by hilzoy
I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson to write something like
this:
"You only thought leftists got excited when American soldiers got killed. As I’ve written before, leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right."
"Some" leftists, perhaps: there are a lot of people on the left, as there are on the right, and thus I imagine you could find members of either group who do any number of loathsome things. But Erick Erickson didn't write "some leftists." He wrote that "leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider" [sic]. All of us.
Even those of us who are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who have family or friends there. Even those of us whose family or friends have died. We all got excited. We celebrated. Each and every time a soldier died.
Duels have been fought for less.
I'm not interested in 'explanations' like: he's on the right, so of course he says idiotic things. Treating his opponents as one big undifferentiated cartoonish mass is part of what makes what Erick wrote so objectionable, and I have no interest in following his example. Nor is hyperbole a good explanation: it's not true that everyone on the left is happy when soldiers die, but that we don't go so far as to celebrate.
I think we can rule out the possibility that he believes this in good faith: that he asked himself, before writing this, "Is this really true?", thought about (for instance) the
44% of military voters who voted for Obama, liberals presently serving in combat, or the liberals on
VetVoice, asked himself whether they actually celebrate when one of their own is killed in combat, and answered: "Yes."
He might be a pure hack, like those expert witnesses that the tobacco companies used to trot out to testify that nicotine is not addictive. But I suspect he's not.
The alternative is that he believes this in bad faith. Maybe, for him, writing blog posts has become a game: you score points when you can, and whether or not the things you write are actually true has ceased to be a concern. Or maybe hatred has got the better of him, like the person C. S. Lewis describes here:
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." (Mere Christianity)
If you give in to "the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible", it's easy to see how you could end up thinking things about them that it is implausible to think about any group of human beings: for instance, that when a nineteen year old who enlisted because he wanted to serve his country gets blown up by an IED, your enemies think that that's cause for celebration. Your opponents become cartoons in your mind, and the normal duty to be charitable and generous, or even realistic, in your views about other people seem not to apply to them. You stop thinking of them as fellow human beings, and start thinking of them as enemies.
I suspect that this is the state of mind in which people laughed along with Rush Limbaugh when he said that Chelsea Clinton was "the family dog." No one who laughed at that could have been thinking of Chelsea Clinton as an actual adolescent girl whose looks were being ridiculed by the biggest talk radio host in the country. Had they done so, Limbaugh's sheer cruelty would have been obvious, and the only people who would have laughed are the kind of people who would laugh if they saw a dog being set on fire.
But Chelsea Clinton wasn't a human being; she was an opponent. And Limbaugh was scoring points. And the thought that an actual girl, and one who had never asked to be in politics, was being made fun of on national radio probably never crossed their minds, any more than the thought of actual human beings who are liberals and who are, or care about, soldiers, crossed Erick's.
No one — not liberals, not conservatives — should forget that their opponents are human beings. And no one can afford to start down the road Lewis describes, in which you allow yourself to be disappointed when your opponents aren't as bad as you first thought, or want them to be as bad as possible. And no one should get so wrapped up in political fights that in focussing on the mote in someone else's eye, they lose sight of the beam in their own.
I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson
Since I don’t believe in demons, the most likely remaining answer is hatred.
The undistilled rhetorical BS that flows from that guy is astounding.
In some strange way, Erick is just being logical about a number of conservative cliches. Isn’t this the upshot of taking something like “liberals just want the military/war to fail” as a given? I suppose something like “liberals don’t support the troops” is more ambiguous, but it still has the air of “liberals are anti-soldier.”
There’s a sort of game among a lot of people who comment on politics, where they don’t really mean what they say. If they thought about the actual implications of the things that they said, they’d recognize the reductio (I hope). Erickson is just the guy who’s thought about it, and not recognized the reductio.
I don’t mean to make an equation between the two. Someone who says “liberals don’t support the troops” but would realize that liberals don’t want troops to die is a much better person than Erickson. What I mean is that given what political rhetoric looks like, we’ll see a lot of Ericksons running around.
I wonder what C. S. Lewis would have said about the pleasure of discovering that your enemies are even worse than you thought.
What if, just when you’ve convinced yourself that the Limbaughs and the Ericksons can’t get any more vicious, they come out and prove you wrong?
What is Mere Christianity’s advice in that case?
–TP
I guess you haven’t read Redstate lately, at least since the election, because they’ve doubled down on the crazy over there. They’ve been pushing hard behind the purity brigade that sees pols like Charlie Crist as being too “socialist” to be a Republican candidate. They see everyone who’s not a conservative to be the enemy. They’re in a mixture of shock, pain and anger and seem to be planning to stay in that state for a while.
I think it’s fairly simple, really. Erickson has thrown his weight to the losing side. He’s convinced his side has the right of every argument and he can’t understand why the rest of the country doesn’t see it his way. Ergo, “those people” are stupid and evil and their motives and actions are designed to frustrate and block his side. Thus, they’re hateful.
Erickson went off the deep end a few months ago and this latest screed indicates he has no intention of returning to anything resembling decency or sanity. A couple of other examples: he implied that Levi Johnston and his sister were committing incest and more recently called David Souter “the only goat f*&king child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court”.
What is Mere Christianity’s advice in that case?
Pray for them, I would imagine.
That guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum was consumed by hatred.
So were the list of other guys on the current Orcinus post–one act of rightwing murderous rage a month since Obama got elected.
Erick isn’t hating in a vaccumn. He’s hating from a public platform to an audience.
Oh, and let’s not forget this little gem in which Erickson accuses Obama of deliberately trying to incite a terror attack on our country:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/27/erickson-obama/
This level of vileness indicates the man has serious issues. I’m starting to think that basic decency requires that sane, civilized folks ignore him like we do the crazy old guy that hangs around bus stops with a sandwich board luridly warning of the coming apocalypse.
Isn’t this also Glen Beck’s shtick? Maybe Erickson is shooting for a radio show.
The more interesting explanation is the one you try out above: some kind of loss of capacity to engage opponents as human beings, occasioned or hastened by the imperatives of the role he’s chosen (somewhat like another recent visitor to the site). It is stressful to be on the verbal attack all the time, so it probably simplifies things to develop a leftists hate everything good heuristic / rhetorical template.
May I recommend a book on this very subject?
“On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
I, too, have been flummoxed at the sheer absurity of the toxic torrent spewing from some quarters; this book explained it nicely. I quote a review:
In the essay, Frankfurt sketches a theory of bullshit, defining the concept and analyzing its applications. In particular, Frankfurt distinguishes bullshitting from lying; while the liar deliberately makes false claims, the bullshitter is simply uninterested in the truth. Bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences. While liars need to know the truth, the better to conceal it, the bullshitter, interested solely in advancing his own agenda, has no use for the truth. Following from this, Frankfurt claims that “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
I believe your post is perceptive but there is no necessary inconsistency with ‘Maybe, for him, writing blog posts has become a game: you score points when you can, and whether or not the things you write are actually true has ceased to be a concern.’
I’m sure that for many people, writing blogs has become a sort of computer game. It’s the reason I’ve just about given up blogging.
Are you kidding? Leftists routinely resort to violence, murder, and theft against their ideological opponents. Not to mention shouting others down whenever they don’t like their views. That’s because the ends always justify the means for you people, and you can always reinterpret the law and the preexisting rules to that effect. Look to thyself.
Leftists routinely resort to violence, murder, and theft against their ideological opponents.
1: Leftists != Liberals
2: I’ll be interested to see your sources for this happening in America. Who have Leftists shot down in a church like the martyr Dr Tiller? Who is the Leftist equivalent to Eric Robert Rudolph?
Can you justify your statement? Or is asking you to going to be considered shouting you down?
as i see it, Erickson is:
1) desperate to be seen one of the leading lights of the Movement.
2) a knee-jerk partisan.
3) not too bright.
so you get someone who is eager to say the outrageously inflammatory things because it attracts attention and provides him with foot-soldiers for the various “Operations” he launches. everything he says is meant to fluff the GOP Base; he wants to be the next Limbaugh.
he’s a dumb but ambitious partisan hack.
If you give in to “the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible”, it’s easy to see how you could end up thinking things about them that it is implausible to think about any group of human beings
show us how it’s done, That Donkey Benjamin!
Donkey Benjamin,
So, it’s okay if the Weathermen did it? Well done.
“I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson to write something like this”
To drive traffic to his crappy website. He’s managing editor now, it’s his full time job.
Plus, Erickson has always been the “editor” there who would just say whatever crazy-@ss thing popped into his head, just to stir the pot. Kind of an in-house troll.
Just say “No” to RedState.
“Leftists routinely resort to violence, murder, and theft against their ideological opponents.”
And drive-by blog commenters routinely resort to flinging heaping shovelfuls of stupid poo against theirs.
Let’s see if the good Donkey hangs out to defend his bold claims.
Done, a long time ago.
I suspect hilzoy has it right with wanting to believe the worst about your enemy. Not necessarily because it dehumanizes them, but because believing that they’re evil makes you, by definition, better than them.
It’s different in degree from the notion that conservatives are, as a body, racist, but not different in kind.
So will we see like indignation the next time a regular ObWi commenter says that all pro-lifers hate women and sexuality? If not, why not just accept that the internet is the place where people of all political persuasions call their opponents monsters and move on?
