Caitlin, I only wish I could stand behind you, over your shoulder, smacking a set of brass knucks meaningfully into my palm, as you deliver this.
It’s loathsome you’re being put through this.
Before last year, we were allowed the illusion that our compatriots “on the left” were all just brighter and less fearful than panic-driven hate-filled insecurity-riddled “conservatives.”
This year it’s become painfully obvious that eighty percent or more of even “free thinking left” are just as pack-based, archetype-driven, and logically insensate as any Tea Partier with a misspelled “Gubmint hands off mah Medicare” sign ever was.
Until this recent dogpile on you (for simply stating something that, if you drew it as an equation, would be totally uncontroversial) it at least seemed more limited to the obviously-faux left (Tanden/Walsh/Daou/Mensch/Reid adherents)… but a lot of these folks who have brainlessly dug in their heels and pelted you with trash are people I had some real hope for, and held in some esteem.
I’ve had occasion to RT Cernovich myself (as well as — ecch! — Tucker Carlson, & even — ew — O’Reilly when he had the only realistic take on the Comey hearing. It’s what happens when your ‘own’ side of MSM decides the completely avoid the truth. Letting Carlson take the journalistic high ground is not my shame: it’s MSNBC’s.). And I always preface it with “I can’t believe I’m RT’ing this” or “this is that stopped clock being right that you’ve heard about.” And I think Cerno has RT’d, or at least liked, a few of my anti-establishment tweets.
And, he’s ridiculed some of my lefty positions. And I’ve been pretty snotty about some of his shakier assertions. We ain’t pals. But when we agree, we don’t pretend not to.
But no idea from the ‘other’ side is ever a good idea to the True Believer. (And man, are they agile in their adherence; Colbert’s on-the-spot retraining of cheerers of the Comey firing was spine-chilling.)
This team-over-goal fixation has come from the wholesale, unspoken adoption by the ‘left’ of the basic mindset that made FOX News & the Tea Party so formidable: ‘our’ team saw how effective post-truth infowar was and decided to just throw up its hands, strip off its shirt, and start cranking out emotionally-loaded ‘othering’ propaganda as its main platform pillar. (Not that there wasn’t always disinfo: but more effort used to be made at a pretense of logical reasonability. They just found that to be essentially wasted effort: the sheep were going to go along whatever, and ‘cats’ weren’t going to be herded no matter what.)
It’s like seeing another team use shitty, underhanded, worst-nature tactics in a game and, after seeing them score a few cheap points, deciding to ape them and abandon fair play altogether, for short-term cheap gain, rather than fight for fairness fairly.
Nobody says it. But it happened. (I’d call Brock a prime vector.)
(In a mirror of the way we abandoned the idea ‘don’t torture cuz, set the high ground, & establish a moral case for your guys not being tortured.’ ‘We’ eventually decided, fuck that, we’re missing out.)
And this swarm-attack on you is spotlighting that eyes-glazed rah-team fixation like little else has.
I’m so disgusted by what I’ve seen I haven’t been back on Twitter in awhile: I’ve always felt like Twitter involves a huge amount of time into talking to people incapable of hearing, but to find out so many I’d thought were reachable are just as dogmatic and controlled-by-buttons as those ‘unreachables’ was just too much.
Instead, I’ve been concentrating on straightening out local ‘progressives’ IRL that I can see face-to-face, where they can’t hide behind such mindless posturing as they can here. (The comparison that occurs to me is, you trying to elucidate your position to someone on a street corner while they shout their snarky, irrelevant responses, referring to you in third person, into a bullhorn not pointed at you.)
You’re one of our best, Caitlin. You and Michael Tracey, a few others, are like Baby Groot Chomskies. Of course they’re coming for you.
The biggest crucifixions are reserved for the least deserving of venom, if it’s any consolation. (He said, knowing it’s not.)
