On Booman’s most recent post (The Polluters are in Control), the first comment was from donnah. I agreed, and elaborated on my agreement. One of the recent neo-centrist, neo-McCarthyite cowards on this blog zeroed me out. Maybe two, maybe more. Who knows?
Since I am saving my comments and replies now, here is what I had to say:
Donnah writes:
Trump allows uneducated money-grubbing phonies into these important positions because they will drag their departments down and strip them of power. Kathleen White, Betsy DeVoss, Ben the idiot surgeon Carson, were all put in place to destroy protections and speed up the destruction of our government.
“…put in place to…speed up the destruction of our government.”
Precisely!!!
There it is.
The real deal.
Trump vs. the Democrats and the Republicans. The smart Republicans know this, and so do the smart Dems. The anti-Trump movement is bipartisan. It was bipartisan when he ran in the primaries, and the Republicans lost…to their absolute surprise. Then they had to hide their enmity as well as they could for fear of losing their offices, their power and their slices of the Great American Pie. No sense in that, right?
Let the Dems take him down. We’ll watch; maybe kibitz a little from the sidelines.
Only…the Dems lost, too.
UH oh!!! What’ll we do now!!!
Make nice and wait for his inevitable fall was “what to do.” The power of the media would wear him down eventually. Let the Dems pound on him in public and the GOPers do the same in the back rooms.
“It’s only a matter of time!!!” they thought.
Well…time’s a’passin’, and there he still is, busily dismantling this system by benevolent…and not-so-benevolent…neglect.
Now what? Gonna wait for Mueller to pull a jackass out of the hat?
Maybe he will.
Or maybe not.
He’d damned well better hurry if he’s going to do anything!!!
So far?
Besides targeted media leaks dribbled out every news cycle for a year or so?
NADA!!!
As “the process” creeps along at yesteryear speed and Trump works on superfast social media time.
“48% pro-Trump!!!” the pro-Trump media blast. And that 48% (or 24% or whatever…) believe it, just as they believe that the inauguration crowd was massive and massively underreported; just as they believe that the Florida school shooting was a setup to ban guns.
How long are we going to wait for our old and antiquated system to do its stuff?
Will it be the usual “too little, too late?” Like the bloated bureaucracy that was supposed to protect those Parkland kids from yet another monster? If the F.B.I cannot act on a decidedly off kid who posts murder threats under his own name on Facebook, how are they going to deal with a multi-billionaire criminal who has the backing of anti-government forces both domestically and (perhaps) abroad?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Soon!!!
Before it’s too goddamned late.
Or is it too late already.
We gonna see.
Before the 2018 midterms, if the numbers aren’t right for Trump and his handlers.
Constitutional crisis?
Comin’ right up!!!
He’s likely to pardon and/or fire everybody…including himself…in some 4AM Twitterstorm, and then ask:
Whatchoo gonna do about it, you bureaucratic nincompoops!!!??? I got half the country…or more…on my side. Go ahead. Try me.
Watch.
It’s coming…the fever is still rising, and every illness must have a crisis before it recedes.
Watch.
AG
Booman…
Where is the “zeroness” in all of that? This zeroing is just a personal vendetta masquerading as “politics,” in my opinion. Are you going to let these people take control of your blog? If so, just say so and be done with it.
If not?
Take some action! I hate to see this once-vital blog go down in a morass of subliterate stupidity masquerading as “progressivism.” You’re better than that, and this blog used to be better than that. All that is happening here is that Trump’s bashing style of commentary is taking over on every level of discourse.
It seems to work…let’s try it to support our own beliefs!!!
DUH!!!
I personally loathe meta, myself. I have never much bothered with it here or on any other blog unless ignorant attacks multiplied to the point that it began difficult for me to make my points.
Make it go away.
Please.
For your own peace of mind if for nothing else.
Sincerely…
AG
Really. You quoted your own post just to complain about a rating?
Instead of complaining, try joking about it.
C’mon. Everyone should save every post that they ever make on BT and create stand-alone diaries complaining about everything from real or imagined transgressions on BT to the fact that they might have stubbed their toe earlier in the day. After all, literally everything any of us writes ever on BT is so valuable it must be saved for posterity. Personally, I think all of these wonderful comments should be sent on the next spacecraft intended to travel far enough to come into contact with other intelligent life forms so that they may read what our species has to offer as a cautionary tale. It’ll be brilliant.
Arthur could seek to understand what he is doing in the comments which draw a bunch of troll ratings from community members. It’s not as if all his comments are treated equally; a few are drawing enough downratings to disappear, and the vast majority of his comments are not drawing enough downratings to disappear.
Instead of respecting the community, he imperiously asks everyone else to change their behavior in order to preserve the deathless prose of a spare comment or two which repel community members and attract none. That’s important to emphasize here: the hostile post he shares here got no upgrades. The BooMan community didn’t like this comment, at all. None of Arthur’s disappearing comments have received a single upgrade. If they had, they wouldn’t have disappeared.
For a radical right wing contrarian participating in a progressive community blog, he sure does whine and moan a lot about his treatment. You would think Mr. Tough Guy Libertarian could accept the reaction he’s getting in the marketplace of ideas.
I’m not necessarily agreeing with AG’s comments, but this is a disingenuous argument. This appeal to community ratings as some kind of validation is akin to appealing to the high school cheerleaders/jock cool club as validation of who is worth associating with, especially when one of this community’s biggest troll rating abusers is of particularly low reading comprehension.
The community of posters here have limited options at their behest when dealing with members who behave as genuinely bad actors. One is to attempt to appeal to said bad actors’ better angels – inevitably that is doomed to failure. Ratings are pretty much all we have left, absent mods or direct intervention from the website owner or owners. A community that cannot deal effectively with those who disrupt it and corrupt its norms (whatever those may be) is one that is not long for this world. I watched USENET groups die during that period when USENET was genuinely relevant (including one that once meant the world to me) and have seen community blogs die under such circumstances. I am convinced that as for now accusations of troll rating abuse are premature. If those were happening on a regular basis for mere disagreements, there would be good reason to be disturbed and outraged and I would be joining the chorus of those expressing such concerns. As it is, those appear to be used for the most part on a serial disruptor and perhaps the very occasional spam (the latter of which was a real problem a couple years back).
He trolled so hard for so long that he’s now fallen victim to his own trolls. There’s something funny about that.
Write a song about it, Arthur.