I don’t think that you’ll ever sway hilzoy into buying into the toleration idea, Andrew. That’s just not who she is. It’s like trying to convince a jaguar to become a snail.
“You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black,”
agreed. but i suspect lewis is wrong about this part:
“and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad”
i would have said that people who go down the hate road are generally just as invested in seeing some symbolic white thing as permanently and purely white, even while they make all the grey things black.
i mean–i don’t know, maybe someone has gone down the hate road in the way that lewis describes, indiscriminately hating everything.
but the more typical case seems to be: cartoonish vilifications of everything to one side of me; but my heroes and values are unassailable, good, pure and perfect.
(and anyone who spots any grey in them? clearly the blackest demon in hell!)
this is all orthogonal to the “why can’t erick think good?” parts of the thread, since it really would not redeem him in my eyes to find out that he is unswervingly loyal to his pet budgie, or his mum, or our lady of lourdes.
or maybe that is my point: if you accept lewis’ analysis, then you might think, “ah, well, göring (e.g.) wasn’t so far gone in hate: he was still very fond of his mum, after all”. but if you accept my analysis, you will say: “göring (e.g.) was as deeply hate-filled as it is humanly possible to be, and his fondness for his mum in no way mitigates that.”
“I don’t think that you’ll ever sway hilzoy into buying into the toleration idea, Andrew.”
(Hopefully) clearer me: I don’t think you’re going to be able to convince hilzoy to accept that the internet is the place where people of all political persuasions call their opponents monsters and move on. That’s not who she is.
No one — not liberals, not conservatives — should forget that their opponents are human beings.
My first reaction was to say, out loud, that conservative commentators are hardly human beings anymore.
I realize that sounds like snark, but I’m actually being quite serious. Most “conservatives” (whatever that means anymore), especially those I know from suburban New Jersey and the out boroughs of the NYC area, are very much human beings. But the representatives of the conservative movement nationwide haven’t been human beings for years.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others who represent the commentator/politician crowd are completely irrational, unhinged loud mouths. They’ve found their enemy, and their position is literally “the opposite of what the liberals say.” It doesn’t matter how eminently reasonable the position is (e.g., tire gauges). You’re right to suggest that moderate and liberal commentators shouldn’t paint the entire right side of the political spectrum in broad strokes, but I’m not about to legitimize the views of a lunatic like Erickson by referring to him as a human being. That’s an embarrassment to the human race.
And no one can afford to start down the road Lewis describes, in which you allow yourself to be disappointed when your opponents aren’t as bad as you first thought, or want them to be as bad as possible.
I generally agree, although I believe that this point is debatable in context as well. Politics (and governing) is the art of the possible. In the vast majority of circumstances, you have to work with your ideological opponents in order to get a deal done that moves us all forward. This requires your opponent to be a rational and reasonable person.
But there is a tipping point, and it’s possible to argue that we’re about to reach it. The GOP has been a thoughtless, position-less party for at least the last 6 months, but truly since 2006. Since then, we’ve seen some combination of “cut taxes/deregulate/freedom.”
There exists a point when a party is no longer constructive opposition and has given way to obstructionism for obstructionism’s sake. We’ll call this “Point A.” If a party goes completely over the line, and surprises me by scaling back slightly (but still past Point A), isn’t it still in my interest that the party becomes as extreme as possible so to marginalize themselves enough that my own policy goals become the only reasonable alternative?
Note: I don’t think the institutional GOP is that far across the spectrum, although I think it is approaching. As has been expressed by numerous bloggers, commentators, and people on the street, the GOP has two options – (1) move themselves back to the center and appeal to the rank-and-file, self-styled “moderate conservatives,” or (2) Whittle themselves down to the most extreme element. I’d prefer the former for a variety of reasons, but I fear it’s going to be the latter. Once they go all in on option 2, it seems perfectly rational for liberals to want them to be as bad as possible.
So will we see like indignation the next time a regular ObWi commenter says that all pro-lifers hate women and sexuality?
instead of indignation, i employ automation to ease my frustration at those who have a reputation for such inflammation. FY information.
EE/Moe Lane are really no different than most RW blogs; go to Jeffy Goldstein’s site or Malkin’s–it’s the same lunacy.
bretttmarston’s comment was astute; in any sort of public relations venture such as blogging, you get noticed by either being really, really smart about some issue or by being hyper-outlandish. Do you think a Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck would be successful by calmly and thoughtfully discussing the issues? Nope. Viewers tune in for the circus-like spectacle.
There’s an entire industry (mainly in and around DC) that exists to provoke outrage. Witness the various groups springing up to attack Sotomayor. They solicit money which is used, primarily, to pay the salaries of those whipping up outrage.
EE/Moe Lane want to cash in. Unfortunately for them, they’re less than mediocre.
all pro-lifers hate women and sexuality?
Nobody’d be dumb enough to say that.
But one could (safely, I think) aver: “Pro-life” MALES hate women and strive to suppress womens’ sexuality, because its mere possibility challenges their “patriarchal” privilege.
there’s also this phenomenon, noted by bérubé here:
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/14/fraudulent-journalist-cest-moi/#more-11125
“As it is in blog comment sections, so it is in the world of serious scholarship: the person who comes very late to the pile-on has to take the invective to the next level.”
and as it is in comment sections, so it is in the bloggy world at large.
whenever you have nothing new to say, you turn it up to 11.
@ Corvus at 3:42
A comment, briefly, on Frankfurt. Intrigued by the book – is it fair to say that he characterizes bullshitters essentially as a bunch of sophists who attempt to persuade with a fury of rhetoric signifying virtually nothing, while liars show intent?
I have two worries about that attitude. First, in our system the Republicans are the only alternative to the Democrats, so if for some reason the public becomes dissatisfied with Obama and the Democrats, they’re going to vote in Republicans, no matter how crazy and dangerous the party has become.
Second, as Republicans become increasingly marginalized and powerless, many of them become more and more frustrated and angry (not that they’ve ever needed much reason to be angry, since they managed it while they had control of everything). I fear that that will lead to more of the sort of violence we’ve seen.
“My first reaction was to say, out loud, that conservative commentators are hardly human beings anymore.”
With respect, I could not disagree more.
“Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others who represent the commentator/politician crowd are completely irrational, unhinged loud mouths.”
That is in no way inconsistent with their being human beings, more’s the pity.
Look: if you stop seeing them as human, then you really are heading down Lewis’ road. Also, if you thereby stop asking yourself ‘what kind of human are they?’, and trying to come up with actual answers, you’re heading down Erick’s.
As I said: I don’t think it’s any better when our side does it.
And I don’t think it’s ever right to want them to be as bad as possible.
So will we see like indignation the next time a regular ObWi commenter says that all pro-lifers hate women and sexuality?
‘I could while away the hours/conversing with the flowers…’
That’s a somewhat life-like strawman you’ve constructed there Andrew. But, for one thing, I wouldn’t equate the editor of a major right wing website with a regular commenter on ObWi. Anybody can comment. For another, even the most vociferous anti-anti-‘pro-life’ commenter would be unlikely to say that *every* abortion opponent ‘hates women and sexuality’. And third, there is at least some truth in the idea (albeit minus the ‘every’): there really is a mainstream history of subjugation of both women and sexuality in the Christian church. There is absolutely no history of *liberals* celebrating the deaths of our soldiers.
I wish you had a leg on which to stand if only to make your whining more tolerable. Just about nobody likes abortion, but thankfully, most people aren’t obsessed by it.
Erick is a polemicist, and he isn’t very good at it. That is why he has to resort to this kind of language.
A good polemicist would have left himself a little wiggle room by using a more amorphous claim. Erick went all in by being specific about how “Leftists” celebrate soldiers’ deaths. He should have said Leftists celebrate bad news from Iraq, and then intimated that Leftists were celebrating soldiers’ deaths. That would have given him some plausible deniability while also giving the wingnuts the hate speech they crave.
If I thought I could make some money at it I would teach a polemics class to wingnut bloggers. Most of the suck at it.
re: Pro-lifers and women’s sexuality
1. What Woody and jonnybutter said about “all.” What makes the statement “all anti-choicers hate women’s sexuality” ridiculous is the universality of the claim. And note that we’re talking about an actual Erick Erickson vs. a straw commentator.
2. When people accuse particular anti-choicers of hating women’s sexuality, it’s usually for concrete reasons. For example, their opposition to contraception and/or real sex education. Or their often baroque refusals to take women’s moral choices seriously (women are just victims; doctors are monsters; regulation is necessary to save women from themselves). Erickson is just making shit up. I don’t know a single leftist/liberal (one never knows who they’re really talking about) who cheers the death of US soldiers overseas. This is just a recycled Vietnam-era cliché.
I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson to write something like this
I’m guessing it’s the fact that he’s a demented troll. Does his crazed gibbering really warrant this level of analysis?
I mean, it’s always useful to have someone keeping track of RedState’s latest idiocy, but asking why Erick Erickson posts hateful nonsense is a bit like asking why he posted in English. It’s his native tongue; he can’t write anything else.
Okay, so what if I said that a couple of regular commenters here routinely say that pro-lifers hate women and sexuality? Take away the “all” label (which was not in Erickson’s rant either), and there is very little difference between saying “anti-choicers hate women’s sexuality” and “leftists lust after the death of American soldiers.” The fact that one rhetorical move gets…
[thinks]
Oh, f*** it. Enjoy your collective self-righteous indignation.
