MJG’s Political Blog » Reflections:
I do admit, I talk a lot of trash. I went to Grab The Mic because it expressed/s good Kerry/liberal point of views, and started to post comments on that site to have a ‘sort’ of rivalry between sites. However, instead of my trash talking rivalry idea, I got people personally upset at me.
Well, perhaps not everyone is into trash-talking, name-calling, and the like. I admit I called this guy a dweeb and a troll (he fits the Jargon File defintion to a T, even by his own admission) but it’s hard to react civilly to someone who writes broadsides about you on his website but never finds a good reason to sign his name to anything, anywhere. I’m not into anonymity, especially if you want to be taken seriously.
As for debate, his own site is just a bunch of “rip-and-read” press releases from the BC04 website or the GOP. Not much original thought there. That and falling back on “if you don’t agree with me you’re clueless and ignorant.” How insightful.
One of the things that’s becoming clear to me is that ideologues like this guy assume that since they take their leaders seriously and brook no debate or dissent, that the other side is just as blinkered.
Sadly, I’m slow to realize this, but it has always been one the truisms about the liberal vs conservative ideology: liberals argue amongst themselves, bicker, and in general look like anything but a political party. Conservatives, by contrast, favor discipline first and foremost: internal debate is muted and outward dissent is forbidden.
Underlying this is the reason, perhaps, why one gets involved in politics in the first place: for progress or for power. Not for nothing are liberals called progressives, and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that conservatives are more interested in power than policy.
So Mark J. Graham (hmm, Google finds someone by that name in Springfield OH: wonder if it’s him?), otherwise known as MJG, doesn’t want to debate unless it’s on his terms, where he can accuse people of spinning or direct his little friends to visit websites he hangs out in for “trash talking.” And evidently one or more of them decided to pollute my logs with a couple of hundred bogus requests, and then talk about my comments on it (sadly, their IPs were blocked by then, so they may not have seen it). He may not have asked them to do it: I would never claim that, but perhaps some of his dimmer contemporaries mistook his playful sense of humor as real animus. I don’t much care.
It’s not he’ll be missed. And if any his vast readership links through to me, they’ll be referred to MoveOn.org [heh heh].