Apologies all around
So I killed that last post because, honestly, that was an emotionally driven, snarky, stupid thing to write (except the part about how I love you guys, that’s all true). It was something I should have addressed at Balloon Juice – and something I now have addressed there. This is one of those lessons you learn when you write publicly and on-the-fly. Sometimes, when you’re really tired, in a bad mood, and feeling defensive for whatever reason, you shouldn’t open your big fat mouth. Or at least that’s what my wife tells me, and if it’s true for marriage it’s true also for blogging. Or something.
Anyways, consider this a retraction. I made a mistake. I do that from time to time. I’m human and full of human frailties including pride. I’m sorry.
Will suggested I post what I wrote. Here goes:
So, after blogging at True/Slant, The Washington Examiner, and recently at Balloon Juice, I just have to say – my love for this place, and for you all has only grown. True/Slant was cool – a good place to earn some scratch. The comment system was abysmal and despite a number of ideas I ran past the team there, they had statistics which proved that a comment system like that made for much better comments. I beg to differ, but my evidence is anecdotal. Or rather, it is the League’s combox. But that’s nothing like having numbers handy.
The Washington Examiner is likewise a nice place to earn some extra cash, gain some exposure, etc. It’s a veryconservative publication, if you haven’t noticed, and so I do feel a bit awkward at times writing there. I’m simply not very conservative myself (depending, naturally, on who you talk to). But it’s been an interesting ride so far.
Of course, Balloon Juice takes us to the other end of the spectrum. I never really considered that the whole epistemic closure thing (or the managed ignorance which Jason has written about in these pages) was something which plagued the left, but I was wrong. One thing I have learned is that if you don’t have any good argument all you need to do is call someone a glibertarian and be done with them. Problem solved. It’s almost as handy as the term ‘statist’. Oh – but wait – I just said that both sides had their own stupid tropes. High Broderism alert!
See, there is a straw man for every situation. I guess what surprised me about this was I was quite used to this sort of reaction from conservatives. Guess I wasn’t expecting it from liberals.
In any case, what has made the League great is not merely the fact that we have a wonderful group of writers here but that somehow this place has become its own little community, as open-minded and open to discussion and the batting about of ideas as any other dive on the intertubes. I feel very lucky to write here, and only more so after writing elsewhere as well. So, thanks.
It’s a great honor.
P.S. I wrote this last night after feeling quite frustrated with the Balloon Juice commentariat and I think DMD and mistermix are correct: I’m being unduly harsh to the Juicers. I suppose it’s still just a difficult transition and unlike the rest of the front pagers there, I’m basically told in every comment thread to go to hell, that I’m a glibertarian, that I know nothing and what the hell was John thinking for bringing me on? This gets old, wears you down somewhat. I’m venting here, and I probably shouldn’t be. I don’t mean it to come off as bad taste but it does. My apologies. Plenty of the comments at Balloon Juice are thoughtful, challenging, etc. But sometimes the negativity can be a little depressing. Hence this post.
Also – just to clarify, I really liked True/Slant. I thought it was a great project. I just really didn’t like their comment system.
One of the things that I try (and often fail) to do is comment in such a way that I, Jay, am talking to you (whomever you are) as if we were actually talking and knew each other fairly well.
In most cases, this will result in me doing stuff like not automatically assuming that you hate minorities, hate the poor, hate women, hate the uneducated, or hate animals.
Dude. It’s me, Jay. Dude. You’re Erik.
The problem comes up when you stop seeing the other person as “Erik” (to use an example) and start seeing them as a representative of the side that exists in opposition to your side.
So when you say that you’re not a fan of, say, mandating those calorie posters next to the menus at Burger King, I don’t have to say “what? why?”, I can move straight to “well, obviously, you’re on the side of the corporations who have been exploiting the poor and framing the issue as easy food for those too lazy or too stupid to cook for themselves when not everybody lives in whiteworld with staff dedicated to instilling a work ethic and with the parenting skills to teach a child how to scramble an egg, you over-privileged neo-racist!”
Rants like that have nothing to do with you (and I mean *YOU*, Erik).
They all have to do with some weird shadowy conspiracy out there of which you are merely a representative. Your (hypothetical) arguments against those Calorie posters are irrelevant. You provide a handy face/target at which I can throw my proverbial shoes.
At that point, it ain’t about you. It’s about me.
Put crudely, we’re no longer making love. I’m jerkin’ it.
