The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Short List . . .

Posted on | September 19, 2010 | 51 Comments

. . . of Astoundingly Stupid Things No Conservative Blogger in His Right Mind Would Ever Even Think About Doing:

  • Publish posts conflating “neocons” and “Jews” in such a way as to provoke accusations of anti-Semitism.
  • Respond to such accusations by publishing deranged rants against Jews.
  • Get into hateful public pissing matches with Ace of Spades and other cuddly ewoks who never harmed a fly, at least if the fly usually voted Republican.
  • Personally attack Michelle Malkin. (Dude. WTF?)
  • Push that kind of act to such outrageous extremes that one Sunday morning I’m finally confonted with Twitter messages like this:

Now, this is merely the short list, and DoublePlusUnDead tells me the list could be extended ad infinitum. It has not generally been my habit to intrude into other people’s online flame-wars, and no one would ever nominate me as Blogospheric Arbiter of Civility, Decorum and Multicultural Sensitivity.

As I reminded DPUD in a phone conversation today, I ignored the LGF attacks on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer for more than a year, to my ultimate regret. If I had been paying attention earlier, perhaps I could have done something to prevent CJ from going so completely off the rails. At least I could have tried to steer the situation toward some less disastrous conclusion. As it was, by the time I got involved, the paranoid madness at LGF was already too far gone to be redeemed.

The policy of Rule 2 here has been to link blogs that link us, generally irrespective of their political orientation. A link is not always an endorsement, and I’m way too busy with my own wild-ass adventures to keep track of every other blogger’s wild-ass words and deeds. I’ve occasionally linked such disreputable organizations and individuals as Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times.

Sue me, OK?

Therefore I had only the faintest notion that a certain blogger — who will be deleted from the blogroll just as soon as I can get Smitty to take care of that task — had done all the hideous things (and more) described in the list above.

Sorry. I guess I should have been paying attention.

Dan Riehl has sometimes chastened me for my can’t-we-all-just-get-along attitude toward blogging. Love me, hate me, beat me, bite me, make me write bad checks and call me “Helen” – as long as you link me, I’m OK.

Were it up to me, everybody would be my friend, so if you’re my enemy, that’s your choice, not mine. Even John McCain could be my friend, if he would (a) resign from public office, (b) admit that he royally screwed up the GOP and (c) do something to get his idiot daughter to shut up.

One of the reasons I tend to ignore other people’s problems is that I’m so busy trying to solve my own problems, among them the seemingly permanent crisis in my finances. When I feel discouraged, I do my “Rodney Dangerfield of the Blogosphere” routine — e.g., “Why does Tabitha Hale hate me?” — because mocking my myriad misfortunes is the only way to keep from going stark raving nuts.

The deer are out to get me!

As long as you can laugh at your problems, you’re probably going to be OK. You may be dead broke and living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass, but if you can still laugh about it, at least you’re not totally crazy. And the most important thing to remember in that kind of situation is this: It’s all your fault.

The minute you start looking around for somebody else to blame for your problems, you’ve bought yourself a ticket on a one-way train to oblivion, and the next-to-last stop on that line is Crazyville:

Good mental health is characterized by optimism and a sense of agency — that is to say, the belief that we are ultimately in control of our own lives. The sense of agency is critical to success and happiness in every area of life, in large part because it is necessary to self-improvement and problem-solving.
Everyone encounters failure and disappointment, but a person who believes that his life is within his own control will respond to such setbacks in a positive, constructive way — analyzing the cause of the failure, seeking ways to improve, determing to work harder to overcome disadvantages and remedy personal deficiencies. A psychologically healthy person therefore must accept responsibility for his failures and shortcomings just as willingly as he accepts reward for his successes and abilities.
While it is true that other people sometimes contribute to our failures by undermining our efforts, it is also true that our successes generally require the assistance of others. Factors which are genuinely beyond our control tend to even out over time. In a free and prosperous society, few people are so disastrously disadvantaged as to have no hope whatsoever of improving their lot in life. . . .
Self-pity and envy are closely associated emotions. If we are not to blame for our own failures, then others deserve no credit for their success. . . .
Paranoia is rooted in the narcissist’s need to rationalize failure, to find scapegoats for his own shortcomings. . . .

Read the whole thing and understand that I’m honestly trying to help people. But it’s hard to help somebody when I’m stone-broke and stressed-out most of the time.

It’s also hard to help some people when there are other people needing help who are at least working hard to do the right thing. Why should I link somebody who’s ranting incoherently about neocon conspiracies and attacking my blog friends, when I could instead be linking Da Tech Guy or some other good-guy blogger who is busting his ass to make a go of it?

Hell’s bells, I could be praising the brilliance of Professor Glenn Reynolds’ lastest Examiner column, thereby sucking up to a guy who could throw me a crapload of traffic!

Smitty toils diligently, with little praise and less reward, because he truly believes in what we’re trying to accomplish here.

Exactly what that it, we’re not quite sure, but if this Underpants Gnome scheme to take over the entire freaking blogosphere has not succeeded as quickly or completely as I originally hoped, neither has it been a total failure . . . yet. Give us time, and we might go back to zero traffic someday.

In the meantime, however, our insane plot for global Internet domination is an ongoing project and there are limits to how much distracting noise we can tolerate. Once Smitty hits the “delete” key, there will be one less blogger on the blogroll, and all I can say about this unfortunate circumstance is that it’s not my fault.

At least not entirely. Everbody will probably blame me anyway, though. They always do.

Because I suck.

Hit the tip jar, somebody. I’m feeling depressed.

UPDATE: OK, this ungodly mess caused me to postpone The American Spectator column I had planned for Monday, and I was so depressed that I took a three-hour nap.

Let me try to explain something to anyone who is confused: Politics is not 100% of life.

It happens to be what I write about for a living, but politics is not the totality of human existence.

There’s also masturbation, for example. (Hint for guys with masturbation problems: Just think of Maureen Dowd. Problem solved!)

If politics is not the totality of human existence, then someone can be 100% wrong about an important political issue and still not be total waste of hydrocarbons. But why bring Patterico into this?

Suppose somebody (a) disagrees with neoconservatives in politics, and (b) doesn’t like Jews Eskimos.

Hey, it’s a free country. Nobody can force you to like Jews Eskimos., and let’s face it, a lot of people have honest and honorable disagreements with U.S. policy in the Middle East Aleutian Islands. Your ability to turn your political beliefs into persuasive discourse, however, is going to be hampered if every time you lose your temper, you start raving hatefully about Jews Eskimos.

Furthermore, such ill-tempered outbursts could cause people to start asking themselves, “Is this really about politics? Or is this guy a demented sociopath who just happens to have stumbled into political blogging as an outlet for the perverse hatreds that poison his soul?”

Well, there’s no need to bring up Charles Johnson again.

My point is that when you inflate politics out of all proportion in your mind, that’s when you’re in danger of losing perspective and acting like an obnoxious turd. And maybe the basic problem in such a situation is not really political.

Maybe the real problem is that you’re an obnoxious turd.

Or, as I wrote in the comments at DoublePlusUnDead:

“It ain’t about the politics. It’s about the sociopathic personality disorder.”

Peace out. And hit the tip jar. It’s a guaranteed cure for the blogger blues.

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Category: Ace of Spades, Blogging, Da Tech Guy, Dan Riehl, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Political Byline, Tabitha Hale

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