Oh, about this: “So will we see like indignation the next time a regular ObWi commenter says that all pro-lifers hate women and sexuality?”
The regular commenter most likely to say this has said it already, and I believe I have objected to it pretty clearly. If I don’t object every time any more, it’s mostly because I can’t see the point of saying the same thing over and over and over again.
My first reaction was to say, out loud, that conservative commentators are hardly human beings anymore.
I’d go further than Hilzoy and say that this is not only immoral, but – worse – wrong in a tactical way. Despite the contradiction in terms, it is quintessentially human to (among other things) be inhumane to other humans. Failure to grapple with this fact is a great weakness of liberalism (in the modern sense of that word), or maybe it’s better to say ‘humanism’. Recognizing it doesn’t make you cynical, nor does it give you an excuse to be inhumane yourself; not recognizing it surely *will* make you cynical and callous in the long run. No human construction – ideology, religion – is immune to being used in the service of inhumanity. Better to just accept that and guard against it within yourself.
What makes the statement “all anti-choicers hate women’s sexuality” ridiculous is the universality of the claim.
“all” is probably hyperbole – though not by much. but there certainly are people who are ridiculously quick to throw the “woman-hating” label on anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their opinions on abortion – you don’t even have to be strongly pro-life, even a hint of nuance is enough to trigger the accusation.
this should be common knowledge to anyone who has read ObWi for more than a few weeks.
Andrew is right in the sense that there are a couple (fortunately only a couple) who do comment the way he indicates. They have been doing it for years and, although in the past they were confronted on it, they continue to do so. They are a minority.
I disagree with the statement that there is very little difference. There is a big difference between saying someone hates women and someone celebrates the death of every soldier, and if Andrew can’t see that, there is no amount of explaining that will clarify that.
As to why EE and others are talking/writing this way, and in fact that this vilification of the left has actually intensified since Obama’s election (though prior to that it would have seemed impossible to intensify) I think it is basically the cornered rat syndrome.
Okay, I lied about being done on this thread. Thanks, hilzoy, for the correction–I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to making a diverse community of posters and commenters into a hive mind. I’d plead insufficiently metabolized morning coffee, but that would be an unconvincing excuse. How about I just apologize instead?
(I still think that expecting people on the internet not to tar opponents with a broad brush is a quixotic and fundamentally doomed task, but I’m glad that there are people like hilzoy who do).
Three thoughts:
– Every blogger should read this before they write their next post.
– The internet needs more ethicists, plz.
– Demonization is a hell of a drug.
@Ben Alpers:
“When people accuse particular anti-choicers of hating women’s sexuality, it’s usually for concrete reasons. For example, their opposition to contraception and/or real sex education.”
Someone’s opposition to contraception is not a concrete reason to impute hatred of women’s sexuality to him/her.
Many of them would say that contraception itself looks an awful lot like hatred of women’s sexuality.
Contraception is not the issue one way or the other. The point is demonizing those whom we disagree with.
Of course, demented hatred does exist. Shooting at a Holocaust museum is an act of demented hatred. But being a leftist on war is not, nor is being anti-contraception.
Kudos to hilzoy for challenging people on both sides of the aisle to try to tell the difference.
Andrew R: thanks. About this: “I still think that expecting people on the internet not to tar opponents with a broad brush is a quixotic and fundamentally doomed task, but I’m glad that there are people like hilzoy who do”
— I don’t have any illusions about ending this once and for all. I do think it matters if even one person stops doing it, and that doesn’t seem to me too much to hope for.
There’s a lot of 100 proof crazy in that thread. On the brighter side, however, the thread’s only garnered a few dozen responses, mostly by the diehards who comment in every thread, and even a few rebukes.
If someone said what Erickson wrote to my face, there would be trouble. But watching Erickson write the same thing on his blog to imaginary “leftists” makes me pity him more than anything else. He sounds like a kid scolding his toys, or a shouter on a street corner. Crazy people on the internet are a dime a dozen. I’m looking for the guy who’s supplying the dimes.
I’m guessing it’s the fact that he’s a demented troll.
In short, yes.
Andrew: Okay, so what if I said that a couple of regular commenters here routinely say that pro-lifers hate women and sexuality?
I know a lot more than a “couple” of pro-lifers who routinely argue that women who are pregnant and don’t want to be shouldn’t be allowed to terminate, because once a woman consents to sex, she’s consented to pregnancy and childbirth. No pro-life organization in the US supports free provision of contraception; nor the right to paid maternity leave or free healthcare as of right to all pregnant woman, new mothers, and small children.
And we have just seen an acute and ugly example of how pro-lifers overwhelmingly regard a doctor who performs abortions late in pregnancy on fetuses that either will not live to be delivered or will die shortly afterward, where the continued pregnancy is a threat to the health of the woman: they call him a “baby killer” and they condemn what he does as “evil”. Even after he’s been murdered.
Yes, somehow: I do see pro-lifers as, overwhelmingly, hating women and hating female sexuality.
And yes, somehow: I do have a real nasty reaction to people who want to associate themselves with this ugly, women-hating, terrorist movement that works and campaigns – and murders – to deny women life-saving health-care.
Somehow.
he’s a dumb but ambitious partisan hack.
I think there’s a lot to this. It seems to me that there’s a good living to be made as an extreme, stupidly provocative, right-wing writer/radio host, etc. There are enough examples, after all. So Erickson is giving it a run.
SDG: Many of them would say that contraception itself looks an awful lot like hatred of women’s sexuality.
And just when I wondered if my response looked over-the-top (re-reading the thread: noting Andrew R’s civilized response at 10:14 AM: good for you, Andrew, have a virtual latte on me) along comes SDG to confirm my point.
(I still think that expecting people on the internet not to tar opponents with a broad brush is a quixotic and fundamentally doomed task, but I’m glad that there are people like hilzoy who do).
More than once I have admired hilzoy’s endurance in answering what I thought was a demented rant. Of course, maybe this is a circle of hell and we’re all her punishment.
I wish you had a leg on which to stand if only to make your whining more tolerable.
Ahem, I’ve been called a misogynist and a homophobe on this blog simply for being less than a 100% in agreement with certain commenters. Not that I’m loosing sleep over such completely ridiculous claims, but Andrew does have a point here.
“It seems to me that there’s a good living to be made as an extreme, stupidly provocative, right-wing writer/radio host, etc.”
Back in the day I spent a lot of time on RedState. I wanted to understand what conservatives were about. Back then, it was http://www.redstate.org (or .net, I forget).
In ’06 they got bought by Eagle Publishing, and now it’s http://www.redstate.com. Erickson is now the full time managing editor, Krempasky, fresh from his gig as blog-world ambassador for WalMart, is on the board, blah blah blah.
There’s gold in them there blog posts, or at least they’re hoping so.
Jesurgislac:
“along comes SDG to confirm my point.”
I humbly suggest that you may be a little too easily satisfied with the confirmability of your own points.
I humbly suggest that you may be a little too easily satisfied with the confirmability of your own points.
I could have added so many links to confirm my points in my comment at 10:39 AM that Typepad wouldn’t have let me post it even if I’d split it up across five separate comments.
But I didn’t need to: along you came…
novakant: Ahem, I’ve been called a misogynist and a homophobe on this blog simply for being less than a 100% in agreement with certain commenters.
But I did not, as far as I recall, accuse you of celebrating Doctor Tiller’s death.
The worst I think I could say about most of the pro-lifers who used hate speech about Doctor Tiller is that they refuse to accept their moral responsibility for the people who took their “baby killer” rhetoric seriously.
SDG: Jesurgislac: I did NOT write that post! Don’t blame me for it. That troll is back spoofing people.
YOWCH.
I’m so sorry! I was trying not to get suckered. *facepalm*
“But I didn’t need to: along you came…”
Yes. And what I said was that opposition to contraception was not a reason to say that someone hates female sexuality; and that many opponents of sexuality might say that contraception itself looks an awful lot like hatred of women’s sexuality.
This is not the same as saying that advocates or practitioners of contraception hate women’s sexuality, and certainly does not offer any support to the thesis that opponents of contraception hate women’s sexuality.
P.S. Cute troll you have here. Fortunately, I have a rather distinctive voice and my general worldview is not hard to discern from a perusal of my website.
SDG: It’s possible that I’m just still groggy this morning, but I’m curious: How can it be claimed that contraception looks like hatred of women’s sexuality? I’ve never heard that argument before.
Usually I can at least understand the logic or emotion behind an argument, even if I disagree, but this one just isn’t falling into place for me.
This sort of “liberals are purely evil, even unto rejoicing at the suffering of good people like you and me” sells, and is reinforced by the entire RedState/NRO/Free Republic/Limbaugh/Hannity/Savage/O’Reilly etc. axis. Spew it, and you earn praise from your peers. Question it as a Frum or a Friesendorf (or in the real world, a Colin Powell) does and you get called a traitor and a RINO for your trouble. It’s no surprise that a stance which gets instantly rewarded is more prominent than one that requires courage.
How can it be claimed that contraception looks like hatred of women’s sexuality?
Reproduction is the purpose, the telos, the raison d’etre of women’s sexuality.