Now, of course, I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for such things. But if one is expecting the former and, instead, gets the latter…
Well, it can be an eyefull.Report
@Jaybird, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for me, everyone to the right of me politically is like my beloved die hard Republican father and everyone to the left of me politically is like my beloved liberal sister.Report
Suggestion: You should put the post in question below the fold or something.Report
@Will, Good call. I don’t see what was so inappropriate about the first post to begin with. The man’s entitled to his opinion. It’s a blog; it’s not like he’s writing a Gospel or something. I think he would be required to get special approval for that.
And I understand his point entirely.
I don’t frequent Lefty blogs and I don’t care to discuss matters with such people, because I have come to the understanding that their vision of ‘Tolerance’ entails complete uniformity of thought. “Think, say, and do everything exactly like I do, and then maybe I can tolerate you.”
There’s a New Right type of website that I frequent which has acquired a particularly vocal Tea Partier. Just last night, I was explaining the formula for calculating GDP, and that any positive growth in GDP means no recession. I also noted that it’s somewhat embarrassing to be ideologically aligned with complete idiots.
Of course, I was accused of being Joe Biden; and I responded by accusing this person of attempting to turn people away from conservatism by giving them the impression that everyone on the Right is incredibly stupid. And I included a Bill O’Reilly quote to make my point.
It reminds me of this sci-fi paperback I read some years ago (can’t remember the name of it).
The protagonist was an advertising executive in a world dominated by huge corporations. The people were being brainwashed through advertising campaigns to like the products of one corporation and hate the products of their competitors.
The guy falls off of a train and is taken in by a subterranean group of deprogrammers. At the end, he is on the train again and smells the cigarette smoke from a brand which his old company markets. He hates the smell of it, thinks it’s cheap, and has a low opinion of the person smoking it. He had unwittingly been brainwashed by their competitor, and loves all of their products, while he abhors every product marketed by his old company.
In the end, people are people all over the world.
Some are capable of approaching matters in a fair-minded fashion, while others will always approach things with an angle.
Other peoples’ delusions will always be easier to see.Report
One thing to note about rudeness on comment boards is that it increases with size – larger, more active boards are almost intrinsically more rude than small ones. But it’s often the same group of a few dozen idiots who are responsible for most of the rude posts. You just have to learn to tune them out.Report
@Maxwell James,
This is exactly what I was thinking. A large commentariat inevitably leads people to feel less personable and also encourages making more outrageous statements to stand out.Report
I have to agree with what Maxwell said. Boards with a lot of people posting in large numbers are usually poor. There is no room or time for conversation. It amazes me that the posts at BJ get 30-40 responses in what seems like 30 minutes of a post and often end up with 150 or so comments. That does not lead to long thoughtful responses or give and take. It is what it is. Focus on the good comments, which there are plenty of. Hell its not like there isn’t namecalling and people saying the same thing over and over here either.Report
WTF, get over it.
Balloon Juice commentors are bottom feeders, probably Ivy Leauge graduates.Report
@Robert Cheeks, Is the Ivy Leauge near Princeton or Yale? Sorry about that, but I really couldn’t resist, especially since I seem to make at least three typos per post that I don’t notice until after I submit. As for the replies, the reason I come here is for the give and take and because people rarely scream “Idiot”. I am sure they think it but are way to civil to say it.Report
@dexter45, well, I had a hddrive hernia and lost my spellcheck and consequently don’t bother which has resulted in the mandatory one or two or three misspellings per comment…which works for me, but thanks for pointing it out in such a polite way..I should take lessons and YOU are not an idiot…at times in error, but no idiot!Report
Bottom feeders yes, Ivy League graduates no.Report
The comment system at True/Slant discouraged me, at least, from ever commenting there. The whole thing where, if your comment was favored, people could read it without clicking another box made some sense, if the goal is to keep out trolls. But, mostly, it seemed like I’d have to get past the bouncer to be admitted to the club and prove that I’m not riff raff first. For the most part, I just thought, “Ah, screw it! I’m going to walk down the street to that Ordinary Gentlemen Pub and catch up with everybody there!”Report
It’s still mild compared to the old AOL message boards and forums. That was the wild west, and it is when I realized “liberals” are vicious when you present a challenge to their most precious issues. So, I’m not surprised at Balloon Juice, and I commented to Julian when he posted his epistemic closure post that he was overlooking the problem on the left. Having said that, we also don’t need to react everytime the word “statism” is used as if it doesn’t have a definition that is pertinent to many people who promote government intevention in all areas of the economy. Many times the user of the word is not using it as an attack, merely a description of a position 00 it’s the position that is being criticized, not the person — — and to be honest, anyone who believes government should be managing the economy as the Obama adminsitration is attempting to, ought to not react to the word statist — they are statist in their political beliefs, and if they believe it’s right to be so, then there is no problem, just a disagreement in political philosophy. To compare “glibertarian,” which really says nothing, to “statist” is misleading, because the term “statist” does say something that everyone should understand. Much of the criticism coming from the left is similar to “glibertarian” — it doesn’t address the issues — it makes me wonder if libertarians know the flaws of statism but are stuck in their support.Report
“That was the wild west, and it is when I realized “liberals” are vicious when you present a challenge to their most precious issues.”
