I am not a shrinking violet. In my time writing online I’ve had people email my professors to yell at them about my politics, I’ve had an ex-girlfriend be harassed at a bar, I’ve had people post my address in the comments at other sites, I’ve had people post anti-Semitic and racist remarks using my name, I’ve had people tell me insults about my dead parents, and so on. I once got an email that had nothing but pictures of my house taken from Google Streetview. All of this, I chalk up to the petty dangers of speaking your mind.
For some time now, I’ve been of the opinion that the comprehensive rot and disease within American conservatism has obscured a less intense, less pervasive, but still very real sickness within American liberalism. I think for reasons of both principle and politics there’s a lot of reform that needs to happen. This is not a “both sides do it!” argument. Just as I have never said that Democrats and Republicans are the same, just as I have never said that partisan politics don’t matter, I have not and am not saying that liberalism or progressivism or whatever are just as unhealthy as movement conservatism. But so many of the procedural, social insults that are levied by liberals against conservatives– that they value party over principle, that they are animated by resentment and anger rather than by conviction, that they are really a social and cultural group rather than a political one– these all seem to me to be true of movement liberalism as well. People are free to disagree, and I won’t bore you with going over the particulars again. The issue is that people expect politics to be about teams and when you aren’t a member of a team, like Team Obama or Team Democrat, they get mad in a way that they don’t towards people who disagree with them on substance. They disagree with a political opponent, but they hate an apostate.
My regular reader and commenter Heliopause wrote recently, “Looks like Balloon Juice and Lawyers Guns and Money have decided on a coordinated assault.” And lo, it came to pass.
Both Balloon Juice and Lawyers Guns and Money operate on a very basic principle: commenters, operating under the protection of pseudonymity, can say the really nasty things without fear. So on both blogs, the bloggers tread right up to those lines and then let the commenters go nuts, knowing that the comments will soon descend into a cesspool of personal insult, ugliness, and perpetual line-crossing. Because they don’t write those words themselves, they don’t have to worry about personal consequences. Because almost all of their commenters hide behind internet anonymity, they know no one will be held personally accountable. So that’s how you get people saying virulently sexist stuff about Megan McArdle, attacking Glenn Greenwald for living in Brazil, attacking Greenwald’s husband, telling lie after lie about who I am and what I believe. Personally, I find this the behavior of bullies, but maybe that’s just me.
Well, I don’t have an army of rabid, anonymous commenters, and I don’t have the protection of a job, and I don’t have the visibility of writing for a big publication. But I refuse to be bullied by people who are unable or unwilling to fight without chumming the water for a mob that can say what it wants without consequence. I have done this for a long time. I have fought with paleocons, neocons, movement cons, libertarians, liberaltarians, liberals, progressives, leftists, anarchists, socialists, communists, Maoists, Trotskyites, social democrats, Tories, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, reds, Yellow and Blue Dogs, jacobins and reactionaries, bohemians and bourgeoisie, Gen X, Gen Y, Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation, academics and anti-academics, full profs with tenure and adjuncts alike, pacifists and militarists, techno-optimists, techno-skeptics, school reformers, environmentalists, corporatists, fundamentalists, atheists, Israelis, Palestinians, reform Jews and Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, Brooklynites and Texans, and probably with you. I was on Robert Stacy McCain’s dishonor roll for a long time, and I’m perfectly happy to be on LGM’s too. It’s all the same to me.
The cause that people like those at LGM and Balloon Juice have taken up, the cause of social justice and equality, is the single most important effort in the world. Because it’s so important, it is necessary and good for people to disagree with how best to wage it. That some people think they own that mission and take it personally when other people have their own ideas about how best to accomplish it is not my concern. It’s funny; these blogs are, above all things, the enforcers of the idea that Teh Politics are always more important than anything else. That was why, for instance, people at both blogs worked so aggressively in 2012 to forbid discussion of drones and their victims, because we all had to be good Obama Democrats. But for all of this dogged insistence that politics are all that matters, I don’t think that the way they operate is smart politics. I don’t think digging these swamps of anger and personal insult is a way to attract anyone to your cause. Not people who aren’t already convinced. I think, in fact, that associating your movement with such vicious, personal nastiness is in fact a recipe for long-term political disaster, that the tired, blank John Stewart-style condescension and mockery that has come to define movement liberalism is an exhausted and useless way to interact. I think their way is a mistake. Perhaps time will tell.
Now: it’s my summer, after this weekend, and I have a ton of work to do and a ton of fun to have. But you all know how to reach me. I’m at your disposal.
Update: Since it seems like everyone’s gotten their various points out, including the crazies, I’m gonna close up shop on the comments. I’m worn out!
“Looks like Balloon Juice and Lawyers Guns and Money have decided on a coordinated assault.”
Possibly because you went to both sites and posted something obnoxious about the commentors.
