If you have some time, I would definitely check out the latest podcast at LGM in their series about the old blogosphere. This is part six, and is with Lauren Bruce, who many of you may remember as the person who started Feministe, which was the first major feminist blog I remember.
I reached out to Lauren afterwards and we had a little chat, and it had been so long since we talked. She was one of the liberal bloggers I chatted with a great deal while still a rightwinger (another being Avedon Carol), and she was always pleasant to talk to- a lot of weekends spent chitchatting on aol im or icq or whatever platform we were using back then. At any rate, one of the things we both agreed on is just how tedious talking to people about politics is these days.
For starters, I think things are different. I just don’t think you change anyone’s mind anymore. Second, I have just run out of energy when talking to wingnuts. I just want to throttle them. I’ve had this discussion before, 100 times, with people like you, and nothing has changed. In fact, you are using a dumber argument than I was when I was a Republican twenty years ago. And that argument was bad back then and yours has not improved it.
It’s just hard. Maybe because I am older and I keep seeing all the things people were right about in 2002 and I was wrong about turn out to be true, and then nothing happens. And the same people keep being right and keep being ignored while the awful people keep getting elevated.
I’m rambling again. Go give it a listen.
Very Far (From) Right-winger Open Thread: Losing Their Meagre Moiety of Marbles*
Alison Rose
Dang, I haven’t thought about Feministe in forever. Nostalgia!
Grumpy Old Railroader
Well kid, ya gotta ways ta go. Apolitical when I got sent to an infantry company in Vietnam, I became anti-war by what I saw and went through and upon return to stateside I rather quickly became a Berkeley Barb burn it all down radical left winger and Womens’ Libber but slowly and gradually moderated then began a slow drift to the right nodding my chin at some of the ideas my old self hated. But I came full circle back to a realist that we all need to help each other and the planet in order to make the world a better place.
You’re on the right path kid, chin up, chest out and don’t ever let the bastards know they are getting to you.
M. Bouffant
Yep. 22 yrs. since the Supremes gave us Bush v. Gore & barely anyone who was an idiot then has wised up, & no one has done anything about anything.
On a more positive note … [holds up blank piece of paper]
debbie
Huh, that must be my problem. Never heard of Feministe. I spent plenty of time at The Angry Housewife. Explains a lot.
NotMax
Accepting you were wrong is 80% of the battle.
RandomMonster
John, you reveal that you’ve always been a mensch. Suddenly I realize I’ve been following this blog for a long time, and now I know why.
Mai Naem mobile
@M. Bouffant: nah, it isn’t that nobody hasn’t wised up. Its that there’s whole new generation who need to wise up. Its the reason history repeats itself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s about when I started blaming Biden. I was ahead of the curve.
Ohio Mom
I’m curious about whom LGM chose to include, and who they will be interviewing next.
I’d have interviewed Markos Moulitsas and Atrios before Bitch, PhD, was she really that influential? (I read her for a while, even though I found her completely self-absorbed. It was the soap opera aspects that kept me coming back.)
Maybe they are interviewing their friends?
I might read the comments, I don’t have the patience to listen to an hour of rambling.
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m still blaming Obama; I’m WAY behind the curve.
dp
I second this. All of LGM’s podcasts are really interesting, so consider this a blanket endorsement. I’m not a voluminous commenter, but BJ and LGM really are the two best sites on the interwebs (and I still like Daily Kos as well).
dp
@dp: Oh, and the one before was with Brad DeLong, and it was great as well.
satby
So true. The lessons of the past become ancient history, and people forget. And the relearning can be very traumatic.
danielx
All too tired of wingnuts, and even more tired of gun freaks. Was sitting at a table of people this evening drinking beer and we got on to the topic of mass shootings. I allowed as how I was truly tired of people just living their lives being mowed down with military grade weaponry by evil little fucks who hate everybody who isn’t losing as bad as they are. Guy sitting there says in all seriousness if there were more people carrying in that crowd it wouldn’t have happened (gag). I looked at him and said that nutzoid kid in Highland Park was on top of a building and without warning emptied three thirty round magazines into the crowd in less than a minute, there could have been twenty – fifty! – people with guns in the crowd and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.
