Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Nah. It's the message.

Enema of the people
ER — (archived)

Your famous research is a smokescreen to cover what are essentially personal attacks, not against individuals per se, but against those you see as as your ideological enemies: the entire class of them, even though you claim "there are no classes". Your little bombs on global warming and the sedition of the climatologists, the Iraqi debacle and its cowards, appeasers and traitors, the perfidy of the press and Hollywood, the deterioration of the economy and the social fabric and the liberal-to-be-slammed du jour, usually initiate a thread, they are deliberately designed to provoke controversy and start a fight, not to clarify a position or defend against attack. As we have seen, when the footnotes are actually followed up, they usually lead to the same alternative media and the usual chattering jackals. But that's neither here nor there. You start these fights TB, the fact most of us don't want to fight is meaningless and irrelevant to you. No, I take that back. It's what you're counting on. You will not be denied your satisfaction. It's bad manners, not good scholarship, I object to.

But no matter how you footnote your provocations, your methods are the same as the other horsemen, exploiting divisiveness and conflict, humiliation and insult in an attempt to monopolize the discussion and shift it into a purely political catfight that will only leave political hacks and bullies to continue the dialogue. There are others on the Right here with your views who do not rely on these shameful tactics. It is this cynically planned and deliberately engineered Rovian conflict that has paralyzed this country into a helpless entity incapable of hammering out any compromise to meet the challenges it faces and has condemned us to endless bickering and partisanship. It may be the downfall of this nation yet, worse than any mistaken policy either side could ever promote. And you have played your part to bring this conflict here to a board supposedly dedicated to science. Shame. If you cannot see this, then there is nothing further I can say to you. But you don't need me, do you? You've got the Good, the Bad and the Ugly riding in the Gang of Four. Aren't you proud of them?

My time here in the Zone has convinced me that the single most dangerous trend in modern American life is the malignant political rhetoric of some (but not all, by any means) sectors of the Right Wing; an infection now spreading to other parts of the political spectrum as well. Can you deny Keith Olbermann and his ilk are just a direct response to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and their comrades? Can you imagine anyone dignifying these toxic witless demagogues as "alternative media"? Is this your alternative to the "elite eastern main stream media liberal establishment"?

I am as moderate a liberal as you're likely to find anywhere, one who's views often overlap substantially with yours. Did it ever occur to you that if you're alienating and insulting me then the chances of you meeting anyone else half-way, or of persuading anyone to your position are going nowhere? Or is persuasion and agreement, as I strongly suspect, irrelevant to you? Do you really want to champion your views and seek allies on the other side, or are you just trying to drive off and humiliate your opponents?

It is not the message I hate, it is the humiliating put-down, the condescending sneer, the patronizing tone. It is what the founding fathers called "factionalism". They too were men of bitterly conflicting political views, but they agreed on the disastrous potential of this lack of fundamental respect for one's opponents. It is ironic that those most eager to claim their legacy seem to be the ones most likely to forget their most valuable gift to us: the civility of political discourse.

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