Yeah, come to think of it, it seems odd how the idea of epistemic closure as a problem for the Right ever got any oxygen in the first place, at least post-Bush.Report
I think we really need to repurpose the word “glibertarian” so it actually means something. I always took it as having a focus on the “glib.” The poster boy for this would be Glenn Reynolds, a public employee who is utterly, immovably convinced that if government just got out of the way, he and his guns and his high tech toys and his smarts would survive what followed. Glibertarians don’t think that they would ever need safety net programs and they consider themselves too savvy to need consumer protections. From a generational perspective, they are the anti-Rawls.
Do all libertarians fit this mold? Of course not. But some do, and those are the ones we should call glibertarians.Report
@Randy J., Additional fun terms to keep around:
gliberal: It’s someone who automatically thinks that the government can take care of stuff.
glibrary: a collection of superficial books that were purchased to look good to visitors but were never even cracked
GLIBOR: a superficial rate of interest for loans between financial institutionsReport
@Jaybird,
For a liberal, I really do enjoy a good interbank lending joke. Kudos.Report
@Jaybird, A women’s glibber? Glay gliberation?Report
@Jaybird,
GLIBT: A person whose sexuality differs from the norm in superficial ways.Report
@Jaybird, I am totally in favor of other applications of the ‘glib’ epithet, to the extent it’s even an epithet, anywhere someone feels it applies. I think it is a very useful shorthand for a particular impression one may get from a style of argumentation. I seriously don’t get what’s up with the extraordinary offense libertarians have teken from ‘glibertarian.’ If libertarians or conservatives had felt that liberals tended to act/argue glibly, they were in a very good idiomatic position to beat liberals to the punch and invent and deploy ‘gliberal.’ This is well within the bounds of fairness and even decent taste. You think a libertarian is acting glibly, so you call him a glibertarian. My stars, where’s the fainting couch? To the extent you apply it indiscriminately or to non-glib argumentation, the joke os plainly on you. My reaction had ‘gliberal’ taken hold rather than glibertarian, I really think honestly, would have been, “Okay, they think we (or some of us) are glib and they invented a semi-clever way to express that, and it’s not really dirty or insulting so fair enough. Do they have a point? Is this detracting from my persuasiveness? Should I rethink how I argue?” I don’t see why the reaction to glibertarian should be different.
“Gliberal” didn’t take hold — not only that, to my knowledge no one ever even floated it. Is there any reason to think this isn’t just because, whatever people think about the arguments of liberals — they’re unprincipled, ad hoc, outcome-oriented, unvirtuous, unrigorous with fact, whatever — glibness just wasn’t much of a problem in how liberals have been perceived? On the other hand, ‘glibertarian’ took hold when’gliberal’ didn’t. Is there any reason to think this was for any other reason than that, actually, people actually do think that libertarians come off as though they have pat answers — nay, one single pat answer to every problem? (Not saying that they do, but just that they [you all?] come off that way over time? [Do you really think they (y’all) don’t???])
You know, on reflection, yeah, there is one other reason beyond real perceptions that we might think ‘glibertarian’ resonated when ‘gliberal’ was never even attempted: as compared to the kinds of names and attitudes that have come liberals’ way from conservatives and, yes, some libertarians, over the years, ‘gliberal’ is, like, mega-ultra-infra-weaksauce as an epithet, and would be laughed out of any self-respecting liberal-basher’s lexicon at first public airing (cite: Bob Cheeks and what he gets away with around here).
