I know I said before that I wasn’t going to engage any trolls, since I have long since realized that it’s a waste of time. However, a recent troll appearance got me riled up just enough to respond. Some guy who calls himself paul k dropped an enormous screed in the comments to this post by sherlock. Before I continue, if I impaired anyones ability to directly address this guy, I apologize. I was feeling feisty. And if I broke any unwritten rules, let me know and I’ll stop. That goes for this post as well. And Jeff, if I went too low by posting my recap of events no one really cares about, let me know and I won’t do it again.
Anyway, one excerpt from his piece is the following:
The costs of fighting a disastrously conceived, incompetently executed, and unwinnable war are no longer supportable in any sense—monetary, political, psychological. And now that the neocons’ megalomaniac project for a nouveau American century has been discredited by its own architects (next time, try a remedial course in regional geopolitics, morons), we’re left to clean up the mess.
I guess we were supposed to address these points in some manner, or at least bask in his wisdom. However, I don’t think any of those statements are factual. To argue the points would be to concede that they are at least partially correct. Here’s some more content:
I agree with Sam Harris that fundamentalist Islam is a cult of death. But unfortunately that’s a potential it shares with any religion within the Abrahamic tradition, especially Christianity, which William Empson rightly described as a “hideous system of torture worship.†If fundamentalist twice-borners were allowed the same access to secular power as they have been in the past (Inquisition Version 2.0, anyone), I have no doubt they’d be burning infidels at the stake with the same True-Believer zeal as their head-lopping Muslim counterparts.
Well, there’s plenty of ill-informed hate in that statement. Again, why bother addressing it?
So, instead, I came up with the snark:
Get a friggin blog, troll-boy.
Concise, I think. It made the point with a minimum of words.
His response
As soon as you quit trolling our sites, dickwad.
…
And at least yr post contains one two-syllable word this round—hey, by your standards, that’s progress! Game, set and match to moi, knuckle-dragger.
Now, I think anyone would realize that it was directed at me, and not at “everyone.” However, after I let him know I never troll any lefty sites and called him “pussy-boy” (juvenile, yes, but why not, really?), he let me know he was in fact adressing others as well. My reading comprehension is pretty good. I doubt he was being truthful. No surprise. Still more:
Also, I have no illusions about your educability, since you exemplify perfectly what John Gregory Dunne called “invincible ignorance.†Teachability requires something other than your tribe’s hard-wired tropisms that substitute for the higher faculties we Homo sapiens take for granted.
Well, that puts the cap on it. I am not human because I disagree with him, and neither is anyone else who disagrees. Throw in a little appeal to authority and you have a winner. What’s ultimately a riot is that I never attempted to argue with him, I just snarked at him. So he has no idea whether I have the ability to address him or not.
I admit, my last response was probably over the top, but I wanted to go out with a bang. An excerpt:
As far as my “teachability†is concerned, if you want to put your academic cock on the table, I have the distinct feeling I can better you by far. And claiming that I am not human because I don’t agree with you is patently ridiculous.
And finally, you visit right-wing sites to point fingers and laugh. That isn’t a broadening of horizons, neighbor. That’s just what I would consider to be a waste of time. Every time I’ve visited a lefty site, I have realized that there is nothing there to learn since the worldview of the writers almost always is based on fantasy. YOu probably feel the same about righty sites.
SO, why bother? My guess, it’s just compulsive behavior on your part. You can’t resist the lure to think of yourself as better than others because of your beliefs, and how they make you so evolved. I haven’t met a lefty yet who didn’t think himself to be smarter than almost everyone else, and yet for a select few they seem to fall way short of their self-described promise.
Yeah, that was bad. I thought it was when I wrote it, but damn I felt like being a jerk. I succeeded.
Anyway, it was kinda fun.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled guest-blogging
sure cranky-d, but after I become a millionaire this weekend, you’ll be sorry you didn’t ask paul k to put his great brains and extrasensory perception to use for ya. ;p
I had no idea he was that good. And I insulted him. I feel so stupid now.
Wow, I’m glad I wasn’t there for that. Insulting the ‘Abrahamic’ religions? That doesn’t even make any sense! Talk about regurgitation!
I mean, obviously Ishmael (an abandoned wanderer) and Jacob (well-off father of 12) have every thing in common! We might as well say every religion shares that tendancy, including Anal-Retentive Atheism.
ARA is the worst kind of mental disease- a kind of combination of early development retardation plus reading a lot of narcissistic idiots when you’re in college trying to get laid.
So I guess calling it a religion is dumb, I mean, unlike Christianity, which is a relationship with the source of all life, intellect and creation, its kind of like a very special way of sucking your thumb.
So, I can’t fault pauly for feeling inadequate.
Paul is definitely compensating for all the wedgies in the cafeteria and all the towel-snaps in the locker room.
That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.
– Just your typical Noam Chomsky idiotarian qumquat. They inhabit the blogosphere like annoying blue bottle flies, speaking truthiness to the vast knuckle dragging masses. Besides, who the hell wants to live in mississippi….
Wow, someone’s looking for validation…
I just wanna pat you on the head, and let you know everything’s gonna be alright.
And as exhibit B – Kakacrat.
It appears that the leftie bloggosfairies are feeling their man chests and need to strut for the poor downtrodden Thugs, stomping on their conservative/libertarian gonads like Scipio bulldozing Carthage. Wonder how they feel about John “eyeball to eyeball, I’ve got the votes” Murtha getting his head handed to him today.
No, they’re wondering why winning an election feels so empty. Aren’t all us Rethuglicans supposed to be guzzling hemlock tea by now?
Hemlock: Drink of the true loyalists since 399 BC.
It says a lot when you see the left panic and rage even in victory. Perhaps it is the realization that it may be a fleeting one.
Perhaps.
What once were vices, now are habits.
Ahhhh, the Doobie brothers…
I’ll admit I wasn’t paying such close attention before, but… was there this much in-fighting on the winning side immediately after the last shift in Congressional power?
It’s crazy; it was crazy when the Dems got themselves elected on a platform of nothing but “Had enough?” (my God, I’m getting tired of seeing that last, tattered poster along the freeway…), and it’s even crazier to watch them now, not even sworn in yet and already Kilkenny cats. People denouncing one another left and right – well, left and left, I guess.
Wow, you ARE a badass! Calling someone a pussy on the internet? Damn, get your cockstrong rear to goarmy.com and start winning us some wars!
Fucking dipshit. Seriously, though – there’s a real world out there, look out the window if you don’t believe me. Sure you won’t get electronic high-fives when you “totally diss” some guy but you’ll have the satisfaction of being around real people. Good luck, Scooter.
Gotta love the irony.
Beyond parody.
Attention idiots : If I posted something at my own blog about how I “totally burned those morons at PW” then you’d have a point. What I do, I do out of compassion for you guys. It is purely selfless. And, you are welcome.
Here’s another vote for “beyond parody.”
heet must have received an atomic wedgie – his underwear pulled over his head – in the cafeteria, when he was making his ‘moves’ on the head cheerleader, and then was stuffed behind the pop machine. By the secretary of the chess club.
It’s the only explanation for the spittle-flecked tirades.