Nope, that’s an out-and-out lie. I went to LGM after they posted something about me first. Same with Balloon Juice. I didn’t swing first, but I did fight back. So please retract what you just said.
I won’t retract it. AT LGM, at least, you got linked to by a front pager and politely engaged on the merits of your argument.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/05/clearly-careerism-talking
You responded with a temper tantrum.
So in other words, your order of events was factually incorrect, but you feel like sticking to it anyway.
By the way, it says something about what a toxic place LGM is that you call that polite.
Please to be citing anything in that post that you feel was “impolite.”
Since you dislike posting under pseudonyms, I shall use my actual name to suggest that you look up the Streisand Effect and apply lessons as necessary before you go complaining about the mean liberals next time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
You aren’t doing yourself any favors.
Oh, and if anybody wants to retaliate and yell at the professors at my school (Guilford College) in the history or geology departments, please don’t bother…
This is finals week and they are busy enough.
You get that the crowd that you come from is not the whole world, right? The piece in question for more hits, tweets, and positive comments and emails than any other blog post I’ve written.
This response is illustrating the point: you guys mistake your little gang for the whole world.
I was too busy being an objectively despicable person (while taking time off a paper on Mary of Scots and Earl of Shrewsbury) to notice that my progressive co-travelers do not, in fact, constitute the entirety of Western Civilization and the American polity in particular.
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll go back to being an objectively despicable person again and keep that in mind. Please carry on with the victimization in progress.
Thanks for keeping at it.
“Coordinated assault”? You really think that Scott Lemieux and John Cole got together and tried to organize a pincer movement? “Listen, Scott, you do the lefty-lawyer angle and I’ll do the over-the-top foul-mouthed veteran; bring in the regular commenters and by golly, we’ll have this Freddie fellow wrapped up by morning. If we need an Air Force, Farley must have one lying around. Worst case, we’ll get Doug J to pretend to think something he doesn’t and Loomis will put Freddie’s head on a stick.” That how it went? Or maybe you wrote something kinda dumb and got ridiculed and lashed out in response and opened yourself up to counter-punching, and responded kinda dumber. Back away from the keyboard, dude. Or, as you might put it: Please retract this!
Do have a wonderful summer, preferably off the grid.
No, not literally, and I don’t think Heliopause meant that they were literally emailing each other, just that they were both working according to the same playbook at the same time.
Yes, the “playbook” of writing things that disagree with things that other people write on the internets. Do you really think most people haven’t noticed that your whining and civility policing is a convenient way of not defending any of your specious claims (“all liberals now oppose the due process of law!” “Free speech means wealthy people get to keep their current sinecure forever no matter what they say!”) on the merits, which you still haven’t?
Please find and quote where I said either of those things.
Oh, you can’t? Because I didn’t say any such things?
Yeah.
How about a link to an LGM comment where someone said Greenwald should go to Gitmo?
It’s a little late to demand exact quotation rather that slightly (in Scott’s case, less so in yours) exaggerated paraphrase.
In any case, for “all liberals now oppose the due process of law!”:
If you want to quibble that your universals were in some way qualified (i.e., elite; online??) then it’s similarly charitable to read Scott’s quantifier as similarly scoped (“All” as in a very wide swath that you take as strongly representative).
Cheers.
Look, Scott, Ralph Nader said something sometime in the last 15 years, don’t you need to go back and write 5000 blog posts about it? Defending us all from that menace surely takes precedence over all this. Go in peace, my son *blessings*
Well that gives lie to the idea that the blog posts were “coordinated” then, doesn’t it? For one who’s continuing academic efforts are focused on language & rhetoric, using the word “coordinated” in a way that is exactly opposite it’s meaning seems, well, problematic.
Writing is not, sadly, his strong suit. Nor is thinking. But, credit where credit is dues, he is a world class whiner.
Oops: due.
There’s nothing to retract; I said what I think about these tactics and you or anyone is free to disagree.
You already retracted (at 2:51). So now you are retracting your retraction. It’s hard to keep up, I know, but do try.
I note, again, that the nefarious “tactic” to which you refer is “writing blog posts that engage arguments on the merits.” That you prefer to whine about some comments rather than defend your arguments speaks for itself, and given the quality of your arguments I might have to resort to smarmy civility trolling too.
I will concede, however, that it was only “elite” “online” liberals who you asserted as opposing the rights of the accused. Needless to say, this claim isn’t any less devoid of evidence.
Please note that he is whining about comments, but never any specifically. What is the “line” being crossed? I’ve been reading the comments. I’ve been participating (and participated here as well). I fail to see anything over the line.
Now, Freddy mentioned that someone mailed a picture of his school to him, which is most definitely beyond the pale, but that was certainly not encouraged by LGM or any of the commenters.
All I see in the comments are people ripping Freddy’s poor arguments, and people mocking him for his long history of a boring contrarian. Is that beyond the pale? Is that a “fevered swamp”? Is that even bullying?
