House of Eratosthenes

I don’t participate in threads underneath my cross-posting at Right Wing News, because I notice when you get what I refer to as the “is-not-is-too” effect — and I expect this is a term I need not define — it makes the comment thread explode. That’s a legitimate thing to have happen over at a place like here, a “some guy’s blog” blog. I’m really not happy with encouraging it anywhere else.

But certain things demand a response. And I thought this was completely awesome.

I cross-posted my thoughts about how conservatives disagree with liberals & how liberals disagree with conservatives; my point being that the ways & means of disagreement are not the same, it’s an asymmetrical divide. These people we nowadays call “liberals,” according to the evidence that has come to my senses, seem to have a worldview built around some folks belonging & other folks not. And as you endeavor to answer the obvious question “belonging to what, exactly?” every answer you get back, that stands up to scrutiny, is sinister.

They can accept some ideas and not others. They won’t tolerate the idea of anyone walking around thinking a thought that is sacrilegious, but at some point during a conflict they manage to make their peace with the idea that you’ve got a wrong thought — in fact, invariably, pronounce that all of your thoughts are wrong. And this is just fine. There is a spooky smug satisfaction in their aggressively non-threatening faces, whereas just minutes before they were getting all riled up that anybody anywhere might be disagreeing with them about something. See, they’re confused about the goal. They don’t know what it is they want: 1) All persons and things in existence must agree with them; 2) All persons and things that disagree with them, must be marked that way; 3) All such persons and things in disagreement must be walled off, and made ineffectual. They shift rather breezily among these, it seems to me, because they’re not thinking clearly.

That, or there’s some Armageddon ahead. Some sort of secularist “rapture.” Those of us who disagree with liberals and are wrong, will never be made right — and that is quite okay. How come that is, is my question. They still hunger for their perfect paradise full of people with clean thoughts, free of contamination of & by us knuckle-draggers who believe scores should be kept in competitive school games, and Sarah did a good thing by keeping Trig. We’re allowed to go on thinking that, and things are still alright — even though they plainly don’t have the maturity to actually accept this. The implications are a little ominous.

Anyway. Huck Upchuck seems to me to be a somewhat cerebral liberal. Suffering all of the popular maladies that interfere with clear-headed thinking, but still possessing some measure of grace in an ability to recognize good manners in others who don’t agree with him about every little thing. This shows some capacity for thinking as an individual, so I’ll probably plug him into the blogroll if it seems like the right thing to do.

But the myopia revealed in this comment was & is stupefying, I say:

Freeberg: I hope you’re paying attention to this thread, because down in the nitty gritty of it you can find this from The Dick Nixon, directed at me:

Considering Nixon despises each and everyone of you liberal POS’s who enabled The Obamateur to fuck the country up, Nixon could really care less about

1. Your opinion.
2. your opinion.
and 3. your opinion.

We should have left you banned.

I hope you take note, and think to revisit your thesis. After all, you did write this:

It’s about hate, too. How many conservatives do you know who would like to put Barack Obama and Joe Biden in a big iron pot, fill it with oil, light a fire under it and watch ’em cook? Heard a lot of that kind of hate lately? Me neither.

I think The Dick Nixon’s comments qualify, don’t you?

Eh…nope.

Frankly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I had a co-worker in an office who would argue things this way. There is A and there is B. I have discerned common attributes between A and B, and from these I have determined A and B are exactly the same. Since A and B are exactly the same it invalidates whatever point of yours I am seeking to attack…

And so, he saw no difference whatsoever between the Islamic radicals who attacked us on 9/11, and Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Except, of course, that McVeigh was white! So I must be a racist for wanting to do something about these other people, and the only way I could ever redeem myself was to go after McVeigh with the same level of energy and ambition, or something.

But, uh, McVeigh was already dead said I. This somehow didn’t seem to matter. It was a difference between A and B, and all differences between A & B were being shunted aside.

