That thread is pretty much an indication of everything that's wrong with Bitcoin's PR, and with these forums specifically.

I know of at least three small businesses that entertained the idea of accepting Bitcoin, until they looked at the political discussions on these forums. It's off-putting to many real business owners to read what people say here. They don't want to be associated with hard-libertarianism, tax evading or government conspiracy nuts. It's almost turned me off a few times myself - I don't want people to think I'm only associated with it to avoid paying taxes, I'm only associated with it because it's a cool technology and a cool experiment in human trust.

I was having a discussion with a fellow on IRC a few weeks back, because he's a full-tilt liberal and I'm a moderate with slightly-libertarian economic leanings... he brought up about how misogyny is so prevalent in the libertarian camp, and that thread just provided ample ammunition for his case. "I don't often give my respect to whores" indeed.

Maybe  it's time we brought back the Bitcoin PR thread and really put some work into educating people on this forum, because honestly I feel like we're driving real small businesses away with a lot of the bullshit here. It's hard enough to attract them anyway, we don't need to be pushing away everyone who's not an anacho-capitalist.

This forum is so full of people who want to believe with all their heart that Bitcoin can work (which is a good thing) that they automatically turn into yes-men for anything remotely Bitcoin related. I bet I could write a thread about a business to FedEx entire cars piece by piece for Bitcoins and I'd have more people telling me it could work than not - it's that bad. Anyone talking bad about my idea is automatically ousted by the community as a troll and we're on a freight-train of bullshit off into unknown territory while looking at a map that says "destination: profit".

Look at that thread: that's the sort of thing people from outside these forums are linking to, so that's how people who haven't heard of Bitcoins are seeing the project. Don't worry about the US government sabotaging Bitcoin, we're doing an awesome fuckin' job of that ourselves and it's not costing them a cent.