Of Scrotum Weights and Political defensiveness
Estimated Days Until Blogger Burnout: 3 (again)


Looking for new blogs, I tried blogwise on the advice of someone somewhere, I forget.  I tried several things including both the universities I went to.  Turns out NO ONE at the school I did my undergrad work at blogs, or at least admits to it on blogwise.  The ones from my grad school had a distasteful Orange County tincture that frankly turned me off.  I tried the name of my hometown here (Riverside) and came up with this one.   Only this one.

My disappointment was palpable and, being the ass-hat that I can be, I did take the time and energy to mention it to the blogger-in-question.  Not only is it a rabid, frothing, clenched-cheeks tirade of a political blog, but a rabid, frothing, clenched-cheeks tirade of a Republican political blog.  Reading was like lifting an uncomfortable amount of weight with a part of my body unsuited to the task.  My scrotum, for example.

Scrotum weights are actually available for purchase on the Internet.  I checked after I wrote that last sentence.  Color me surprised.

As I said, I posted a comment or two on the above website (the blog, not the scrotum weight thing).  I was probing a little, trying to get at what makes frothy-mouthedness so appealing.  I mean, the whole stance is so defensive (and I don't mean just Republicans... there are just as many Democratic Kool-Aid drinkers out there.  You know who you are).  It's as if they think if they should waver just the slightest little bit, just open their minds the tiniest little crack a breeze might blow through and carry their entire personal identity away with it.

I asked a fairly benign question (though trying not to bait these people is tough) and got back the tired old predictable tirade.  Something about Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi (I've never voted for either of them, by the way).  I pressed a little more and felt like I got over the wall a little bit, but in the end he seemed to think that my reasonableness precluded me from actually being a Democrat because we're all insane America-haters.  Thank you Fox News.

Engaging in conversation with someone of the opposite party is not unlike those scenes in "Crocodile Dundee" where he does that hang-ten thing with his fingers, moans softly at the back of his throat and approaches the otherwise rampaging animal slowly, eventually lulling it into a sense of safety. The end result is ol' Croc keeps the creature at bay when it would rather be goring you with tooth/horn/claw, what have you.  Limited interaction is possible at that stage, but in the end, it's going to wake up and be as rampagingly uninteresting as its nature dictates when it does.

I have no personal animosity toward this blogger nor do I mean to direct all my frustration at him, but two people screaming pre-scripted insults at one another at the same time is not the same as dialogue.  It's not even the same as argument.

So where's the fun in that?


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.1

 
Pops


- posted by Pops @ 2:30 PM