Contraception prevents women’s sexuality from reaching its truest and deepest fulfillment.
QED.
P.P.S. Oops, looks like you got suckered. 🙂
Just to be totally clear: I’m an orthodox Catholic. I’m a student of John Paul II’s theology of the body, which means I regard both male and female sexuality as profoundly good and even sacred. I regard all human life as sacred; I consider abortion and contraception to be contrary to human dignity, but I absolutely do not think that because you disagree with me you must hate babies or otherwise be in bad faith.
Reciprocal recognition of my potential non-hatred of women is appreciated, but if it’s too much to manage, I can muddle along without it.
He’s a hateful hack and a lazy one at that.
Consider what Orwell once said:
That fits Erickson to a tee.
SDG: I do think that some misogynistic men view women solely as objects for casual sex. Contraception enables that
Oh dear, is the silly troll back again? Okay, I won’t be suckered this time.
To the fake SDG –
What if we were to recognize that you don’t hate women, you just don’t view us as human beings capable of deciding what is ‘contrary’ to our own dignity? Satisfied?
Regarding: “Duels have been fought for less.”
I’m not comfortable with the idea of healthy adults dueling people who are clearly not in touch with reality.
I’ve been called a misogynist and a homophobe on this blog simply for being less than a 100% in agreement with certain commenters…..Andrew does have a point here.
So what?!
Andrew didn’t make the point you want him to have made and you aren’t making it either. If the point is that both sides in an argument can but oughtn’t demonize their opponents, particularly in comment threads, that’s not much of a point, since it’s not debatable – it was one of the main points of Hilzoy’s post!
The problem with the endless abortion ‘debate’ is that it almost immediately goes into an abstract, almost fatuous space. It’s like arguing about lying. ‘Lying is wrong!!’ ‘Do you want to make lying illegal in all cases?’ ‘Well….not really, but it’s wrong!! WRONG!! And people sometimes call me names because I SPEAK OUT on it so much!’.
I, for one, am really sick of it.
Not a perfect analogy, I know, but approximately as maddening.
“Okay, so what if I said that a couple of regular commenters here routinely say that pro-lifers hate women and sexuality? Take away the “all” label (which was not in Erickson’s rant either), and there is very little difference between saying “anti-choicers hate women’s sexuality” and “leftists lust after the death of American soldiers.” The fact that one rhetorical move gets…
[thinks]
Oh, f*** it. Enjoy your collective self-righteous indignation.”
You are leaving out context. Pro-choicers aren’t responisble for setting up a Noise Machine with a huge audience, have not systematically over several decades used that media empire to spread hate and lies, and have not provided either cover or justification or inspiration for a series of murders.
It would be bad manners for a hypothetical commenter to say the sort of thing you invented for that hypothetical commenter to say. That’s all, because the hypothetical comment is not connected to anything more nefarious.
Erickson’s statement is more than bad manners because it is part of a movement, a movement that promotes violence through the use of eliminationist rhetoric while taking no responsibility for the actions of a person who takes the rhetoric seriously.
If you want to find a liberal equivalent to Erick’s offense you would be better off going back to the VietNam era. The overheated rhetoric about President Johnson (Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?) did contribute to a sense of moral superiority which did seem to go to the heads of some individuals who then felt that, in their superiority, they could kill people.
The parallel isn’t exact, however. For one thing the Democrats did not have a Noise Machine like the Repbulicans now have. There was no equivalent of the Faux-talking heads-Republican party leadership axis which supports rightwing hate mongering these days and engages in an only slightly less toxic discourse that what comes straight from Rush or Malkin.
Also the Democratic leadership was divided with the anti-war movement part in the minority. That isn’t the case with the current Repubicans. They are pandering to their base quite openly and there has been plenty of eliminationist bullying right in Congress. AS a matter of fact the lates attack on Obama is that he is soft on the Gitmo terrorist because he wants them tohave their Miranda rights read to them. The difference in bullshit between someone like Erick and some one like Boehner isn’t big enough to be worth discussing.
Rightwing hate has been going on now, fanned by hatetalk radio, hate TV and more recently by hate websites, for decades and is used by Republican politicians to get out the vote, to provide money for the party and to swell the audiences at Sarah Palin rallies or TeaBag parties. Back in Lee Atwater’s day the Republicans decided to increase their base by inviting in disafffected, marginal people who previously hadn’t voted. Those folks, with their odd, angry preceptions are now the base and Republican politicians pander to them.
So Erick isn’t being hateful all by himself and he isn’t just sounding off to a few commenters on a thread.
the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils
Erickson seems well advanced down that path.
I regard all human life as sacred; I consider abortion and contraception to be contrary to human dignity
So you consider mass death to be supportive of human dignity? Isn’t it a little bit odd to regard human life as sacred and to believe that it’s undignified to prevent millions of human lives each year from being created only to die within days?
I’m a student of John Paul II’s theology of the body, which means I regard both male and female sexuality as profoundly good and even sacred.
That’s odd: the John Paul II I used to hear from had a theology of the body that normal human sexuality was inherently evil, but that if a priest went after little kids, it was a bishop’s job to make sure he got transferred without too much fuss to another parish. Which one were you thinking about?
Thank you, Hilzoy, for a secular sermon we all need to take to heart. It is too easy these days to assume the worst of people we disagree with. Granted, it’s not easy when someone accuses you of cheering the deaths of American soldiers…
Obviously the right is just coming to the realization that 1) they may have been horribly wrong on many issues, 2) the American people who once embraced them are distancing themselves from them, with some even expressing revulsion, and 3) they are beginning to see the red meat of hate that they routinely threw out to their ardent supporters has turned some into dangerous beasts who now believe intimidation and violence are legitimate tools, even necessary tools, to achieve victory over their enemies.
These rightists, having seen themselves in a new light, are still in denial. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that while they might be ugly, the left is even uglier (“yeah we’ve engaged in some race baiting, but it’s the left who are the real racisits, witness racist liberals like Judge Sotomayor”; “Yeah, we might have supported the torture of detainees, but the left positively hates our soldiers and they even cheer each one’s death”).
They are facing an internal crisis. Some will emerge humbled and smarter, but more will self-destruct into hateful ranters, increasingly marginalized by society I hope). Some of them will be consumed by hate and possibly become dangerous.
My biggest concern is that the right is also enraptured by guns and the philosophy that gun ownership is supposedly a protected right to allow citizens to fight an onerous government.
The SDG I responded to at 11:42 AM, and the SDG posting at 12:11 PM claiming the one at 11:42 is a troll, are both using the URL d/e/c/e/n/t/f/i/l/m/s.c/o/m, which according to its google summary is “Film appreciation, information and criticism informed by Christian faith.”
At this point *rueful grin* I think I just have to quit responding here until this particular plague of trolls has been weeded out by someone who can see who’s using which IP address.
Second “SDG” banned and eliminated. I think the results may be interesting.
Moral: when someone comes in as a new poster, and is immediately sockpuppeted, maybe someone is playing a little game.
Thanks, Slartibartfast (nice handle!).
FWIW, I am the first SDG who posted to this thread (i.e., SDG 10:29 AM | 11:13 AM | 11:25 AM), and the author of Decent Films.
Your resident troll, SDG 11:15 AM | 11:40 AM | 12:11 PM, posted after me and has posted little of substance except to try to confuse others which is which.
Hope that clears things up for now.
Tracy, you wrote:
“SDG: It’s possible that I’m just still groggy this morning, but I’m curious: How can it be claimed that contraception looks like hatred of women’s sexuality? I’ve never heard that argument before.”
Thanks for the question.
I admit that’s a provocative way of putting it, but I was responding to a fairly provocative assault on those who oppose contraception.
Here’s how I see it. Fertility, and virility in the corresponding sense, are a normal part of healthy sexuality. Sexuality does not require fertility or virility — a barren woman is as much a woman, and a sterile man as much a man, as anyone else — but it includes it.
The use of pharmaceuticals to make, as it were, chemical war on normal, healthy fertility or virility seems to me not to reflect the healthiest possible attitude toward our sexuality in its fullness.
Likewise, to interpose a barrier in the nuptial act, at a moment that is meant to be total gift, total union of male and female in all their respective goodness, holding nothing back, seems to make it an act in which something is held back, in which the other is not fully embraced. Where the two become one, there is no barrier.
I don’t mean to say that the subjective attitudes of those practicing contraception actually have negative attitudes toward sexuality or reproduction. But I think that the act is contrary to the best and most healthy attitude of embracing sexuality in its fullness.
That’s how I see it. I recognize that how I see it is bound up in a whole worldview that is in many respects fundamentally different from other peoples’ worldviews. In recognizing this, I don’t say that I don’t believe that I’m right — I do — but I don’t gratuitously attribute malicious or odious attitudes and motivations toward those who disagree with me.
The ways that people come to their beliefs are complicated, and hasty judgments along the lines of “You believe that because you hate _____” are facile and self-comforting, and I believe too strongly in self-criticism to be comfortably dismissive of everyone who disagrees with me.
Not to deny that odious and hateful attitudes do exist. There is a line between people who shoot at Holocaust museums and people who are worth having a respectful conversation with. I try to assume that most people I meet are on the right side of that line. I appreciate similar treatment, and I try to earn it.
