“Someone on the internet is wrong!”

Uncategorized

   


whoops you did it again

you continue to respond to the caricatures dancing around in your head instead of external reality. More proof: My understanding of the label “redneck” is not someone who has a love of cops, quite the opposite.  I was not using labels at all and I certainly can’t understand how you could think I’d project the redneck label on to you. I actually attach a lot of anti-authoritarian qualities to the label “redneck.” Apparently you were responding to “the voices” and not me. You’ve done another double backflip projection with faulty premises thrown in as a flourish.  what a mess, I’m done.

There it is in all its disgusted hostile glory: a reply I wrote but never posted. The sad online version of a letter never sent.

I’m glad I never posted it. I had noticed while reading the thread attached to  Jack McCullough’s “You’re under arrest” that one member was making it very difficult to stay focussed on the facts of the case by creating hypotheticals, and questioning the veracity of undisputed facts. I called him on it in a very straightforward manner. He replied, I shot back with some snark, he got long winded and obnoxious, I wrote the above, thought better of it, and walked away with my head held high. Plenty of other members continued to school him and eventually the thread calmed down.

A conversation I had with Bill Simmon helped me walk away from the keyboard. Here he discusses a dilemma of political blogging: either it can become a like-minded echo chamber, or a futile effort to persuade the unpersuadable. We begin by discussing Seven Day’s designation of his candleblog as “non-political,” some background on the daysies reader’s pick awards, political blogging, a shout out to Dohiyi Mir.  Then he shares a bit on how he and Steve Benen determine content for their radio and online show Poli Sci-Fi Radio. This segment closes out with a consideration of the Nerd Life.

As Green Mountain Daily gets more popular, it seems that we are experiencing an increase in antagonistic posters. I generally try not get involved with the nattering nabobs of negativism and instead offer support to commenters I agree with. But sometimes I get pulled into that “someone on the internet is wrong!” compulsion and tend to feel like “why’d I waste my time” afterwards. I’m impressed with how members here can engage the hostility dispassionately, or with humor, or with relentless debate. GMD has a strong and just community police squad and it helps maintain the integrity and legitimacy of this place as a lefty forum. So I understand the need to school a fool. But I’d still like to hear about how people deal with that “someone on the internet is wrong!” feeling, maybe some personal guidelines or philosophy on engaging antagonistic commenters. It is clear that people approach the question from many angles, and that is part of why this place gets so lively.

Thoughts?

10 thoughts on ““Someone on the internet is wrong!””

  1. let someone else have it unless you have something to add that has not already been said.

  2. If I join in it is typically because the person spewing factual misunderestimations is giving me a shot at adding something to a post that I think would be worthwhile on its own.  Not a hard and fast rule, but generally where I find myself.

    I do keep in mind the advice of my favorite muse who correctly identifies just who it is we mean when we refer to “Conservative Republican.” In discussing the current GOP/Media/wingnuttasphere fixation on birthing and health care, this is the mindset & attitude of our modern GOP/conservative/McCain-Bush voter:

    Which brings us to the present day, idiocy like the Conservative birther twaddle, and the “debate” over health care.

    Republicans want to kill health care reform dead — regardless of the scale of the crisis or the timidity of the Administration’s proposal — not because they know enough about the subject to intelligently rub two adverbs together about it (beyond whatever ridiculous lies and demagogy their corporate puppeteers pay them to parrot on any given day) but because it offers them their first, early-inning opportunity to “break” and destroy Barack Obama.

    And, as always, fuck the cost, because hey, they’ve already got their gold-plated evil gummint supported health care, and if you were stupid enough to be born poor, or lose a job, or have your DNA turn against you, or fall down in the shower, or trip over a crack, or have your kid get sick at just the wrong time, or didn’t take enough accounting and pre-law to fully understand the acres of legal gibberish on page 322 of your insurance policy, or just don’t have the time and energy to fight an army of lawyers who get paid by the hour to screw you, it’s your own damn fault. Loser.

    And so the three, central realities around which the entire political and media class orbit continue to be these:

       1. On issue after issue, the reason things get and stay so completely broken in this country is that Republicans can only get ahead in the Modern GOP by doing the political equivalent of standing on our cultural overpasses and lobbing cinderblocks into rush hour traffic.

       2. The more havoc Republicans wreak, the more their base rewards them because the GOP is now mostly made up of zealot Christopaths, bigots, moral imbeciles, gun nuts and the generally cactus-fuck-crazy scum of the nation.

    (do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, –cl)

       3. Every major media outlet knows the minute they acknowledge the incredibly dangerous reality that 1/3 of the American electorate are zealot Christopaths, bigots, moral imbeciles, gun nuts and the generally cactus-fuck-crazy scum of the nation – and that they are not evenly or randomly distributed across the political spectrum, but instead have been carefully and deliberate recruited en masse by the Right for the last 30 years – they will instantly lose millions of readers, listeners and viewers – along with the billions of dollars in ad revenue that come with them – and will instead be subjected to an around-the-clock cry for their blood by the orc armies of the Right that would make the Kill Bill havoc of the anti-Clinton crusade look like a friendly round of nude Stratego.

    I am not trying to bring those folks around to my point of view. It’s a fool’s errand.

    The typical conservative is a felon enabling amoral fear driven sheep. To the extent they raise some specious bullshit that allows me to advance additional arguments or add additional perspective to an issue for the benefit of the reality based community, I’ll do that.  My attitude is that I’ll respond to the fear.hate.authoritarian fetish inspired balderdash of our typical late-model U.S. conservative if it might otherwise add value to the reality based or help me better develop my own advocacy (i.e. the punching bag), short of that, however, pass.  

  3. This is a private site, not a public service, and I realize that.  As such there is a particular viewpoint expressed and in several areas I agree with that viewpoint or gain something from the discussion, which is why I voluntarily read it regularly.  Generally I refrain from posting unless I see something that I believe to be truly misguided or just plain wrong.  My “long winded and obnoxious” reply was to tell you not to assume the totality of my opinions based on one opinion or a small sample of opinions in which we disagree. While perhaps you don’t believe you did, look at the thread in its entirety, or this thread for that matter, and you discover that based on disagreeing on this issue apparently I am a conservative Republican and a “felon enabling amoral fear driven sheep”.   Now as I said, I realize this is a private site.  If I went into a hard right site and argued that the death penalty is an abomination and universal health care an obligation of the government I could reasonably expect to be labeled and crucified.  The problem as I see it is that no matter how you insist to abhor the Republican “cactus-fuck-crazy scum of the nation” ideas, you are identical twins when it comes to methods and insistence upon rigid ideological purity.  Nibbling around the edges of an idea is allowed; (“how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”), but questioning a core belief is not (“there are no angels”).  And before anyone reminds me; yes this is a self selecting society and I am always perfectly free to leave, start my own blog, or just generally go hump myself.  I choose not to because while I would avoid some frustration I would also miss out on some pieces that I find interesting.

  5. One would be that someone with a uniform and a gun can’t count on us for obedience and obsequiousness if he swaggers into our home for no good reason, and we probably wouldn’t throw roses at his feet pretending he was a liberator if his occupying army showed up on our streets.

Comments are closed.