{"id":3638,"date":"2008-11-13T13:26:07","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T18:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2008-11-17T12:59:08","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T17:59:08","slug":"i-dont-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3638","title":{"rendered":"I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first post this blog did that generated any <\/em>attention – and by that, I mean maybe 50-60 hits, in those days before this blog had any kind of regional following at all, back in the summer of 2002 or so – was the “DFL Dictionary”.\u00a0 The post – which is, unfortunately, lost to history (for now) listed a series of common words that the DFL had re-defined for their purposes.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

“Bipartisanship (noun): to belong to a non-DFL party, but to espouse and support DFL policies without any serious question”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That kind of thing.<\/p>\n

And it’s become almost a cliche among leftybloggers in recent months<\/strike> lately<\/strike> as long as I’ve been reading them<\/strike>;\u00a0 a sort of inexorable “inflation” in pejoratives.\u00a0 Conservatives never take umbrage, they “whine”; we don’t argue, we “melt down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I’m a pretty lucky guy.\u00a0 Generally pretty happy with life.\u00a0 I have two great kids, a job I love, a couple of hobbies I love even more, great family, great friends – really, just about a guy could want out of life.\u00a0 I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in decades, I’m feeling generally good about life, I’ve dispensed with a lot of real and metaphorical baggage in the past year or so, and while life has all sorts of inevitable twists and turns, things are generally going pretty dang well right now.\u00a0 One of my hobbies – debating politics with strangers in writing and on the radio – has turned into a fun sideline; in this, I’ve been able to find some semblance of fulfillment, as well as some future possibilities, while honoring my sense of integrity.\u00a0 In other words, I’m getting little bits and piece of happiness, and all in all it’s a pretty good stretch for me, knock wood.<\/p>\n

Which, if you’re a gutless anonymous leftyblogger, means “angry”, “hateful”, bla bla bla.<\/p>\n

No, really.\u00a0 “Stove” from Cocky Slob<\/em><\/a>\u00a0just\u00a0can’t get enough of trying to jam\u00a0people into his own bigoted little template:<\/p>\n

It came to Spot today, unbidden. In over three years of reading blogs and writing this one, Spot has been unable to find the word that summed up the festering Bund of the right wing blogosphere. But he’s got it now: bullies<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ooh.\u00a0 Another<\/a> neo-Nazi reference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He must be writing about something serious.<\/em><\/p>\n

What, after all, is a bully? It’s someone who is cruel and overbearing, a thug<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0Someone who picks on somebody else, preferably smaller and weaker, maybe to make himself feel like a big cheese, or even just appear to be one to the drooling sycophants he wants to impress. The words of the bully almost always have a tinge of intimidation in them, or sometimes more than just a tinge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or sometimes much, much less than a “tinge”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, in some cases it’s more of a “little corner of actual meaning that you’ve carefully sanded to fit your own\u00a0 myopic, bigoted, deranged template through which you force all of your own perceptions”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As in “you read “apples”, and see “axles””.<\/p>\n

There they sit on the bar stool of grudge and resentment, taking big swigs from their tankards of bile, belting out tuneless refrains of impotent rage. Then, tottering home in crazed and bilious humors, they sit down and write stuff like this<\/font><\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He links to the piece I wrote Tuesday about former Minnesoros “Independent”<\/em> writer Molly Priesmeyer and City Pages <\/em>doddering troll Emily Kaiser.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rage?\u00a0 Bile?\u00a0 Crazed?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is no especial mystery why all the paranoid, poisoned, gun-toting crazies are all on one side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Although why some people need to vilify, defame\u00a0and demonize those who disagree with them is <\/em>an “especial” puzzler to those of us with fuller, richer lives)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0The pathology is unremarkable. But its consequences over the last twenty five years or so have been catastrophic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If only because they –\u00a0“consequences” like people\u00a0speaking freely and still\u00a0<\/em>disagreeing with “Spot”, gutless anonyme – seem to have driven their author around the bend into complete derangement.<\/p>\n

Intimidation?\u00a0 I wished Molly Priesmeyer good luck in her job searc<\/em>, having been in her shoes all too many times (sometimes with kids to feed, to boot).\u00a0 I’d like to be so “intimidated” by my nemeses.<\/p>\n

Bullying?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I’m the underdog, you half-trained trick chimp<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I’m a little solo blogger from Saint Paul.\u00a0 Emily Kaiser writes for a multi-million dollar corporation; Molly Priesmeyer\u00a0wrote for a Soros front, and\u00a0not being\u00a0an untalented writer\u00a0will no doubt get picked up by another sooner than later.<\/p>\n

It is a period from which the barest signs of emerging have now just appeared. But the bud is nascent and the bullies will try to kill it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Catch that?\u00a0 It’s not just responding –\u00a0“participating in life”.\u00a0 It’s “bullying” and “crushing your hopes”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For some of us, the notion of “disagreement” and “dissent” isn’t a threat.\u00a0For the others, there are anonymously-posted pictures of the Nuremberg Rallies.<\/p>\n

Courage my friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Courage”.\u00a0 Heh.<\/p>\n

This from a guy who blogs anonymously – who\u00a0quite visibly\u00a0panics, indeed, at the notion of being “outed”, when he’s not taking his defamatory,\u00a0cowardly little shots at his betters.<\/p>\n

The word we’re looking for is “deranged”. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Look that one up on “Answers.com”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Courage, little doggie.\u00a0 Now, run and play.\u00a0 You are boring and predictable.<\/p>\n

(Via Fut<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first post this blog did that generated any attention – and by that, I mean maybe 50-60 hits, in those days before this blog had any kind of regional following at all, back in the summer of 2002 or so – was the “DFL Dictionary”.\u00a0 The post – which is, unfortunately, lost to history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}