The DHS (you know, the Bush agency with the nativist “homeland” in its title) report on possible violence by radical fringe elements introduced the notion that veterans returning from war would be recruited by extremist groups.
This is precisely what Erick Erickson is doing with his demagogic statements. He even quotes himself (“As I’ve said before”) and stresses his appeal with “each and every” .. twice.
He’s recruiting folks who know how to use weapons into what is left of the Republican Party, the treasonous, bitter rump of the Gingrich/Limbaugh/NRA axis spawned deliberately to destroy government in the United States.
That they are identifiably human is what makes them dangerous. Were they less than human we could declare a rabies epidemic, put them to sleep, and call it a day.
It is too bad duelling went the way of the dodo, except that Erickson wouldn’t show up at the appointed time (neither would his Redstate seconds) even to have his face slapped with a pair of gloves, out of pure cowardice, Limbaugh would hide in his studio, and Gingrich would take up residence in the FOX studios until old age obviated the need to shoot him through the heart at ten paces.
See, duelling was the private sector alternative, but since these ilk can’t handle it (shrinking inside their already too-small codpieces), we require Homeland Security to surveil their movements and their rhetoric and the people to whom they appeal.
In the case of Glenn Beck, their is probably a clown retirement home somewhere with a lock-down ward.
This also has the virtue of further radicalizing this bunch and flushing them from their lairs so that maybe, finally, after all of the trash talk of the past 30 years, they’ll actually put their cheap talk into action so that they can be arrested, tried, and executed under the rule of law.
Until then, Erick, shut the f— up.
by erickson’s lights, i would undoubtedly qualify as a “leftist.” funny thing though. i served (in vietnam, not iraq or afghanistan) and had friends who died there. i can’t remember ever celebrating a soldier’s death, then or since. for you see, i am not of the privileged or the cowardly set (so many of whom seem to populate the g.o.p.’s leadership). any death i celebrated would likely be one of my own. ergo, erickson is a damned liar, a damned fool, or both.
Slarti: Moral: when someone comes in as a new poster, and is immediately sockpuppeted, maybe someone is playing a little game.
Yep. Especially when there’s no way to tell which is which except by IP address, which is (a) possible, if tricky, to spoof; and (b) we know our current troll can spoof an IP address, because otherwise, it would long since have been permanently banned.
Anyway. What John Thullen said.
Also, dehumanizing people is wrong. It’s doing precisely what’s the people one is offended by are doing.
What if we were to recognize that you don’t hate women, you just don’t view us as human beings capable of deciding what is ‘contrary’ to our own dignity? Satisfied?
This begs the question, doesn’t it? I.e., What of the unborn child’s dignity?
(The abortion debate is profoundly uninteresting to me because each side routinely argues past the other’s points. It’s also off-point.)
Rhetorical extremistism anywhere does not justistify rhetorical extremistism everywhere. The fact that there are stupid things said by leftists and liberals cannot be an excuse for this stupid thing said by Mr. Erickson.
is it fair to say that [Frankfurt in On Bullshit characterizes bullshitters essentially as a bunch of sophists … while liars show intent?
Frankfurt makes the distinction thus : a liar seeks to convince the audience that his claims are true. When neither the speaker nor the audience have any expectation that the claims made will be taken seriously (e.g., most advertising, many blog comments) the utterances are bullshit.
It’s bullshit when the audience already knows they’re being lied to, and the speaker knows they know, but makes the claims anyway for the sake of appearance, or because he’s being paid to make the claims, etc.
Seems like one could counter Erickson’s claims by noting that there are neocons out there pulling for Ahmadinejad in Iran’s elections. Sure, it goes against our interests to have him re-elected, but Cheney and the like need a bogeyman to rally around.
Not saying I’d make that argument, for reasons already lined out here: it’s not only unfair to paint your opponents with such a broad brush, it’s dumb. There are far more conservatives pulling for Mousavi than for Ahmadinejad, for obvious reasons.
von: This begs the question, doesn’t it? I.e., What of the unborn child’s dignity?
The argument that contraception affronts the dignity of the unborn child is curiously circular…
The abortion debate is profoundly uninteresting to me because each side routinely argues past the other’s points.
Well, it’s nice to see you acknowledge that’s what you do, but…
It’s also off-point
…true.
Cleek’s pretty much got it – though I don’t know about the “dumb” thing. Personally, he wants to be influential. Practically, he wants to drive web traffic. Ideologically, he justifies hyperbole, offensiveness, etc. as a “radical” activist would: some dressed-up version of ends justifying means.
I’m not just guessing these things. I know them to be true from my brother’s correspondence.
I wouldn’t say he’s dumb, because he keeps getting bloggers like hilzoy to write about him. Notice that pissing liberals off falls under “practical”. There is not much emotion involved, outside of schadenfreude when it works.
My advice to you, hilzoy, is never to write about Erickson. There is no use arguing with someone who is arguing in bad faith, and so all you are really accomplishing is helping him to accumulate page hits.
It’s difficult to ignore people like Erickson – I know that from personal experience. But what happens to RedState will parallel what’s happening to a smaller extent in the GOP in general – the thoughtful, intelligent people will abandon it. Pejman already left because of the “direction of the site”. If they’re ignored, the trend will continue.
My first thought about Erickson’s little rant was that it was obvious madness and not worth responding to.
The problem is, I have thought that about various memes over the last 20 years that have become conservative mainstream. Hilzoy mentioned Limbaugh’s joke about Chelsea Clinton, which I thought at the time would disenchant at least some dittoheads, but no, Limbaugh’s influence keeps growing. Coulter is a best-seller, RedState has high volume, frankly stupid and ignorant people like Sarah Palin get fawned over…that whole half of the country keeps getting crazier. And by crazy, I mean that they say and act upon notions that have zero empirical basis, refuse to use logic, and become enraged by extremely small and distant problems or risks.
So at this point, I assume that Erickson’s meme is going to start turning up as an echo-chamber talking point within two years, and little kids will grow up in nice Bible Belt homes honestly believing it. And as KCinDC said, the GOP is the ONLY opposition party.
This is how republics decay into tyranny. I recognize the pattern, I just hate seeing it here.
How, exactly, does this Erickson person honor the men and women who continue to die weekly, even daily in Iraq and Afghanistan? Does he pause to reflect upon and mourn each? How about the wounded? What, exactly, does he do to help them and their families?
What was his position on the Bush administration’s failures WRT strategy and tactics? How about the VA debacle? Did he yell for a fix from the interweb mountaintops, or did he keep his yap shut?
I’ve never in my life encountered someone who literally wished ill on our troops, but I’ve met PLENTY who’re eager to put them in harm’s way.
I have a hunch this person is not only amoral, he’s a misanthrope. No fixing that.
“What of the unborn child’s dignity?”
The term “unborn child” is itself begging the question.
that whole half of the country keeps getting crazier. And by crazy, I mean that they say and act upon notions that have zero empirical basis, refuse to use logic, and become enraged by extremely small and distant problems or risks.
Are people actually getting crazier or is just getting easier to see what they’re thinking? One “benefit” of the old school media landscape where people could only watch three boring national television channels and read local dailies was that it fostered a synthetic consensus. Regional groups of people had their beliefs and were lulled into thinking that all Americans shared those beliefs. That’s why video of MLK marchers facing down firehoses was so politically powerful. It forced people to realize that lots of other people didn’t actually share their beliefs as they had always assumed. Maybe as our communications technology transitions away from broadcast to narrowcast, we’re seeing what’s always been there.
I guess I find this statement odd because it sounds very universal: most humans say and act upon notions with no empirical basis. Most people refuse to use logic for most of their decisions, including (especially?) political ones. And all large groups of people love their little 2-minute hate fests focused on small/insignificant/low-probability problems. This behavior seems way too universal to ascribe to the 25% of the country that loved Bush till the very end.
This is how republics decay into tyranny.
It is? Having people act like all people everywhere at all times in history have acted presages a decay into tyranny? I guess that might be true, but that seems a bit tautological.
“Coulter is a best-seller….”
Sales of her books are reportedly down.
I suspect Erick Erickson was a very dignified fetus inside his mother’s womb. He probably didn’t speak until spoken to and displayed great table manners.
What of Erick Erickson, the adult fetus’ dignity?
now that doesn’t sound much like trilobite i’ve ever heard…
I think Erick Erickson’s children should be recruited into the Democratic Party and be re-trained as community activists.
As for apes, the fact that Erick and I are related by that bloodline is a coincidence which must drive him …….. ape.
cleek: it wasn’t, nor were wholly uncharacteristic posts by bedtime, Jes, and I forget who else. Now they’re gone, and the IP address is blocked. Sigh.
“If a fetus is aborted it has no dignity. You just throw it away.”
IMPOSTER ALERT: That 2:17 p.m. comment is not mine.
Now I know how others have felt during my two-week absence.
This is worse than trolling, of course, whoever is playing these silly reindeer games. You’re sad.
Get a life.
—the real btfb
(P.S. Wonkie: I responded to your sad and lovely Mr. Jack story this morning in Von’s open thread.)
The Rev Jeremiah Wright should shut the eff up too,the dumb anti-Semite.
P.S. That’s really me.
So when did Rush say this about Chelsea Clinton? Seriously, I’ve sen this bit of folklore several times and I have yet to see any documentation of it.