So when they argue with me, that’s argument, but when I argue back, that’s illegitimate. It’s almost– almost– as if you just don’t like me, but want to find some sort of meta-argument to use against me!
Incidentally, I’m not sure that my point is that people are crossing the line. I like to argue, like I said. I’m used to this. My point is that the reality of the mass anonymity of the commenters at these sites allows them to behave in ways that they would not want to be held accountable for in public life, and this creates a deep and unfortunate argumentative problem.
Freddie, with all respect, you seem to be shaky on this “argument” concept.
“Does it ever occur to you guys that your commenters are objectively despicable people?”
Not really an argument on the merits of the post.
“Enjoy your HUAC meeting, fellas! Why you want to live this way– why you want to bathe in this swamp– I will never know. But I’m sure you’ll redbait your way to liberal paradise any day now. Lord knows, siccing your enormous, frightening band of pseudonymous McCarthyites against a grad student who writes a personal blog on WordPress will bring about that permanent Democrat majority I keep reading about. Say hi to Mickey Kaus for me.”
“[Glenn Greenwald should be in Gitmo, something misogynistic about Megan McArdle, Muslims aren’t human, all the rest of the LGM commenter boilerplate]”
Also not really an argument on the merits . . .
So when they argue with me, that’s argument, but when I argue back, that’s illegitimate.
No, the problem is that you’re not making any arguments. Your responses have been exclusively devoted to 1)whining about tone, and 2)made up generalizations about commenters. If you would actually engage any counterargument in the merits, that would be most welcome, but I’m not holding my breath.
LGM has banned me because I’m opposed to the amount of control that Wall Street and AIPAC have over our political system.
Uh, no–you were banned for overt antisemitism
Yeah, Wall Street – you know, The Jews!
what antisemitism? i stated repeatedly that i am a fan of Norman Finkelstein AIPAC and Wall Street like to think that everyone who opposes their agenda is an antisemite.
It is unquestionably true that AIPAC and Wall Street- and yes, the Jewish lobby- exerts an undue and grotesque influence over our society.
For what it’s worth, I was banned by those whining crybabies at LGM too.
Oh Hector…
There were other reasons you were banned.
So, you’ve said. You also said a lot of other things that everyone else regarded as anti-Semitic. Perhaps you need to consider whether you are communicating effectively.
I confess to being utterly uninterested in what AIPAC and the Anti-Defemation league regard as anti-Semitic, Chris. Whining crybabies will always throw a sh*t-fit whenever they’re criticized. What matters is the opinions of the parents, not the children.
“I like Norman Finkelstein” is to anti-semitism what “some of my best friends are black” is to white-supremacism.
Anti-Semitism is nothing more than a trivial nonentity in modern America, dedc79. It’s usually a term of abuse used to shut down people making legitimate criticisms of Judaism, Zionism, Jewish culture or the State of Israel.
Some of us think that ideas should be judged based on criteria like truth, virtue, morality and factuality, not on whether they offend against ‘anti-semitism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘sexism’ or other sacred cows of our time.
Do I have to ban you, as well, Hector?
It would be one thing if these sites wedded the red-meat rhetorical style to actually doing something or changing anything, but their energies seem most stoked by defending the status quo of the Democratic Party as it exists and dismissing any challenges to its leaders, particularly Obama. It’s not all black and white; Lemieux and Farley and Loomis are the worst at LGM, while the others are less so, and Cole at BJ (I guess because he’s an apostate Republican) is a little more willing to challenge the party line and think for himself. But, for years, and particularly in 2012, the level of undisguised rage, contempt, and hysteria directed at any challenges from the left has been remarkable. Progressives like to think of conservatives as tribalists, but these sites demonstrate regularly that it isn’t a trap limited to one side of the political spectrum. Disturbing stuff.
Wise people like to think of humans as tribalists.
any challenges from the left
Assumes facts that are exceedingly not in evidence.
If you say so. Ralph needs fightin’, son!
OK fine,
I am an overt leftist in that I call for the expropriation of resources from the rich and socialism.
I do not believe Freddie DeBoer is a leftist. I see no economic analysis in anything he ever writes. I do see him defending plutocrats like Donald Sterling against his workers who refuse to work for him anymore.
Now, where is the facts in evidence that Freddie is to the left of me? Please provide citations.
Here’s one: I think the right of innocent Muslims to not be killed is more important than the political career of Barack Obama.
Freddie,
What are your beliefs about capitalism and socialism? Economic questions are actually the historical definition of what it means to be “left.” Please delineate.
Also, I believe the rights of women to have an abortion, gays to get married, workers to have a union, people to live in a clean environment, OSHA to have funding, etc., i.e., the huge differences between the two parties, are more important than your right to feel morally above the two choices you have in a presidential election.
