MY SECRET PLEASURE.

I have a secret internet activity. Something that has grown in dimension and intensity, since i started my internet activity. I used to feel awkward about it, embarrassed even. No, not that one! I'm a troll. I click on comments initiated from right-wing nut jobs. What's a rightwing nut job, you ask? Good question. It's like how Justice Potter Stewart described pornography, "I know it when I see it". If you come onto the screen with the insulting over-confidence of a watcher of websites populated by young, white, and dim-witted males in muscle shirts, you are almost surely a RWNJ. If your opinion is regarded by you on the same intellectual level as science, or medicine, or economics, you are an RWNJ. You are the kind of guy that will peer over the shoulder of a portrait artist on the street, and say, "I think you should make my old lady's lips fatter". 

Where is that line between spirited discussion and verbal war? It is at the level of wit. It is the bon mot, the topper, where the game is engaged. It is the comedic paring of the comedian and the foil. One guy gets the good jokes, the other guy sets them up like a high-set volleyball about to be spiked. Most of us do not fall into that headliner category. But the internet allowed the set-up man to think they can get the laughs, too. My use of the pronoun, he, is intentional.

A cautious person might remind me that I make myself vulnerable to the same accusation as the RWNJ, and I agree. I think however, that by relying on the expertise of science, medicine, economics, and other disciplines, I feature them, not my opinions. I can further illustrate my point by personal observation that conforms with what science or history appears to tells us, but I acknowledge its shortcomings. RWNJ have no intellectual shortcomings; according to them. I had one guy reply to a comment I made on a recent heat-wave. He proceeded to inform me of some physics idea he, or someone, had concocted showing that these climate anomalies are normal. He ended it by making fun of science by spelling it s-i-e-n-c-e. This my good friends is a gift, and I exploited it for all of the insult I could wring out of it.

Some years ago, before a trope had a name, there was this sports-comedy movie called White Men Can't Jump. The set-up was us white men, the comic focus was black basketball players. And they had some fun with us. Probably the premier white basketball player of that time was the Hall of famer Larry Bird. Larry Bird could jump. As high as many black players in the league. He just started from a foot lower. The point is that RWNJ can't wit. They fumble the set-up. There's a YouTube short of Whiskey Pete Hegseth, when he was a mere Foxnews weekend host, throwing an axe, which carrommed off of the top of the target and shot backwards at him. This is the Heisman trophy of RWNJ. This is when even a dimwit goes, WTF? The internet has given these guys anonymity, and the assumption that their ideas have merit. It is the medium of the mediocre. You will not find an Algonquin round table here. You won' find even a scintilla of thought. Thought being the quality that allows us to be exposed to new ideas. 

On another occasion, a person responded to my comment on a libertarian post, where I said that we don't have much faith in libertarian thought. He responded that he did not have much faith in the voter. I replied that I'm often disappointed in the voter, but the authoritarian leader is much worse. I'm deliberately editing out some of my salty adjectives. I prefer to use them on those who deserve them. Yes, I could be more accommodating to these dipshits, and there was a time when I would have tried. But after some 40 years of rightwing radio, tea-party activism, insults of Gary Hart, Howard Dean, John Kerry, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and President Biden, and three elections in 24 years where the results seemed tainted, I'm no longer making the effort to be nice. I do not care.

Words in the realm of higher thought require careful use. Not every word has the broad definition too often attributed to it. Free, for instance.  We are promised freedom by our founding documents. With that freedom comes obligation. It's part of the package. That package, now in its 250th year has evolved. For the first hundred years, freedom was not offered to slaves. It was not offered indentured servants over many years either, though they were released from servitude after 7 years. Even then, the one great freedom, to vote on the people who lead us, was only offered to land-owning males. By 1856 the last state adopted that freedom to non-landowning males, North Carolina. That was, incidently, 2 years before the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery. The newly-enfrachised black citizens were granted the vote in 1868 by the 14th Amendment. It was soon taken back. Then returned to them in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, then taken away from them by the Robert's Supreme Court a mere few weeks back. which may change that law back to those pre-14th Amendment days in the coming months. Freedom is not always free. 

Let's talk about free speech. While not strictly defined, lying or disinformation was not acceptable free speech. Until 1993, we kept pretty close to that custom. There were times when free speech was allowed the liar, but there was always some pesky legislator that would speak up to the careless abuser of speech rights. The German-American Bund in the 1930s, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s were examples. Newt Gingrich, when he became Speaker of the House opened the way for Trumpian lies. Donald Trump, predictably, went even farther. There is very little that is spoken by rightwingers that is not somewhere between disinformation and an outright lie. That is where fascism takes possession of democracy.  If you can defend this misuse of free speech, or even remain silent, you are tolerating the people who won't tolerate you. STRIKE BACK! Speak the truth to stupid! There can be no acceptance of these people, or the stand they take. Polite society should not be open to these people!