And is that the best you can do? A fragment of one sentence from a decade ago? Very very weak, especially if you cannot cite when (or even IF) RL ever said this.
Apologies for double posting from over at WaPo, but I think there is another angle that many here haven’t considered (as do we all, of course, which makes my apology less than convincing I am sure).
I suspect that the very simple reason Erickson feels this way is that every death of every soldier makes him sad/upset because he feels that he may have been wrong. Therefore, of course his opponents must feel happy because they feel vindicated. His day consists of overcoming his emotional response and staying the course even though the world keeps punching him in the gut. Therefore his opponent’s day must consist of celebrating the evidence that comes their way making it easy to believe that they are correct. I suspect that hatred does cause the thought to be formed, it flows from the thought afterward. Yeah for false dichotomies ruining the world.
Just to be clear, the 2:52 post was NOT the real John Thullen. I’m going to send an email to the abuse line if this doesn’t stop.
“And is that the best you can do?”
About Rush Limbaugh? Not really.
In any case, we were discussing Erick Erickson. Do you feel documentation is lacking for his assertion that “leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider”?
I’m fairly sure that “Francis Joseph Donovan” on the Barbarians thread is another example of the troll, btw. Having argued the issue with a whole bunch of sincere religious nutcases, there’s something just a bit off about this one.
…of course, I could be paranoid, having got spoofed by the troll earlier. *gibbers, nibbles fingers*
OK, gang, I get the hint. I’ll work on the new site over the weekend. david, I’ll email you.
Looks like the only thing Erik hates more than lefties is spellcheck.
Tomaig,
It’s called Google. It’s in there somewhere.
I would imagine that your failure to find any documentation for the claim is probably closely related to your not bothering to look.
No doubt Rush is just a kind and benevolent soul being picked on by the VLWC.
Jeepers. I feel really, really repentant for having brought up the A word while in something of a snit this morning. Mea maxima culpa.
“I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson to write something like this”
It’s not that hard. He’s a loon. An angry, fulminating, mouth breathing loon. Does it make human less than human? No, of course not. But it does make him stupid.
There are a group of far right wingers who grew up during the Reagan “revolution”, gained sea legs at the knee of Gingrich and Limbaugh, and weaned on the idea that Americans were engaged in some sort of holy war with each other and winning all your points 100% of the time was the only outcome acceptable. Eric is one of these guys, and IMO he’s lost forever. Trying to figure out why he’s reacting the way he does is not hard. It’s how he was taught, and he’s just not bright enough to question his assumptions.
Hilzoy’s post:
Possibly this paragraph didn’t show up in some people’s browsers.
Jeepers. I feel really, really repentant for having brought up the A word while in something of a snit this morning. Mea maxima culpa.
Have more coffee. And a cookie.
I’m feeling somewhat repentant (though as an ex-Quaker, I find it impossible to go the full Mea maxima culpa route) for having leapt at your abortion bait and – mostly – for getting suckered by the troll.
Jeepers. I feel really, really repentant for having brought up the A word while in something of a snit this morning. Mea maxima culpa.
And I too am sorry I ran with it, frankly. But if it hadn’t been you, it would’ve been someone else, most likely, Andrew. Your comment was more point of departure than a specific focus, I hope.
BTW, did everyone hear the news? Brunn is a leftist! Strange, isn’t it?
@Adam Collyer (in a small voice in the great fizz) – Even worse: sophistry would require some actual attempt at argumentation, or at the very least a pair of functional ears. As joel hanes points out, it’s not even that, it is all performance for the sake of improving one’s standing with the like-minded.
BTW, did everyone hear the news? Brunn is a leftist! Strange, isn’t it?
it really is, considering that he hates liberals.
what a confused, crazy, black-hearted, bastard.
i’ll get that.
Beautiful post.
My nephew, age 20, is in the Army and set to deploy to Iraq later this year. Obviously I want him to come home ASAP, physically and psychically whole. Yet I remain left-of-center.
Obviously I’m not the only one.
By his (and most of conservative talk radio’s) own logic, if liberals are happy when a soldier dies or if the war they oppose is going poorly, republicans must rejoice every time a family loses their home or their job, since they oppose Obama’s economic policies.
I poked into the stories about Limbaugh’s Chelsea Clinton dog joke. It’s not easy to find evidence for it.
There are two separate incidents that get referenced, one in 1993, one in 1992.
The 1993 incident — which matches Hilzoy’s description — is mentioned in a lot of places, all of which seem to be refering to a newspaper column by Molly Ivins. I haven’t found any direct evidence of it, nor a date.
The Nov 6, 1992 incident was a slightly different thing. It definitely did happen; transcripts are easy to find. Limbaugh was talking about the change of the occupancy at the Whitehouse:
So, was Limbaugh making dog jokes about Chelsea Clinton? My guess is he was — the set-up and timing in the transcript I found are about right for a joke, and Limbaugh definitely did this sort of prop gag regularly– but he’s got plausible deniability.
That strikes me as about right. Right-wing talk radio — which my school bus driver had on every morning back then — wasn’t as baldly vicious then as it is now. They’ve had to up the dosage some to keep getting their highs.
I should add: None of this changes my opinion of Rush Limbaugh much. He’s the political equivalent of a bacterial infection. What bugs me about him though isn’t the things he says; its that our political immune system is weak enough that he has an audience. Limbaugh may not have started the Chelsea Clinton dog jokes, but they were everywhere when I was in school.
What Erick Erickson desperately needs is a good, old-fashioned ass-kicking. If this bag of pus ever said anything like this in my presence, I would happily break his nose for him.
Like so many of his rightwing pals, Erick thinks himself so very macho, albeit not man enough to actually join the Armed Forces, of course. I’d wager he would hit the sidewalk in two or three punches, if he didn’t crap his pants and faint beforehand.
A little context.
It’s reassuring that Slartibartfast says he isn’t among redstate’s fans, and of course some of that traffic comes from critical links like Hilzoy’s own. If fully half of the redstate.com traffic comes from people like us, that means that only 750,000 people read and approve of stuff written by the likes of Erickson.
And yes, of course he’s human. Saying that people are at risk of forgetting that is a bit of a strawman. Lots and lots of humans are horrible people.
Krugman has a great column about this. Follow the link below.
“No one — not liberals, not conservatives — should forget that their opponents are human beings.”
I no longer accept this as true. After the last 9 years, I am no longer capable of recognizing the humanity of Republicans. Given the unrelenting hatred; the effortless bigotry and mendacity; the sheer, unadulterated evil espoused by the GOP, I do not consider myself a member of the same species as the GOP and consider that organization and the people who support it to be nothing less than the enemies of the entire human race.
We are talking about people who are willing to murder us in our own churches! Why should we even pretend to recognize any humanity to be found in them?
Alan, in what way does what you wrote just now substantially differ from what Erick wrote?
Alan: what Catsy said. It is absolutely no better when we do it. Plus, thinking like that is what makes people do the things you object to.
There are people on this blog who are Republicans, and they have no desire to murder anyone in their church, any more than I wanted to blow things up when the Weathermen were active on my side, or kidnap Patty Hearst when the Symbionese Liberation Army was.
Jebus, get rid of Dr. Gonzo’s post. And whatever you do, DON’T CLICK THE LINK.
This is why I will never ever ever click a tinyurl link again.
It’s almost six years since Ann Coulter informed us, on national television, that “liberals want there to be lots of 9/11’s.” And, you know, it’s all worked out very well for her.
While I understand (and applaud) your desire to get under the hood and figure out what’s making these people tick, Hilzoy, I feel compelled to point out that there’s very little new here.
Sorry, I’m lining up with Alan, Uncle Kvetch, et al:
1) The Far Right has peddled mendacious vile slime since the Wars Against Clinton, and the GOP party apparatus and leadership has actively cheered them on for that long.
2) There is no equivalence – NONE – between an occasional on-line poster or commentor talking trash about the Right and the GOP, and the vile agitprop spread by an entire Party leadership and soi-disant news network 24/7 that has, in fact, no sh*t folks, led to a rise in murderous violence against the Right’s usual hate objects.
Polite is nice, y’know? But there comes a point when being polite is no longer nice, but delusional. The Right’s been pushing eliminationist rhetoric for at least 15 years, and the best that most of the “good” Republicans can muster is to say stuff like “Well, I don’t agree with their actions so please don’t tar me with the same brush” – this, after at least 15 years of at best enabling and at worst propagating the eliminationist rhetoric!
I am NOT going to worry about hurting their ever-so-fragile feelings, not when their ideological comrades are murdering people.
Erikson is writing about his own ego and messed up fantasy.
He is clueless about the military, their family and friends. He has a fantasy in his head of what the military is, mostly it is based on G.I. Joe doll commercials and Hollywood movies not the actual people.
CaseyL:
It’s not about hurting them, it’s about hurting you. Just as in the CS Lewis quote hilzoy used, the more you let yourself think of other people as “not human” the more of yourself you cut off. There is no “get out of species free” card (and I hear the Martian citizenship residency requirement is a *bitch*).
But I did not, as far as I recall, accuse you of celebrating Doctor Tiller’s death.
I suppose that makes it ok then to call me a homophobe and misogynist engaging in hate speech with no factual basis whatsoever. If it is allowed on this blog to smear somebody in this way with impunity, then hilzoy’s outrage rings a bit hollow, because treating opponents as “one big undifferentiated cartoonish mass” seems to be your favorite past-time.
