Ted Ralls had a good opinion piece yesterday.

He pretty much outlined what I want:

In an ideal world, Americans of every political stripe would enjoy a forum to discuss the issues of the day. In an ideal world, communists and conservatives and militiamen and socialists and centrists and Christianists and atheists and libertarians and anarchists would all get the chance to express their opinions and propose changes in law and policy in the media as well as the corridors of power. In an ideal world, vigorous debate would never degenerate into name-calling or threats. In an ideal world, a losing political party would play the role of the loyal opposition as it plotted its return to power. In an ideal world, an imaginative, freewheeling, independent media would cast a wide net, broadening our national dialogue to include the previously disenfranchised.

His vision of the real world is a little more harsh than I would admit to (witness the ability of congress to pretty much stop all of Bush's judicial appointments, the upcoming defeat of the FMA, etc)...

In the real world, however, a narrow subset of right-wing conservatives controls the Supreme Court, White House, Congress and most state legislatures. In the real world, no American to the left of John McCain--including John McCain--has a chance to propose a law and see it signed into law. In the real world, newspapers, magazines, radio and television outlets are owned by a shrinking pool of conservative corporations motivated by short-term profits and cozy ties to the right-wingers who run the government. In the real world, the Democratic Party has given up hope of recapturing either the House or the Senate, and Democratic politicians vote along with the Republicans. In the real world, anyone who questions the president's justifications for starting wars, or questions whether he even has the right to call himself "president," should expect to be insulted and ridiculed, blackballed, smeared as a traitor and threatened with death by conservative commentators.

...but it does help explain the shrill tone of the opposition.