It’s really astounding the lengths you go to to avoid discussing your repeated justification of conditions that have led to the rampant loss of Muslim life. Not just justification, but virulent attacks on anyone who takes that loss of life seriously. You can dance and dance but you can’t get away from the fact that you think being a good Democrat is more important than opposing a war on Islam.
Re: Also, I believe the rights of women to have an abortion, gays to get married,
Should surprise no one that abortion ‘rights’ and gay ‘marriage’ rate much higher on Eric Loomis’ list (who the hell is Eric Loomis?) than labour unions. Says all you need to know about the moral vacuity of cultural liberalism right there.
Freddie,
What are your positions on capitalism and socialism?
See, I don’t think you are a leftist in any way. I think you are a poseur. I think you couldn’t talk to a member of the working class if your life depended on it. I don’t think you have any critique of capitalism at all. I think you just want to pose as morally superior to the choices we have in this nation at this time. I see absolutely no evidence ever of any economic analysis coming from you. None.
Because you are not a leftist. You are someone who is happy to defend a plutocrat like Donald Sterling against his own players and the players’ union.
Your life project isn’t liberation. It’s jerking off to your positions that are so far removed from the lives of everyday Americans as to make you a complete irrelevancy who has never done a single concrete thing, at least according to available evidence, to advance any kind of struggle or even give anyone a tool with which to do so yourself.
You are great at allowing your blog to become a place where anti-Semites and racists hang out and feel comfortable though, so that’s pretty cool.
As to the substance of the war on Islam, as I have said many, many times before, it is bad that both parties have effectively the same position here (although one is worse than the other), but that in the society we have right now, when we vote for president, we have to make the choice between the two people in front of us. Opting out of that says to everyone–working Americans, women, gays and lesbians, everyday citizens–that the effects of a Republican administration don’t matter here because of my one pet issue.
The reality is that politics are complicated. The fact that you don’t operate in the actual world means you don’t have to admit that.
But keep on pretending to be a leftist you poseur.
I don’t know why you aren’t grasping this: I have no interest in justifying myself to you. I am not concerned with your opinion on my politics, because of what your politics are. It’s just more red baiting centrism and I’m not interested.
Where hoping for a world where we can have full socialism is “red-baiting centrism.” Freddie, do you at least understand political terminology? Do you understand that for me to be red-baiting you, you actually have to be a red? Which means a socialist. Do you understand that?
than the political career of Barack Obama.
Yes, plainly the only reason one might not be indifferent to the results of the 2012 presidential election is because one has an interest in Barack Obama’s political well-being for its own sake. And don’t kid yourself, as soon as Antonin Scalia becomes the median vote on the Supreme Court any killing of innocent Muslims will stop, just like Nixon immediately brought the troops home in 1969.
What do you care about LGM and Balloon? Let them be, just don’t read them. There’s plenty of annoying shit in the universe that is to be avoided, because it can’t be changed.
Last I checked (it’s be awhile) Fred was assigned front page rights on Balloon Juice. Instead of whining out here why not post your argument on the front page there since that is where your fight is at? Infact why did you stop posting there in the first place?
Personally, I think that the problem is not their nastiness so much as their unwillingness and inability to engage with anything that doesn’t fit into their script. Dogmatism, IOW. Anything outside the script, they don’t know how to react, other than with (also scripted) inept sarcasm, pedantry (see Bijan Parsia), contempt, and insults. It’s just so boring.
So this is where trolls from Crooked Timber end up after they get banned.
/I wonder if Scent of Violets is around here somewhere.
These fools know that they’re losing the war of ideas, so they’re turning on each other in an intnecine bloodbath. They substitute political fads and fashions for facts.
As a liberal I usually make donations to Planned Parenthood or my favorite Dem candidates but obviously from now on I shall make my donations to the Donald Sterling and Brendan Eich legal defense funds. It’s millionaire white male bigots who are the true victims in our society. And dougj once made a funny about Megan Mcardle, so all Obama supporters are obviously raging misogynists.
Thanks for showing me the light, Freddie!
Good god what a tiresomely familiar comment. Do you really – I mean really – think this is a persuasive point? This type of mock-sarcastic vitriol is so juvenile and so unoriginal and so irrelevant. None – none – of what Freddie was arguing was premised on sympathy for people like Sterling or Eich. And yet you and your ilk continue to make that category error over and over and over again. I suppose you think it has some type of rhetorical effect. Or maybe you’re just helplessly deluded and don’t know how to argue in any other way.
DougJ and (much more so) TBogg are not misogynists because they “made a funny” about Megan McCardle. They are misogynists because they shower McCardle – and Sarah Palin, and Briston Palin, et al – with sexist abuse on a regular basis. By that I mean to say they do not merely attack these women for being wrong; they attack them in ways particular to their female identity. TBogg in particular. He is incapable of criticizing McCardle or the Palin without commenting on their personal appearance or their sexual habits. It is garden variety misogyny.