“This is why I will never ever ever click a tinyurl link again.”
I didn’t click the link because I’d never click a tinyurl link. I keep trying to tell people why it’s an unbelievably bad idea to trust tinyurls.
You’d think folks had never heard of rickrolling, or 4chan, or spoofing on the internet….
CaseyL, how do you feel about rants about “the Far Left” and what “the Left” do? Any problem with that? Do you find it useful when people engage in such usages? If someone on “the Left” writes or does something, is it appropriate to hold you responsible? Should we hold “the Left” responsible for everything you say or do?
“I am NOT going to worry about hurting their ever-so-fragile feelings”
Whose feelings? Who is talking about anyone’s feelings? What’s that got to do with anything?
The fact is simply that neither “the Right” nor “the Left” consist of Borg. That’s all.
People are responsible for their own acts and statements; they’re not responsible for “the Right” or “the Left.”
“…not when their ideological comrades are murdering people.”
Ideological comrades of everyone murder people, if we lump generally enough. I’m a liberal, so I’m responsible for Pol Pot.
Some reasoning. Thinking like this is just a way to make people stupid.
I suppose that makes it ok then to call me a homophobe and misogynist engaging in hate speech
If you were making homophobic remarks and declaring yourself to be opposed to a woman’s right to choose abortion, what did you expect? Love and kisses?
The distinction is that I am reacting to what you say – and pointing out some pretty direct implications of what you say, if you declare that you believe no pregnant woman can be trusted to make good decisions about when/whether to terminate – but I’m not claiming you said/did what there’s no evidence of. You may believe that Doctor Tiller had no right to decide to offer late-term terminations of fetuses that were going to die anyway, to women whose health was at risk if they chose to continue the pregnancy. But that belief would make a person misogynistic: it wouldn’t necessarily mean they were sick enough to celebrate when Doctor Tiller was murdered.
But Erick thinks that when Andy was killed, we were “celebrating” because we were “excited”. That goes beyond anything. It really does,
then hilzoy’s outrage rings a bit hollow, because treating opponents as “one big undifferentiated cartoonish mass” seems to be your favorite past-time.
Actually, Hilzoy’s been pretty outraged against me too, at times. If it’s any consolation to you.
Absolutely, my opponents are all one big undifferentiated cartoonish mass of green silly putty and lego bricks. Thanks.
Dr. Science: “It’s not about hurting them, it’s about hurting you.”
Exactly.
“The distinction is that I am reacting to what you say – and pointing out some pretty direct implications of what you say”
I know you don’t want my opinion, Jes, so I’ll just say this once and drop it, but you’re very big on running together what you take to be “direct implications” of what someone says with what they actually said. You tend to treat the former exactly as if it were the latter, and as if there were no possible distinction between the two.
What you think someone must mean is actually often different from what they, in fact, do mean. No matter how unreasonable that obviously seems to you.
That’s where you constantly get into unnecessary trouble.
Now I’ll shut up again as regards your style.
Dr. Science: “It’s not about hurting them, it’s about hurting you.”
No, it’s not about that.
It’s about they’re fncking killing people. They’re terrorists – successful ones.
I don’t spend my every waking moment thinking about them, or hating them, or doing whatever it is that hurts one’s karma.
I just am not joining the Great Kumbaya Chorus looking for common ground with people who would cheerfully see me dead, imprisoned, or exiled.
“It’s about they’re fncking killing people.”
“They” don’t kill people. Neither “the Left” nor “the Right” kills people.
Generally, whenever people start ranting about “They,” it’s a good time to step back for a moment of self-examination.
When we quit noticing individuals, and can only talk about “They,” what we’re doing is dehumanizing people, and treating them as if they are homogenized.
This is what we are against Erickson doing. It’s what, I’d like to think, we’re against anyone doing.
There’s no such thing as dehumanizing and homogenizing In A Good Cause. It doesn’t suddenly become A Good Thing to hatefully generalize just because we’re doing this.
See “abysses, staring into.”
Casey: Seb is not killing people. Andy was — well, he didn’t kill anyone, and he was pretty clear on the distinction between civilians and soldiers. Von is not killing people. This matters.
“we know our current troll can spoof an IP address, because otherwise, it would long since have been permanently banned”
Well, no. Our friend has been IP-hopping, and we’re playing whack-a-troll.
BTW, a number of posts have now gone into the memory hole, and a few others have had the names changed to protect the innocent.
This is the real Slarti. Some of the other posts weren’t, and they’re getting “adjusted” slightly to reflect their woeful lack of authenticity.
I just am not joining the Great Kumbaya Chorus looking for common ground with people who would cheerfully see me dead, imprisoned, or exiled.
While I share your outrage at those “who would cheerfully see [people] dead, imprisoned, or exiled” I’d like some assurance that you’re not one of them.
I keep being amazed by the depths that conservative commentators will sink to (how about that Wiley Drake?) but their offense is not that they’re conservatives but that they’re liars, demagogues and thugs.
Conservatives are people I disagree with, demagogues and thugs are people who threaten to destroy our society, if you can’t tell the difference (and it can be challenging these days) you’re liable to wind up on the wrong side of the real struggle.
NB: I figure you just want to express your outrage which is understandable and appropriate, I don’t actually assume you’re some kind of zealot but I do think the stakes in the rhetorical game couldn’t be higher.
If you look at the shootings and the bomb plot that have happened recently the common thread is that they were all crazy people who believed nonsense that evil (or at least extremely irresponsible) people told them. The answer has to be an insistence on reasoned debate not an escalation of violent nonsense.
“Generally, whenever people start ranting about “They,” it’s a good time to step back for a moment of self-examination.”
Either that, or it is a good time to carefully define “they”.
Erick is part of something. He’s part of a pattern. The pattern is the use of hateful, overheated demonizing rhetoric deleivered by a very large percentage of those Repubicans who are in the position to be public speakers through the media and/or in Congress over the last decade or more. It is is not lumping all Republicans into a cartoonish army of nonhumans to acknowledge the fact that over the last decade or so the majority of those Republicans who have public platforms in the media have indulged in language that falls in the range from bullying to outright eliminationist rheotric with a lot of lying thrown in.
That rhetoric is linked to violence. The guy who shot up the Unitarian church wrote in his diary that he was inspired by a rightwing radio personality. The guy who shot the three cops did so because he believed that the Obama administration was after his guns–a lie promoted by Faux news and an array of Republican politicians. The rhetoric that provided the justification for the murder of Dr. Tiller came in part from O’Reilly and from the rightwing religious fanatics of Operation Rescue. So there is a connection between the pattern of over the top hateful rhetoric from the Republican party and rightwing terrorism.
CaseyL just needs to be more precise about who “they” are.
CaseyL:
When you say “this (group, behavior, whatever) is not human”, you are not telling the truth. In addition to my moral reaction, I’m a biologist, and I invariably find that the behavior people are most ready to label “inhuman”, “not a human being”, etc., is in fact *precisely* human. Frequently-made comparisons are insults to weasels, snakes, and things that live under rocks. There are no “vicious” wolves, because wolves have no vice — though there may be vicious dogs, because we’ve made them into half-people, psychologically.
When you label someone “inhuman”, you are stating “there is no way that could be me, there is no commonality between me and that behavior.” If there’s one thing we learned in the 20th century, it is that this is a delusion. It is *always* us, it is always pure 100% human behavior with no non-human ingredients going on.
I’m just waiting for some of y’all to decide whether I’m human or not. I’m a patient man, though.
Doctor Science @ 10:41 — well said.
Going far afield from the usual discourse here, here’s a quote from Solzhenitsyn and a poem from Thich Nhat Hahn:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
**********
And from Thich Nhat Hahn:
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the
surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the
clear water of a pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly
weapons to Uganda.
I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee
on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after
being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with
plenty of power in my hand,
and I am the man who has to pay his
“debt of blood” to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes
flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it
fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs
at once,
so that I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
What I don’t understand is why a person chooses to center their understanding of political life around hating. It is, as Dr. Science says, an all-to-human behavior. I can see why the Republican party chose hatemongering and fearmongering as political tactics; since the Republican party has done little for the US in the last hundred years except help the rich, pander to corporate power and deliver federal dollars to special interest groups, they have to have some message to sucker the not-rich into voting for them. What I don’t understand is the people who fall for it.
Most of the women who volunteer at my local dog rescue are wingnuts. They leave racist jokes on the table in the break room and say things like “Obama is not my President.” None are wealthy. They all love dogs and work really hard without pay at the rescue. I like all of them and I am in awe of how hard the director works and the good she has done. I really don’t get why their view of politics is so paranoid, insular, and angry.
Slarti, I have always figured you are as human as I am. Of course, that may not really make things any clearer according to some people that know me.
I wonder whether hilzoy (and others who focus on whether Erickson is just not being virtuous) is unsympathetic to a structural account here. Reading the stuff at Red State is very similar to reading dense tracts of late official East German historical materialism, to pick an example – I’m just not sure that I share enough background assumptions to have a meaningful political conversation with, say, Erich Honecker in 1986. Too much work had been put in to the conscious creation of a particular worldview.