Huck, I really do think my meaning was clear so I see no reason to go back and re-write it. But I will spell it out for you. When I talk about putting a liberal figure in a big iron kettle and boiling him in oil, I am not talking about something like banning from a blog. Boiling in oil is not the same. I am talking about physical and deadly injury — audibly fantasizing about it. Lusting after it. Causing excruciating agony in the person who is the object of hatred, just to show how odious you find his thoughts to be…

If anything, the other person’s dismissal could have been thought to correlate to my other comment about liberals. Up above. The breezy, casual dismissal of the person with the wrong-thoughts, accompanied by the smug smirk. But even that connection doesn’t really work. My complaint about the lib-dismissal followed by smug smirk, as I’ve said, is that these are liberals who clearly have a goal in mind where everyone in existence agrees with them, and there’s nobody left alive who disagrees. And once you cross that line with them, suddenly they know every thought in your head is a wrong one, and that’s okay. Like I said: It’s ominous. Makes you want to know what the liberal knows. Is there some giant flyswatter somewhere about to hit you?

When a conservative tells a liberal “I really don’t care about your opinion” it’s usually a way of toppling the liberal from a pedestal of gigantic ego. It’s usually directed toward liberals who fall into the common trap of thinking — I got this idea that popped into my head, therefore, that’s just the way things are. Corporations are evil. We can sit down and talk to our enemies and life will become all happy.

Swing and a miss, Huck. Banning someone from a blog is not the same thing as boiling him in oil.

Mr. Freeberg – I’m glad you decided to address my comments. I greatly appreciate it. I have to say, when you mentioned the subject of hate and spoke of hatred of the kind that would put anyone in a vat of oil, I thought you were exaggerating for effect. The reason why I thought you were exaggerating for effect is that I haven’t heard any liberal arguing against George Bush or Dick Cheney in terms of cooking either of them in vats of oil, or audibly fantasizing about physical and deadly injury. But, since you really seem to mean hate of that kind, I’ll take you at your word. Are there some fool liberals who probably do think this way? I imagine you could find a few. But I imagine I can probably go to the comment threads at Free Republic and find an equal number of fool conservatives who think that way about Obama, Biden, or Ted Kennedy, too.

My understanding of what you were getting at in the larger argument of the posting was not seeking out and finding examples of the wackos out there, and making them out to be the norm, but rather taking what is the normal, common experience most of us have with our ideological rivals when we debate topics we disagree about. I thought you were trying to get at how “hate” rears its head in such debates, particularly in the minds of liberals. Have you had any direct experience with liberals expressing to your face the desire in inflict “excruciating agony in the person who is the object of hatred, just to show how odious you find his thoughts to be”? If you have, that would be very unusual. I hang out with lots of liberals, and even amongst ourselves when no conservatives are in the room, I’ve never heard anyone express a desire to physically maul Bush or boil Cheney in a vat of oil.

And though I agree that banning someone from a blog is not, literally, the same thing as boiling him in oil, the “hate” expressed in calling a liberal a POS and calling for someone’s banning is still pretty intense and vicious. Especially when you reflect it back on the tenor of my previous comments in that thread. I ask you, was there anything at all I said in that entire comment thread that would have merited such a response from The Dick Nixon? Did I engage in any repugnant trollish behavior? Did I not try to fashion an honest argument in opposition? In other words, did I merit the way in which The Dick Nixon thought to counter me, a way that was dripping with derision and hatred?

I disagree with you that The Dick Nixon’s comment is more like a “breezy, casual dismissal of the person with the wrong-thoughts, accompanied by the smug smirk.” If he had said something like “Did you sleep through High School debate class, Huck?” then you might have a point here. But, there was a nastiness (and a literal vulgarness) to The Dick Nixon’s comment that goes beyond smugness. It’s a kind of vitriolic despising. I can accept the “I don’t care about your opinion” line. But you ignore the tone of everything surrounding that line in The Dick Nixon’s posting. And that tone was, I don’t know how else to explain it, hateful. And even still, what does it do to a conversation when a conservative says: “You voted for Obama? You are a liberal? Then I don’t care about your opinion.” It’s not mainly to topple a liberal from a pedestal of gigantic ego; it’s also an example of a conservative who, before even getting into an argument with a liberal and approaching a line in the sand to cross, thinks that he knows every thought in that liberal head, and knows it to be wrongheaded and stupid even before it is articulated and expressed.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond. Much appreciated.
- huckupchuck | 07/05/2010 @ 19:46

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“I Hope You Take Note and Revisit Your Thesis”Monday, July 5th, 2010

“I Hope You Take Note and Revisit Your Thesis”
Monday, July 5th, 2010