The Lowest Common Demonizer

You are a leftyblogger.

You write a post that is so chock-full of long-debunked shrieking points that there’s no room for any information of value that  you might, improbably, know.

In and among the mindless uncritical droogs who support you with more of the same, a small group of pro-civil liberties people with actual facts on the issue at hand set you straight.

What do you do?

You delete their substantive and fact-clogged comments about the time they start to make you look like the un-informed naif you are; when even that doesn‘t work, you declare those who disagree with you “propagandists”, and take your toys and run away.

Not that anyone should expect better.

6 thoughts on “The Lowest Common Demonizer

  1. I will take it by ‘droog’, you are lifting the nadsat slang of Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” term for ‘friend’? And ‘mindless’ and ‘uncritical’ are not quite fair either.

    Do you see any hypocrisy Mitch, in objecting to being called a propagandist while in turn calling someone a similarly derogatory name?

    Just to be clear – I don’t like either instance of name calling. I particularly object to civil comments being deleted, preventing a legitimate exchange of ideas taking place. It is an unacceptable way to treat a differing point of view. Nor do I view ending a thread that has had a lot of comments to be quite the same thing as taking one’s toys and running away. It is legitimate to move on to other topics when the comments begin to be repetitive rather than touching on new information or ideas.

    But from what I read of the comments, the disagreement with you and other commenters from SitD was polite. I was diappointed that it did not touch more on either the lobbying of the NRA, or on the issue of gun related violence in this country in comparison to other countries per capita. I wouldn’t have limited that discussion to deaths by firearms per capita either. I’m not against open carry, I’m also not against regulation that makes it harder for crmiinals to get their hands on guns or to make it a stiffer penalty when they use guns in crimes.

    I have no problem with you faulting the O’Brien’s Mahablog fairly, but to do what you accuse her of doing in the same criticism — with that I have a problem.

  2. DG, a fair number of us would have loved to weigh in on the whole “lobbying by the NRA” meme, particularly in light of Maha’s, err, raging concern about what she wrongly but stubbornly insists on calling “shall carry” laws. (Short form: anybody who was at all involved in the passage of carry reform here knows that NRA was a minor, although not insignificant, player; the heavy lifting was done by local grassroots folks, not any national organization. It’s been the same, as far as I can tell, everywhere else.)

  3. Dog Gone said:

    “I’m not against open carry, I’m also not against regulation that makes it harder for crmiinals to get their hands on guns or to make it a stiffer penalty when they use guns in crimes.”

    You are sounding like a NRA propagandist right there, believe it or not. 🙂

  4. Do you see any hypocrisy Mitch, in objecting to being called a propagandist while in turn calling someone a similarly derogatory name?

    There is none whatsoever.

    One person’s “propagandist” is another person’s “guy with a point of view”. It’s fairly clear “Maha” thinks giving someone an off-color label justifies her behavior. Behavior to which she is, by the way, entitled – it’s her blog. It’s just cowardly.

    And have you read the comments in the thread? Joel characterizes Maha’s commentary correctly – it was just ignorant. The others were ignorant and stupid.

    So no – they are “droogs” in the popularly accepted sense of the term – ignorant thugs (in an intellectual sense, at least).

    It is legitimate to move on to other topics when the comments begin to be repetitive rather than touching on new information or ideas.

    Yes, and it’s also legitimate to cut ones’ losses when one is clearly coming up on the short end of the argument, as Maha and her band of nutslaps clearly were against Joel and the 3-4 other gunnies. I just get to call her on it.

    I was diappointed that it did not touch more on either the lobbying of the NRA,

    What Joel said.

    I have no problem with you faulting the O’Brien’s Mahablog fairly, but to do what you accuse her of doing in the same criticism — with that I have a problem.

    Well, problem solved – it was nothing remotely the same!

  5. DG — speaking of “stiffer penalty when they use guns in crimes”, in what way, if any, do you think the present penalties are insufficient?

    Like Mitch, I think Maha is perfectly within her rights to stomp her foot and close the comments, rather than correct the errors that I (among others) pointed out and/or respond to our assertions of opinions.

    But she’s right about one thing: I am a propagandist — for truth, justice, and the American Way. You know: the usual. 🙂

  6. Pingback: Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » Around The MOB: Penigma

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