So, maybe this will help:
i·ro·ny1
ˈīrənē,ˈiərnē/
noun
the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
If that puts him in the “blank John Stewart-style condescension and mockery” category thats fine. Stewart has done more to highlight conservative stupidity and evil than LGM, BJ and Freddy put together.
He’s done a lot. I think it’s time for liberals to move past that. I could be wrong.
I don’t see why Jon Stewart and Bill Moyer can’t coexist. Also, Voltaire’s Prayer comes to mind. The only people who can’t stand mockery are the ones who truly deserve it.
Now who said I can’t take mockery? I mean… I usually do!
Cheap irony is the security blanket of the lifestyle liberal.
It sounds you’re saying that liberals should be dour, hand-wringing wet blankets. Noted.
I think a lot of conservatives miss those days, too, but there’s nothing stopping them from finding their own Colbert – aside from the fact that they they’re not-so-secretly projecting about the whole humorless thing.
Brendan Eich and, yes, Donald Sterling, certainly seem to be less morally objectionable than Abortions-R-Us…sorry, “Planned Parenthood.”
You get that I don’t like Rich or Sterling, right?
I don’t like Sterling either, but I find the murder of innocent unborn children to be worse than some racist private comments.
My take on this is that Freddie was (fairly uncharacteristically) confused about something—to put the matter briefly he isn’t comfortable with using majority social pressure as a weapon, even though you can and should when you’re lucky enough to have it—and he posted about it, sincerely asking what he was missing. (IMO, Freddie, we can’t do anything when social pressure is used for bad causes. And it is, and it will be… and to abstain from using it for good causes whenever possible will not change that.)
Anyway instead of discussing it in good faith, and correcting him in good faith, the folks at LGM and Balloon Juice went after him like a pack of rabid hyenas. Look at Lemieux on this very page, trying to turn Freddie’s inquiry into Freddie’s sworn doctrine. They really are assholes.
Calling his takedown of Isquith’s Salon piece an “inquiry” is more than a bit charitable, don’t you think?
Let’s see if we can find some common ground on the facts of how this argument has transpired. Here’s how it went down from my perspective.
1. Elias Isquith’s Salon piece went after Julian Sanchez and others.
2. Freddie didn’t like that, so he wrote a very critical response, including ad hominems about how Isquith lacked the courage to call Sanchez a racist.
3. Lemieux saw Freddie’s piece, and felt that it lacked evidence for key claims — the first claim being that liberals feel that Woody Allen and Jameis Winston should be denied due process, and the second claim being that the liberal view of free speech has ever included a universal right to retain one’s job no matter what they say.
4. When asked to supply evidence for these two claims, Freddie demurred, retreating back to his much more circumspect observation that Isquith was overly dismissive of Sanchez’s position that, because the racism was discovered by recording a private conversation, Donald Sterling would be right to say that it’s none of our business whether he’s a racist or not. It may very well be that Isquith was too harsh on Sanchez, but that’s not the entirety of what Freddie said, and his lack of interest in defending his other claims is notable in assessing whether he’s arguing in good faith or just trying to score points, as he claims his opponents are. The Allen, Winston, Eich, and Sterling examples were all parts of Freddie’s argument, but instead of defending the response to those on the merits, he decided to make it all about whether Isquith was mean to Sanchez, who, it must be pointed out, didn’t exactly show a lot of class himself when discussing this topic.
But, hey, if you think this is all about Freddie just “asking questions”, tell me where I’ve read this timeline wrongly and we can have that conversation.
Meh, my bad on the HTML there.
Freddie:
One reason you draw so much vitriol is you combine a holier-than-thou attitude with an utterly unsupported and largely false series of factual assertions. For example:
” liberal attitudes change very rapidly”. Prove it. Which attitudes? How fast? Polling data, please.
” dominance of personal branding and cultural signalling over political theory means that liberal attitudes change very rapidly”. Prove it. Establish how the dominance of personal branding over theory affects the speed at which attitudes change.
“liberalism as an elite social phenomenon has abandoned first rights of the accused and second the right to free expression”. Whose liberalism? Mine? Yours? Assume, for sake of argument, that “liberalism as an elite social phenomenon” is defined by Balloon Juice, LGM, Kevin Drum, Atrios, BooMan Tribune, Moneybox, Wonkblog, and Vox. (You’d agree that that’s a fair list of leading liberalish blogs?) Point to the posts where the 5th and 1st Amendments were abandoned.
“rise of resistance to any discussion whatsoever of due process”. Prove it. Cites, please.
“online progressives moved quickly to a place where anyone mentioning those rights at all were immediately and angrily denounced”. Examples, please.
“On Twitter and Tumblr”. Nutpicking, are we? Why not look at the comments to random newspaper articles?
