"Look, you're obviously not interested in making an argument. You're just trying to expiate your guilt over your [crypto-communism / Patriarchal complicity / anti-Semitism / support for terrorists]."
"People, I'm pretty sure [Poster X] is really [Unsavory Personage Y]."
"Since you apparently think [X] is acceptable, try arguing that [rape / child molestation / the Holocaust / Stalin's slaughter of the kulaks] is acceptable." (Extra points where X is something innocuous, like speed limits.)
"Sorry you're not intelligent enough to understand this simple concept." (Best when it follows a long, twisty free-association rant.)
Pious quotation of the variety: "Hate is not healthy" / "Be the change you wish to see in the world" / "First, free your mind of cant" ... following a long rant about how one's political opponents are all brain-damaged or evil, and how Islamofascism is poised to turn France into Eurabia.
Good to see. Of course, Rumsfeld lying kind of is old news; by now he's one of the most famous examples of the contemptuously offhand, clumsy mendacity that characterizes the Bush White House from top to bottom. (Tom Friedman, of all people, once nailed him to the wall in the midst of trying to un-say his own prior statements on Iraq and "imminent threat" -- I think the video is still available at CAP.) But it does bear repeating.
The impulse to say "I told you so!" is extremely strong. Should it be inhibited in favor of "Welcome aboard! Here are some good projects for undoing the damage."?
Well, I can see where Smiley is coming from. If the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill is ever to achieve something beyond just being loosely opposed to the madness of the current GOP apparatus -- and maybe voting against it in various ways in the future (but in some cases, maybe not) -- frank discussions have to take place about what's worked and hasn't worked, which ideas are good and which aren't. This means calling bad ideas what they are, and that in turn will mean offending some of the more fragile "converts."
OTOH there are other ways of doing this than saying "I told you so," particularly in view of the fact that even most of those who were anti-Bush from the outset didn't fully understand how radically far gone the GOP was until it was too late. I personally would rather see it framed as "we've all learned some hard lessons, conservatives in particular, and we need to learn honestly from them in order to move forward."
jennie: Have you never heard of the time-honoured practice of getting drunk and flaming someone?
Uhhhh, no, actually I hadn't. I stand corrected! It probably didn't occur to me because I'm rarely near both a drink and a computer terminal at the same time. Luckily.
when I'm having a truly bad day, I hang out on blogs and in LJ communities whose politics I don't like, and ask intelligent questions. It seems to annoy people, and it makes me feel better. I call this trolling when I do it.
Intriguing. Usually, I get into this mode when a random issue catches my interest -- whether it's a blog I usually agree with or not. Not a "bad day" thing, but a "grew up debating politics around the dinner table" thing; I find I often don't have good instincts for realizing that people have different thresholds for that kind of thing. So, that could be trolling depending on the perspective... but it's not something I'm ever conscious of doing as such*. I suspect a lot of the people who seem like "trolls" to me could have a similar dynamic going on.
(* Well, except when I run into instances of genuine net.k00kery, like the odd person who threatens to beat one up or drive one from the Interwebs with their mad hacker skillz. Taunting those is always tempting, and that's definitely trolling...)
Of course, I too am a sworn, virtuous enemy of trolldom.
As are we all! :)
KC: But has someone already covered this from the perspective of the troll?
The problem is that there really isn't much by way of "the perspective of the troll," because the number of people who actually see themselves as such is small. Purely disruptive trolling is usually what the other guy does; in fact, some of the most obnoxious trolls I've ever seen saw themselves as sworn, virtuous enemies of trolldom.
Incidentally, since you've mentioned it in a couple of places, which particular thread brought this issue to the fore for you?
The Chinese reference to the Roman Orient (Da Qin) is in the Hou han shou in the texts section of the Silk Roads Seattle website.
Michael: I'd like to say that after reading some of the comments at Crooked Timber, then reading the comments here, I like it here
You have to admit, though, there's a certain beauty in the way some members of the CT trollosphere took it upon themselves to provide illustrations of the point. Lots of "I'm offended by this post for mocking my offendedness" -- it's really quite entertaining.
Patrick says: but I can't quite remember the name of the current leader of the Bloc
That would be Gilles Duceppe, who was rated the most charismatic of the leaders in the debates, actually. Too bad he wasn't a federalist candidate, otherwise I'd have voted for him, actually.
(While watching the Anglo debate with a couple of friends, we joked that it would make a pretty good drinking game to take a shot every time Duceppe said the words "fiscal imbalance." Shortly after that, we realized that we'd have had alcohol poisoning inside about a half hour...)
Linkmeister: Canada: A People's History is a useful and respectable recent effort (sponsored by the CBC; there's also a television mini-series by the same name).
Oops. The Yoshida quote is two paragraphs, BTW.
And I agree with sennoma, incidentally. We know what you meant... but it'd be best to correct the "premier" thing.
IP: Actually, I was with you more on the post than I was on your first comment. Stephen Harper is hardly a "nitwit" (he's actually quite intelligent, even eggheadish)
Unfortunately, being eggheaded does not preclude being a nitwit (as Condi Rice's career in the Cheney Administration attests). It's a question of judgment, not raw processing power.
nor is he likely to do much sucking up to Bush unless their agendas match up exactly.
Actually, he's not likely to do much sucking up to Bush precisely because he is indeed running the most precarious minority government ever. The core of the CPC really is practically a branch transplant of American-style movementarianism (see the link Marna posted to a bizarre Conservative victory rant about Canadians' supposed "cultural Marxism" if you doubt this), and really does see America as a model economy / society, is upset that we haven't joined in on the National Missile Defence boondoggle yet, is irritated that our troops (such as they are) aren't fighting in Iraq right now, and so on.
Not to "pull rank" on your Canadian friends living abroad, but I say this as someone who lives in Harper's riding and hears what a lot of the party's membership actually believe, instead of what the party says publicly during an election in which they finally managed to muzzle most of their extremists. (Although that, apparently, didn't last long.) What you can glean about Harper from Canadian news sources would tell you relatively little, since his representation of his party's agenda was probably, shall we say, more than a little Straussian.
Having said all of that, it's safe to say that even the most rabidly pro-American of the neoconucks isn't interested in being an American protectorate or colony per se. It's more like they fantasize about being more-equal partners in the Team of Invincible Super-Heroes that they think of the US as leading. Or as the redoubtable Adam Yoshida puts it (in a post that begins with a deliciously wingnutty quotation about "tyranny"):
On matters of foreign policy, Prime Minister, you should follow the words, but not the spirit, of the Liberals. They claim that they want Canada to have an “independent foreign policy.” What they really mean is an anti-American foreign policy. What I propose instead, Prime Minister, is that you chart a genuinely independent course for Canada. You should do this not by making sanctimonious speeches before the United Nations, but rather through rebuilding our Armed Forces and aggressively asserting Canadian values – those of individual liberty and security of the person – all over the world, with force if necessary.
There is no reason why Canada shouldn’t be a genuine Middle Power worthy of serious weight in International Affairs. Britain is. Australia is. We should be one as well.
Yeah, Britain and Australia have had great luck "aggressively asserting their values," haven't they?
But the thing is, Harper's bit of Nationalism Theatre is canny in that it will play well outside his base as much as within it. There's a rising thirst for greater assertion of sovereignty and military independence from the US right across the political spectrum, as much from people who no longer trust the US as a benign neighbour as from those who suffer Adam Yoshida-esque "Justice League Syndrome."
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