So Cowboy up, you rugged individualists. Calling someone glib isn’t even saying he’re wrong. In the world of today’s public discourse (and that of late Eighteenth-Century America) it’s practically kissing his ass. In most cases, this term is an expression of exasperation with the confidence with which you hold your ideas, and in the worst case it’s just an expression of unwillingness to engage with people with who differ from oneself. The former is not something to take any offense at (that I can see), and the latter is an attitude you ought to just take as reason not to care what the person thinks anyways. If you think the term accomplishes something I’m not seeing (that isn’t a legitimate observation about libertarian argumentation*), please enlighten me.
* But(!): The mere fact that not all libertarians argue glibly all the time is not a compelling case that it is illegitimate for non-libertarians to perceive and observe upon the tendency — even coining a term for it — if it is in fact relatively common. And glibness, I think, is itself a quality defined by perception (is there an objective standard for whether an argument is glib?), so if the perception is commonly experienced, then the glibness is by definition real. The question in my view, then, is just whether the people who (at times) embrace ‘glibertarian’ have honestly experienced enough libertarian arguments as glib to fairly use the term. Again I would ask, does anyone really argue that they haven’t?Report
@Michael Drew,
You know, we wouldn’t have so much glibness if it weren’t subsidized by the government.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I disagree. Glibness is just the natural state of man, which is a wicked and mean creature that seeks only gratification of self, and also glibness.Report
@Michael Drew,
If only we could get rid of those damned subsidies. Then we could properly test your claim, which is only a hypothesis for the time being.Report
@JK, To this desire I assent.Report
@Michael Drew,
You know, those miners in Chile wouldn’t be trapped underground if they were allowed to carry weapons.Report
@Michael Drew, hey! I think it’s *GREAT* that you use “glibertarian”!
I compare it to sagging pants.
I will, occasionally, make fun of such folks for doing so… but it’s a great signal and the fact that you use it voluntarily makes it twice as awesome.
The last thing in the world I’d want you to do is stop using it.Report
@Jaybird, If the reaction has been making fun of those using the term, I haven’t seen where that’s been happening. Haughty umbrage is more like what I’ve been seeing.Report
@Michael Drew, it’s all good, my man.Report
@Michael Drew, What would make you think that “people actually do think that libertarians come off as though they have pat answers” AT THE POINT OF A GUN!?!?!?!?!?Report
@Will H., Umm… what?Report
@Michael Drew, sarcasm /offReport
I don’t get it. It’s a little out of my bailiwick but it seems that you want to think that Reynolds is a glibertarian exactly as that word is commonly used.Report
@Koz,
To the extent that it is used to mean “glib libertarian,” then yes. To the extent that it’s an all-purpose slam on libertarians, no. Non-glib libertarians do exist. Allegedly.Report
For a liberal, I really do enjoy a good interbank lending joke. Kudos.Report
While I enjoy Balloon Juice, and occasionally even comment there (not often, though — what’s the point of being #113 of 250?), it doesn’t seem like a good fit for you, Erik. The posts generally point out how boneheaded someone or something is and the commenters pile on. That’s not either a liberal or conservative stance; it comes from John Cole’s personality and style, and only the targets have changed since he was a Republican. In other words, it’s a place where someone who tries to be earnest and thoughtful will get eaten alive.Report
@Mike Schilling, I too have wondered wherefore either party thought it a good match. I applaud the efforts of all involved to get along all the same…Report
In the words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word (epistemic closure). I do not think it means what you think it means”.
The BJ commentariat have a very specific set of expectations for their front pagers which has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with interaction style.
Lobbing a post in and then ignoring the comments and questions which follow is derided.
As far as “being #113 of #250”, that’s what happens when you actually have back-and-forth. Yes, there are snipers and point-scorers and every other species of annoying internet personality. But there are also folks who honestly are trying to develop a rational and cogent world view and who could benefit from your viewpoint if it was clearly presented and well defended and explained.
Tolerance doesn’t mean anything but just that. “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” is tolerance. Although nowhere in there does it say “And I reserve the equivalent right to ridicule you when I think you’ve stepped in it” but I think it’s pretty clearly implied.Report
@NoPublic, I suppose that that is fair enough, but do you need the person who wrote the post to defend it?
Surely you have enough folks with views similar to the poster who can run with it, or defend the parts that they agree with, or, at least, the one single point that they agree with… no?
Perhaps even someone who enjoys the whole “Devil’s Advocate” role who wants to strengthen his own viewpoints by exploring the strongest/best arguments of the opposition?
Do you have one of those?Report