“Isquith’s piece does not contain an argument”. And, to commit a tu quoque fallacy, yours doesn’t contain any evidence.
” a mostly-failed attempt to achieve an arch tone” Now this is the pot calling the kettle black.
“not one single attempt to explain how you would defend a CEO or sports team owner who was forced out for insufficient loyalty to the state of Israel.”
By exercising my own speech rights?
Yes, employment-at-will sucks. Yes, the increasing power of employers to monitor the speech and conduct of their employees off-work, and to fire employees for unpopular speech is outrageous. But really, kicking off an employees’ rights movement by relying on Eich and Sterling is going to get you nowhere. No law was broken, so it’s not like either of them can hire the ACLU to establish a Nazis-in-Skokie precedent. If you want to change peoples’ minds about policy, and get legislation passed, sympathetic victims are far more likely to rally people to your cause.
It’s Jon Stewart.
People read and take seriouslty the comments on BJ and LGM?
Internets are serious business, I guess.
I take everybody seriously.
Because almost all of their commenters hide behind internet anonymity, they know no one will be held personally accountable.
I can’t help wondering what kind of personal accountability you have in mind, really. What consequences should someone face for saying that you’re a tiresome, leftier-than-thou wanker?
Merely the same exposure and accountability that I have in writing under my own name.
Hey Freddie. Since I’m a minor celeb now because of a comment I made I guess I have to clarify something.
“Coordinated assault” was a completely offhand comment. A joke. J-O-K-E. Not meant to be taken terribly seriously. Just an observation with an embedded metaphor noting that a couple of individuals who normally studiously ignore you suddenly took notice. In fact, in my followup comments in response to “Kevin” I adopted what I thought was a pretty obvious joking tone.
Sad, needless to say, that any of this needs to be said.
Sure, it’s possible that Doug J and Lemieux contacted one another behind the scenes, but nobody should care one way or another whether they did or not, it’s irrelevant to the fundamental issue under discussion. Which is why I find it strange that some individuals who are, let’s say, overly earnest are still making a big deal out it in comments. In fact, now that I think of it this is a page right out of the book; talk about a meaningless trifle instead of the substantive issue. Overly earnest types use the jargon term “derailing” for this behavior and it’s unsurprising when they display a comical lack of self-awareness in practicing it themselves.
Now that that little bit of housecleaning is out of the way, your efforts here might be valuable for this if nothing else; nothing gets a mainstream liberal quite so incensed as pointing out that they are as prone to human nature as anybody else. Incredible sight, isn’t it? John Cole blogs about little anymore except his pets and army buddies, but Freddie deBoer, who averages maybe six comments per post over here in his tiny little niche sends him into a frothing rage. Scott Lemieux, who is so important that he can’t be bothered to speak anything but the language of ridicule, takes a couple of days out of his Nine Billion Snarks of Nader to issue stern correctives.
I’m tempted to say that this means you’re doing something right, but that’s a cliche. What it does is draw out into the open, yet again, that there is a disturbingly large quantity of people who aren’t in this for the social justice and equality but instead for their private emotional needs and social posture. How else to explain the behavior? It makes no sense to waste so much intellectual capital on Freddie deBoer if he’s as fringe and unimportant as they claim unless they’re doing it for some reason other than the stated end goal. You pressed a button that they pretend not to have, but do. Someday they’ll thank you [snort].
I’ll never forget observing how the passing of General Stuck, a longstanding participant at Balloon Juice, was completely subsumed within the outpouring of grief over the death of John Cole’s cat. It’s not that the latter wasn’t a thoroughly traumatic experience for Cole and, by extension, his pet-loving community, nor that Stuck hadn’t been rather nicely eulogized up until the announcement of Tunch’s death; rather, it was how the mourning commentary for Stuck instantaneously and comprehensively disappeared once the feline’s passing was announced that really jarred me. Quite revealing in its own way, I felt.
This. Yep.
I’ve been reading Balloon-Juice since the days before John Cole came to his senses about the GOP, libertarians, and Iraq.
So pardon me if I ask, who are you? Seriously, I’ve never heard of you and while it’s possible I’ve read something you’ve written Fred your existence was unknown to me until reading about your insignificant dispute with a guy who runs a blog.
Now it might be because I’m a Negro and I mainly focus on writers who take positions on issues of mass incarceration of black men for petty crimes like smoking weed and cops who shoot 93 year old women dead, or cops who murder car crash victims who make the mistake of looking black & scary.
I don’t have time for crybabies with hurt feelings.
There are real problems out in the world, including a pack of lawless a**holes next door in Nevada actively pursuing another Waco so they can have their Apocalypse. The only disappointment Sean Hannity has with Cliven Bundy is he didn’t die like he was supposed to, martyr to the cause of oppressed white men.
Grow the hell up.
