Some Thoughts on Leftist Blogs
Recently I had a chance to explore quite a few blogs. Besides the well-known right-leaning blogs I frequent, I found 20 or so left-leaning blogs with threads on all sorts of subjects of some interest. Most of them post an article or extract and link to introduce a topic, add a comment, and then wait for comments to roll in.
The very first thread I read was a hate piece, telling the world how badly America is thought of overseas, how Bush was terrible, and so on… The next thread was the same, just on a different topic, but focused on Bush. In fact, all of the threads I read that night on one site were purely negative on the US, and on Bush in particular. It was the same the following evening, and the evening after that…
When I began to post counter thoughts and ideas to some of the threads, I was immediately attacked for being all kinds of bad things. Of course, I had to say that one special thread was horribly hateful to America and Americans, and that opened up a flood of invective that is hard to believe. From that point on there was no sensible response to my posts: I was being “flamed.” as the web saying goes.
One example stands out for its idiotic statements. The poster said to the effect that: America will not learn from 9/11, and it will take a much larger attack for the US to wake up and mend its ways. This was standard fare on the site, and no one challenged this raw and bloodthirsty thought. So I did. In essence I said that another more massive attack on the US would cause us to mobilize and go for the Middle-East in total. (Muslim terrorists would lose their countries, their homes, and their financial support in retribution for the attack.) The response was to attack me, not the challenge, naturally!
The tactics used were patently obvious, and even childish. Before I left the other night, I had cataloged all of the possible attacks I could think of being used to drown out my voice. The first kind was simple invective: “you are an idiot… etc. “ Then, there was the: “who are you to say this and what is your source?” (they are hung up on sources: one’s own thoughts aren’t of any creditability). Then, if you do cite a source, guess what? The source is denigrated too. The point is to discourage anyone with differing views from posting on the site, especially rightists.
What I should have remembered is that virtually every right leaning author publishing in the US has been carefully explored, and any weakness they might exhibit is mercilessly used to discredit the author. Make one slip in a thousand pages, and these jackals are on it furiously! Since I have my Shunning List posted here, which amounts to an identification of leftists to ignore, I should not have been surprised that leftists have their own also.
Yet another type of attack was to call me a liar, and refuse to acknowledge any counter argument. One situation of this kind was set up when I commented to one poster that her words appeared to be inciting to revolution in the US, and that is treason. Her reply was to the effect that she wasn’t an American nor in America, so she was beyond the law! So be it, no point in further conversation.
One of her buddies, however, and an American (he said), responded with: What’s the matter here, don’t you believe in the Declaration of Independence? Read these words! My reply was yes, the Declaration does what it does very well, but that the Congress, the Administration, and the SCOTUS have put into the US Code clear provisions for defining and punishing treason and sedition against the government. From that point on, this “American” could not do anything but sputter and attempt derision and the usual deflection tactics.
One site is not at all a problem. But by following links from one or two leftist sites, I found a fairly large network of them busily tearing down every facet of American life they could think of, or discover in the news feeds. The sum of these sites is truly depressing. A torrent of invective every hour is spewing forth against Bush, the Iraqi War, Terrorism (it doesn’t exist!), our foreign policies, our financial problems, daily life, loss of freedoms, and so on! Completely negative every time out.
They want the US to fail in its mission in Iraq, mostly by having the insurgents kill a lot more GIs. Then one person claimed we had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and children. When challenged that the civilian casualty list was under 20,000 all told, there was no response.
This is the same tactic as was used by the Left during the War in Vietnam, which, when hyped by the captive leftwing media, caused our withdrawal just as we were on the threshold of winning the war, and the consequent fact that untold millions of people (some put the number at higher than 8 million) were executed in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia by the “victorious” communists. We didn’t lose the war in Nam: the Leftists gave it away to the communists.
Anyone who lost close friends in Nam, or Iraq, or even Korea, or who visited the memorials and saw the lists of the dead, all dishonored and defeated by weak-kneed Leftist and MSM trashing of the military, the war, our motives, and the administration, would react with absolute disgust and hatred of such actions and of the Leftists who caused it. This is especially true when we are at war.
Perhaps treason cannot be proved, and even sedition isn't easy to use, either. But some of these sites cruise very close to the line. In the end, I am saddened and ashamed to see near treason or sedition being preached.
# posted by Mannning @ 1:33 PM
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