jackbooted-racist-facist in the office because they had an opinion different than your own.
Pretty simple to not do it on the Internet if you put your mind to it, but many people don't have the self control to hold themselves to a higher standard.
(And look, I know that we ALL slip up sometimes. But there's a difference between slipping up sometimes and being "that guy" who everyone KNOWS is gonna jump in with some smarta$$, punk comment every time he sticks hiss head in a thread. I'm talking about the latter here.)