As a member of the anonymous blog commenter mob, I find this all a bit amusing. We should never be taken seriously unless one of us is saying something you feel should be taken as serious. I always thought this was a given out here in the internets.
deBoer’s stated issue, the cognitive/confirmation-belief bias characteristic of excessive tribalism is true, but I find it amusingly ironic that a person who is kvetching about thought policing advocates reform that would necessarily involve policing thought. Those reprobates at LGM and BJ are doing no more bullying than deBoer is here in this post; the main difference is the number and varying qualities of their respective commentariats, aka ‘chattering classes’
“They disagree with a political opponent, but they hate an apostate.”
No one reacts well to what is seen as betrayal, especially from someone on the same team that they respect. This will all pass, after the current round of navel-gazing and circle-jerk-style flagellation (of the self and of others) winds down.
Megan McArgleBargle?!? REALLY??? LOL, what a joke.
Freddie. You’re 100%, without a doubt, full of shit, buddy. And my full real name is David Turner Stephenson. Totally full of shit. Jumped the shark, lost the plot, etc etc…. buy a clue…. eat a snickers… jeebus and maryjane….
Can somebody explain to me exactly what Freddie is arguing re: Eich? (I choose Eich since his is a closer call than Sterling’s).
*Is he saying that Eich’s ouster was illegal? I haven’t heard anyone make this argument, so I doubt this was his point.
*Is he saying that Eich’s ouster should have been illegal? If so, how exactly does that work? AFAIK, the Mozilla board decided he was bad for PR, so they asked him to resign. How do you make that illegal?
*Is he saying that the left shouldn’t have pressured Mozilla to ditch Eich? AFAIK, there was little external pressure put on Mozilla. And really, should I be totally cool with using a product that will put money in the hands of a dude who will then put money in the hands of people who wish to strip away marriage rights? Am I allowed to be uncomfortable with that? Am I allowed to say that I’m uncomfortable with that? Is it okay to steer away from products that enrich the Koch brothers?
*Is he saying that the ouster of Eich was okay, but the left shouldn’t have celebrated it? I don’t think that’s what he’s saying, but I’m trying to cover as many bases as I can.
From reading his posts, my best guess is that he’s saying Eich’s ouster should have been illegal. But he never actually says that, so I’m confused. Little help?
Eich was as clueless as the playhouse director who enthusiastically supported Prop 8 and was shocked to find out there’s a lot of gays in theater.
In the Bay Area it’s a pretty safe bet in tech that either the person you are working with is gay or has gay friends or family and is not to fond of people trying to deprive gay people their rights as citizens.
In an industry where people will hold a grudge over losing an argument about where a comma goes it should not have been a shock that a mostly volunteer organization would balk at a CEO donating money to their cultural enemies.
The government had no hand in promoting the guy to CEO so first amendment arguments do not apply.
When given the chance to repudiate his actions, Eich weaseled and surprise his colleagues said we want nothing to do with Mozilla if this is your leader. If he leads we will not follow they said, so he resigned.
No different than my refusal to shop at Wal-mart or eat at Chick-Fil-A. Eich still has his beliefs, he just doesn’t get to be CEO of Mozilla while having them.
F*ck yourself, Bottoms.
You remind me a lot of the Islamic Jihadists.
Things I care more about then this guy and John Cole feuding:
HEARNE, Texas — A 93-year-old woman was shot and killed by a police officer at her home northwest of Bryan, Texas late Tuesday, authorities said.
KBTX reports that Pearlie Golden, known in the neighborhood as Ms. Sully, was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Hospital. The elderly woman was rushed there after being shot by a male officer at her house on Karney Street. Multiple witnesses tell us she was shot at least five times.
Hearne police did not say whether Golden was armed or why the officer felt threatened.
Cole Middleton says a police officer who came to his house in response to a burglary call shot his beloved pet in the head after she started barking. The religious man says he had to end her misery with his bare hands and that he hopes they are reunited in heaven.
An African-American man in distress sought help from nearby police, who fatally shot him, thinking he was a threat. The victim’s attorney believes his death could have been avoided had the color of his skin been different.
Attorney Chris Chestnut said he is seeking to obtain every piece of piece of police evidence from the shooting, adding that “If Mr. Farrell was not black or brown, wouldn’t they have asked him a few questions before showering him with bullets?”
F*** Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling.
“Hearne police did not say whether Golden was armed or why the officer felt threatened.”
Incidentally, if you click on the words “KBTX reports”, the link now says:
But I hope you had enough time to enjoy your righteous indignation. And I’m sure you’ll find a way to milk some more out of this incident, even after the update.
Let me get this straight, two armed officers can’t handle a 93 year old woman with a f***g gun?
How about back out of the house, turn off the electircity and wait until she gets hungry?
I am sorry, but when did cops become so weak kneed that a yapping dog or an old crank with a gun gets executed just because what… they have someplace to be and can’t talk it out?