This kind of view just gets up and running more quickly nowadays. It may be more shallow, but in some cases it is more intense: here it is tethered to an explicit self-consciousness that RS is some kind of virtual vanguard.
I don’t know what the category “bad faith” means in the situation where you’re talking across that kind of basically subcultural divide.
Rush said it on the November 6, 1992 episode of his TV show, Tomaig. You’re welcome.
I’m just waiting for some of y’all to decide whether I’m human or not.
well played, a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test”>Dr. Turing.. but i’m afraid this kind of analysis take time.
So, here I am at a bit after Midnight Friday (Saturday morning) and I’ve read most but not all of the comments, including the ones that went WAAAYYYY far afield, and I have to say: Erickson succeeded.
Remember, one of the main tenets of wingnut conservatism is pissing off the liberals! There are at least 142 comments ahead of this one. A highly unusual number for this or any other blog post.
I’d say EE pissed us off good and proper (and got a number of us sniping at each other, too). Success, wot?
I think that you have to consider posters like that, on blogs like that, to be trolls from the start, even if they own the blog.
F
I find it both saddening and amusing to note that in response to this post, we have people arguing that we should lump EE and pals into one tidy inhuman mass to hate viscerally and that not doing so is obviously only caused by concern for their feelings.
And yet, I assume that part of what pisses this person off is the fact that EE anc co use this exact same farking argument when talking about why we should invade/glass all of the middle east. Good lord,people, even if you can’t follow the fairly simple moral argument hilzoy is making, you hopefully can understand the tactical utility in her position, since you have likely been arguing the point re:Muslims for the last 8 years.
I’m just waiting for some of y’all to decide whether I’m human or not. I’m a patient man, though.
I thought you were that Fjord-designer from Magrathea. Humanoid? Yes, but that may be just convergent evolution.
If you were making homophobic remarks and declaring yourself to be opposed to a woman’s right to choose abortion, what did you expect?
The thing is: I didn’t make homophobic remarks and I don’t oppose a woman’s right to choose. Also, what Gary said. ANd I didn’t mean to
oops, continued:
And I didn’t mean to attack hilzoy, as I realize that she probably has better things to do than baby-sit each and every comment on this blog, so apologies.
It is is not lumping all Republicans into a cartoonish army of nonhumans to acknowledge the fact that over the last decade or so the majority of those Republicans who have public platforms in the media have indulged in language that falls in the range from bullying to outright eliminationist rheotric with a lot of lying thrown in.
Exactly. Well put, wonkie.
As the years go by I find that I’m less and less interested in knowing what lies in the heart of political actors, or what they’re “really” thinking. Did George Bush invade Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East, or to show up his old man, or as an exercise in machismo? Is Barack Obama’s pragmatic centrism heartfelt, or is he really a thwarted progressive? Does Ann Coulter really believe that liberals want there to be lots of 9/11’s, or is she just making a buck? These may be very interesting questions in the abstract, but I don’t see where they get you.
Let’s keep our eyes on the ball here: what do people say, and what do they do? What Erickson said is part of a much larger, well-entrenched pattern of slander from the most prominent representatives of “conservatism” in this country. What should the response be from those who are the targets of this slander? That’s the central question to my mind, and I don’t have an easy answer. But going round & round on the “does he really mean it?” carousel does not strike me as particularly useful.
Pardon my rambling–coffee’s just kicking in…
“Let’s keep our eyes on the ball here: what do people say, and what do they do?”
A good point, and well said.
Sometimes political theater is just theater. Sometimes it’s not.
And sometimes the distinction between the two is kinda academic.
Mainstream political rhetoric on the right regularly includes justifications for and outright incitements to violence.
The tolerance of that needs to end.
BTW three members of a Minutemen-type organization did a home invasion of a Mexican American family and killed a nine year old girl.
It is a crime that was justified by the killers by the use of the rhetoric of the Minutemen.
The killers may be people who live in a fantasy world of faux heroism–heroes in their own eyes–with no actual connection to the faux-heroes of the better known Minutemen organization. The female killer has a long history of violent behavior and is descried by the local police as a psychopath. In a minute I’ll try to post some links or references.
This is from News 4 of Tucson, Arizona. Near as I can figure the website is www. kvoa.com.
“David Marino reports on arrest of Arivaca suspects
Head of a minuteman group arrested for double homicide
TUCSON, AZ – Three people have been arrested in connection with last months deadly double homicide in Arivaca that left a nine-year-old and her father dead. One of the people arrested for the homicide is the National Executive Director of the Minuteman American Defense group (M.A.D.), a group known for patrolling the border, and is dedicated to “Defending America’s Borders” according to their website – http://minutemenamericandefense.org/
Jason Eugene Bush, 38, Shawna Forde, 42 and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 43, were all taken into custody and charged in connection with the murders of 29-year-old Raul Flores and 8-year-old Brisenia Flores. Both were killed during an alleged home invasion.
According to authorities, Bush, Forde, and Gaxiola broke into the home of the Flores family just after midnight on May 30th. At the time, the mother, father and daughter were home. The invaders reportedly shot the three members of the Flores family, killing the father, Raul, and the daughter, Brisenia. The invaders then left the scene.”
Flores was known to be involved in drug trafficking.
Shawna Forde was involved in one of those boader watch events organized by a coalition of Minutemen-type organizations. Her own organization might not be much more than a website. Well, that and three killers.
Farther down in article is the quote from the police officer who describes Forde as a psychopath.
I do not believe that people like Buchhanan, Tancredo and Lou Dobbs who routinely say things which are untrue and xenophobic are directly responsible for the behavior of three psychos in Arizona. On the other hand the three psychos are acting in a way that is the logical extension of the sorts of things Dobbs, Tancredo and Buchanan say so there is a connection. Perhaps Forde would have killed someone sooner or later regardless of overheated, irresponsible rightwing rhetoric on TV; the sketchy info in the article about her does make her out to be a timebomb. Nevertheless when the mainstream media allows itself to be used as a platform for hate rhetoric and misinformation, the hate rhetoric and misinformation is legitimized and spread and becomes the rationale or the inpsiration for acts by unhinged, marginal people. The point I am working around to here is that not only are many Republicans responsible for creating the kind of cultural environment that encourages wackos to kill their neighbors, but the media is too. The media is very, very much to blame for continuing to treat Republcans who are rightwing extremists like normal people just because they happen to be members of politicians or their relatives, well-known Republican spokespersons or conservative media figures.
Hit “post” too soon, as usual.
That last phrase should read “just because they happen to be politicians”. For get the “members of”, please.
“Remember, one of the main tenets of wingnut conservatism is pissing off the liberals!”
efgoldman has a point. So, to that extent, Erickson has succeeded.
I’d say to Alan and CaseyL that their anger and frustration is understandable. But now that we have the ball, Democrats need not become like the right wing of the Republican Party and function narrow-mindedly.
If I were a moderate Republican, I’d be more angry at the heads of my own party than the opposition for turning the GOP playbook into, as wonkie said, full of hate-mongering and fear-mongering — and, ultimately, ruinous.
I’ll leave with a Chinese proverb that I saw under the blotter of a manager’s desk yesterday. It fits the situation we are talking about here. (I found it ironic it was under this manager’s blotter since he has well-known anger management issues; then again, having this reminder at his desk is a good sign, I hope.)
“Do not create in anger what you lack in reason.”
—the real btfb
Gary nailed it. I think ObWi’s subtitle should be changed to:
The fact is simply that neither “the Right” nor “the Left” consist of Borg.
Hey, btfb, I’m glad to hear from you! I worry about you.
That is a great quote. I have trouble disciplining myself to communicate in a way that isn’t designed to piss people off. The real way to win an argument is to change the other person’s mind and that doesn’t happen if one puts the other person on the defensive or pisses them off. There is (to me at least) a seductive satisfaction to scoring points, but that comes from conceptualizing the converstion as a boxing match: pow! Sock ’em! What hilzoy does so very well is to conceptualize the conversation as communication (what a concept!)and she just explains carefully and reasonably what she thinks, resorting to emotion only very judiciously and within the context of communication.
Unfortuanately our corporate media conceptualizes political discourse as a boxing match and they promote the flashiest, most colorful boxers. The media acts like it is all a game, just theater, like no one really means anything they say and there are no real life consequences influenced by the tone of the conversation.
SDG: If you read down this far, thanks for the explanation. My understanding is that the difference is whether the arguer considers sex as something that can or should exist without the possibility reproduction. Obviously, this is a simplistic way of putting it, and doesn’t take into consideration infertile couples, for example, but it seems to be the basis. Reproduction is a part of the process, and denying it is denying a part of sexuality. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I disagree, because I feel that sex has other important purposes than just reproduction and all purposes of an action don’t have to be realized to make something worthwhile. For example, I’m growing a vegetable garden this year. Because it was the first year I planted, costs were higher. I’m also sharing vegetables with another family, who isn’t doing well financially right now. This means that, while a garden is a good money-saving strategy and that may be the main purpose for many people, I might actually lose a little money on it this year.
However, my reasoning for planting the garden is fresh produce and getting my kids involved (I have a vague hope that they’ll eat the vegetables because they helped grow them). I may not realize one purpose of the activity – one which may be the most important purpose for some people – but that does not lessen it, as another equally important purpose will be realized.
Not the best analogy, I’m sure, but it’ll do.