Well, now that really bad things are going on,
My 10 years of blogging have proven that point back to me time and time again. Its been especially disheartening to watch the decline of so-called “front-running” milblogs become the kind of conservative cesspool that the Breitbart enterprise is known for. Ellen Pao is right to be jumping ship over at Reddit:
The Internet started as a bastion for free expression. It encouraged broad engagement and a diversity of ideas. Over time, however, that openness has enabled the harassment of people for their views, experiences, appearances or demographic backgrounds. Balancing free expression with privacy and the protection of participants has always been a challenge for open-content platforms on the Internet. But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning.
My own experience validates that, I can assure you. I like to think its been reasonably ok over here at my little place but we have had our run-ins with moron set. It’s been nothing to compare with some of the displays of lunacy that we have seen elsewhere though.
Take the tragic events of this weekend. Charles Pierce over at Esquire magazine, a real magazine with real editors and management, (something Tom Johnson has probably never had to deal with more on that later), published a pretty reasoned piece on the shootings in Chattanooga. Pierce pointed out quite correctly that whatever the motive of the shooter, the insanely easy effort required to get guns in the United States did not help matters much.
Because he wrote eloquently and did not immediately jump in the cesspool of hatred, all the demons came swarming out of hell.
As a regular reader at his place, I can assure you that the comments you see-especially in the last day are not typical of the kind of discussion that normally goes on at his place. There is a reason for that. In the general atmosphere of insanity that is prevailing in America after the horrific events in Chattanooga, it seems a certain percentage of our citizenry takes offense if you say anything but, “Kill Muslims! Kill more Muslims! Arms for every citizen”
And that is where a stellar specimen of humanity such as Tom Johnson comes in.
Don’t stay too long over there-just reading the comments will make you despair of humanity or the fact that so many of my fellow citizens of the land of my birth are really that f*cking stupid.
He did accomplish his goal though. If you follow the link over to the Esquire piece you will see the hoards of really useless and stupid people commenting in a variety of useless and stupid ways. As Charles Pierce would say, “These people really are more people”. For a minute there, I thought I had clicked the wrong link and had actually stumbled onto the useless idiots who write at The Federalist.
(When it comes to an overall level of douchebaggery, the folks at The Federalist are hard to beat. They take the conservative culture of victimhood to a whole new level. They, support Scott Walker after all-which is essentially the same as supporting Satan himself).
But the simple truth is that it gets worse. One cannot have a dissenting viewpoint anymore-and you can be certain that no one, even if they disagree with you will talk about the specifics of an issue. If there is one legacy of Fox News and its tenure during the 21st Century, that is it. You are not even allowed to get angry at them anymore-although the President did try:
The President had the correct response to Major Garrett. “That’s nonsense and you should know better!”
One reason I have not been writing as much as I used to, is my overall level of disgust at my fellow citizens who should know better but throw themselves willy-nilly into the lanes of stupidity. It’s barely been 48 hours since the horrific events in Chattanooga, and the swill that passes for commentary on the internet is, to put it honestly, appalling. I already showed you some from the Town Hall Harlot, but actually if you peruse either Facebook or Twitter, it is even worse. The level of ignorance and stupidity in the land of my birth is appalling. Digby provides some really bad examples for all the rest of us to see.
@AnnCoulter KILL THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— Leroy Shitslinger (@LeroyShitslinge) July 16, 2015
As Digby points out, “Sadly, that thinking represents a majority of the Republican Party.“
And indeed it does. She then goes on to point out an annoying little fact that bears repeating just like Pierce did:
If we were to compare our most recent mass murders (we have so many) and the reactions to them, ask yourself whether or not anyone was clamoring to punish Dylan Roof’s family. Or round up all the white supremacists and put them in jail. No, there was a clamoring among some Americans to pull down the confederate flag from official buildings. And it’s astonishing, when you think about it, that such a flag was even flying or that people were defending it — the same people, no doubt, who are clamoring for this family to be deported (or worse.)
I noticed that while we don’t know at this point the motives of the Chattanooga shooter, it’s crystal clear what Dylan Roof’s were — to start a race war. And yet the media is having no trouble calling Chattanooga suspected terrorism. The head of the FBI says he’s just not sure about Dylan Roof. It seems too obvious now, if it didn’t before, that the term is only applied to Muslims.
Charlie Pierce has it right — this is about America and our love affair with violence. I had been under the impression that the right had made its peace with that as the price we pay for the freedom to be armed to the teeth at all times. But that’s not true. They are very philosophical about the consequence of violence when it’s perpetrated by white people, to be sure. It’s just a fact of life like summer storms and earthquakes. But they get very, very angry when a racial or ethnic minority does it. There’s some sick white privilege for you.
This is your democracy America. Enjoy it while you still can.