I’m sure they’ll investigate and let you know. That’s how it’s done. But feel free to bubble, who am I to deny you the pleasure.
You must be one of those people who aren’t black and thus not acquainted with trigger happy and brutal police? Every encounter with police is a new opportunity to get shot.
Just ask this guy:
North Carolina police shoot dead unarmed car crash victim
http://rt.com/usa/crash-farrell-shot-police-894/
I’m one of those people (I hope) who can read a news article without feeding their confirmation bias. Or, at least not excessively.
>But I hope you had enough time to enjoy your >righteous indignation.
Enjoy being singled out by law enforcement because of skin color? Sure, it’s a blast.
You’re right my bias does get confirmed every time an Amadou Diallo gets riddled with bullets.
Every time some black man makes the mistake of thinking he has the right to go anywhere he’s legally allowed to… without being beaten or killed for the crime of being scary my bias gets confirmed. Damn right it does.
If that’s your thing, fine with me. It takes all kinds.
It’s just that we don’t really have anything to discuss. If the police shoot someone (black or white, don’t matter to me) without a good reason, there will be a lawsuit and they’ll pay up. Next time, presumably, they’ll be more careful. And the cop might be punished, and even end up in jail. That’s how the system works. Do you have a better system in mind?
Mao Cheng Ji,
Reasoning with these folks is futile.
>Do you have a better system in mind?
Yes.
One where they don’t f****g shoot people who don’t deserve to be shot.
How about we train the people walking around with the power of life and death strapped to their hip to not be trigger happy fools?
I’m supposed to comforted by the idea that if a cop gets scared by my being black and shoots me that my widow will at least get the money and the cop will feel really bad about it?
BTW, you’ll notice that while this is going on, over in Nevada a bunch of guys with an arsenal are daring the governor of the state to enforce the law.
Hmmm, what could be the common factor keeping the cops from throwing them and Cliven Bundy’s a** in jail right now, today?
Everybody read this:
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/03/04/nowhere-to-turn/
Seriously?
>On the national level and the state level, Democrats and media liberals >excoriated Connecticut Democrats for having the gall to reject a made man like >Lieberman.
See, conservatives understand that this kind of idiotic feuding distracts from crushing the voting rights of blacks, reproductive choice, and fighting wars.
In short, they have their squabbles, then they line up for whoever doesn’t have ‘D’ as their political affiliation for the win.
Joe Lieberman is an irrelevant has-been and that you are still nursing that particular butt-hurt is both amazing and quite silly.
‘Reproductive choice’, in other words the choice of mothers to murder their unborn infants on a whim.
Your arguments remind me a lot of arguments made by folks like the Nazis, Confederates, and the Ku-Klux-Klan. They thought some innocent human lives were dispensable too.
Fuck you ‘reproductive choice’.
Oh, lord.
What?
I support abortion rights without restriction and you’re bumming me out.
Let me guess, you think the Earth is 6,000 years old too?
Are you one of those clowns spending money putting up billboards in black neighborhoods because your concern with abortion is so great?
Instead of, you know helping feed one of those children you’re so concerned with?
Abortion is a medical procedure, legal and constitutional so you can just eat it.
So you have an argument alleging a widespread opposition to Ned Lamont’s general election candidacy on the part of Democrats that you made up out of whole cloth? And generalizations about liberals in the media derived entirely from Jacob Fucking Wiesberg? This is indeed an instructive example of your style of argument, although not in the way you think.
What prevented Lamont from winning wasn’t the punditry of conservative nominal Democrats, but Connecticut’s unique electoral laws, which allowed Lieberman to run despite losing the primary. But, since you’re not really a serious left-winger, you’d rather make politics into an imaginary morality play rather than thinking about structural barriers of any kind.
Dude: you don’t know what you’re talking about. I was there. Every day. For the whole thing. It was the usual suspects in West Hartford and the Greenwich corridor – Democrats -who sunk Lamont.
You are literally incapable of not being partisan, at this point, aren’t you?
What’s wrong with partisan?
I am a Yellow Dog Democrat who would eat broken glass washed down with gasoline before ever voting for a Republican.
For any office, anywhere, ever.
Our problem is not being partisan enough. There are no bad Democrats, there are no good Republicans.
The worst Democrat is better than the best member of the GOP because they enable snakes like Ted Cruz no matter how much they claim moderation. We can always find someone else and try again next primary to oust a jerk, but come election day I vote Democratic.
Don’t you?
Scott Lemieux, I used to read you at Tapped all the time. I can’t believe serious political pundits, and college professors, like you and Erik Loomis are spending so much time pursuing a childish grudge against someone who criticized you.
Freddie, you said to drain the swamp. I wish these visitors didn’t interpret that to mean, “Sure, we’ll drain it. Just dump the water onto Freddie’s blog!”
So everybody gets the irony in responding to being called a red baiter by asking me to pass a purity test, right?
Oh, forget it.