Not to stereotype, but it certainly did cross my mind that something like this would be normal in the Middle East where if you disagree strongly enough with somebody then it's okay to be violent towards them. Passion and emotion rules the day and rationality is afforded only cursory consideration.
I also fail to see how I'm being "zealous" in protecting the office of the President... I am neither in position nor the mindset to 'protect' anything. If you recall I voiced similar disapproval in the incident with Manning and the overzealous traffic cop. I firmly expect to be in the minority on this and that's fine with me... I don't advocate blind deference to customs and institutions, but at the end of a day a certain amount of decorum is both reflective of and central to organized (and civilized) societies.
I am no Bush fan, but I certainly agree that ratonality is an ingredient sorely lacking in human interactions accross the globe. Imagine if a man were to pelt a shoe at P-E Obama during one of his overseas missions. Some of his supporters would have a fit. Can't have it both ways.
However IMO you are being somewhat irrational yourself by associating an entire region with the actions of one man. After all is a shoe he pelt, not bullets
Fact is President elect Obama probably stands the same chance of being executed in the US that Bush does in the middle east. When the FBI arrested those neo nazi extremists for plotting to decapitate the heads of 88 or so children and quench their final bloodlust on Obama himself I had to struggle against those nagging thoughts in the back of my head that such evil was reflective of white America.
My point is that rationality is not only a tool for dissecting the actions of others but for checking our own internal passions, which we often like to pass off as rationalism. As I see it decorum is affordable; one of the spoils accorded to history's victors. Maybe that was Assylumseekers point. And it is certainly not limited to White nations. By many reports the Middle East pre-modern to Israel was noted for its cultural complexity.
No person, institution or nation has a monopoly on civilized behaviour. Some just so nasty (African conflicts) they make the others look good. As the saying goes "The veneer of civilization is one inch thick, man still thinks with club and prick."