Then I got the well, homineh homineh, second amendment, blah blah…and got up and walked away. I can no longer deal with that attitude and mind set.
Ohio Mom
@danielx: The most telling example is what happened in Dayton, in the downtown bar district in August 2019.
Typical unhappy armed young guy killed nine people, injured 17 in just *32 seconds*. Thirty-two seconds is how long it took the cops who were on the scene to react, draw their guns and shot him dead.
But as you said, there’s no convincing those people.
UncleEbeneezer
@dp: Agreed. I’m a big podcast listener and LGM does a good job.
Poe Larity
It’s a small world. Friend of a cousin lost his Aunt in HP. Great kid, slept on my couch half a dozen times. In Asia, not sure if he can make it back.
joel hanes
Avedon Carol
I loved her Sideshow blog.
Then she went all bitter and hating on Hillary Clinton, all the time, and I just couldn’t any more.
EZSmirkzz
Far be it from me to interject on a fine post John;
I think I should point out that most of the wingnuts are bots, whether human or not, so you’re not going to get an intelligent exchange of ideas with them in any case. Think of drawers full of mismatched sock puppets. If you got something intelligent to say say it and maybe someone in their information bubble will snap to what you are saying.
Not everyone that disagrees with youse guys here at BJ is a troll, they have different opinions. That is their, and y’all’s right. We are all entitled to our own opinions. That doesn’t make them enemies.
Finally back in the old days when people in the forums were asking what blogs were, we had to beat the conservatives to a pulp with facts. It was a relentless effort posting headline and links after headlines and links. No one gives Co-operative Research any credit, but they were instrumental in finally getting Congress of their thumbs and establishing a 9-11 commission, which the families of victims were asking for and being ignored by in the hoopla of being someone instead of doing something.
The deck is stacked against us, has been for decades. Who coulda known media consolidation would lead third grade level reporting on national TV and news outlets? I don’t think we should spend any time helping those assholes out in dumbing down America.
I think progressive/liberal Democrats need to up their game. After all, the conservatives brightest lights are all giving Doug Feith a run for his money, which garbage is picked up by the national media and catapulted into the toilets of MAGA minds. We need to scrape that sh!t right off our shoes. (I heard a big rock band said that last line so it’s OK.)
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
They may be limited to people they know, can get in touch with, or have a good relationship with.
A history ought to include talks with Jerome Armstrong, Markos, Duncan Black, whoever was running thleftcoaster.
Critical Question: The true identity of the editors of Media Whores Online – “The site that set out to bring the media to their knees—but found out they were already there.”
randal m sexton
I am reminded of how Max Planck described how science advances: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Maybe we have to just wait for all the RWNJ to get old and die off. Except there are too many ‘young republicans’
It is discouraging at times.
livewyre
@randal m sexton: If my model has any substance to it, I have what may be good news and bad news.
The mistake isn’t constrained to just certain people, is the short version. The bad news is that there’s an element to it that all of us are stumbling over, but on the other hand, that means it’s something the rest of us – meaning, those who want to – can work to fix.
It’ll just need rethinking some fundamental norms. That might be the generational part; or, at least, biased towards those not so invested in current ways. Maybe that’s what makes it seem like a matter of individuals getting stuck in the mud and having to be left behind – we’re all slogging, just some further away from high ground than others. And some too proud to ask for rope. Something like that.
SFAW
Careful, buddy! I thought LGM is blogona non grata here, because they are the worst bunch of doom-posters since Eeyore was a pup, or something like that. If the powers-what-be see you’ve spoken semi-approvingly of them, you may get shunned, or at least suffer slings and arrows (which are probably worse than “thoughts and prayers.”)
Just trying to be helpful.
nickdag
‘@cole
This Krugman column from a couple weeks ago ties into what you’re saying here.
Why Did Republicans Become So Extreme?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/opinion/republicans-extreme-abortion.html
neldob
We shall fight on the beaches,
We shall fight on NextDoor,
We shall fight in the Twitter and in the NYT comments section,
We shall fight in the hills;
Also in the Indivisible Truth Brigade
We shall never surrender ….
some good news is that a new California law could eliminate 23 million tons of plastic in 10 years… progress is slow but steady-ish.