Little Green Sheep: A Telling Update

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 54 Comments

Nothing is more predictable than the herd instinct. Despite their insistence that they make up their own minds, many people are in fact, as psychologists say, highly suggestible, and subject to peer pressure, so that if any trend becomes dominant within the particular herd with which they identify, the average person follows the trend without much conscious deliberation.

If herd membership is dependent on a shared set of political opinions, a shift in those shared opinions requires members either to join in the shift or else risk ostracism by the herd. To be abandoned or rejected by one’s herd is not an experience most herd-minded people seek — why else would they be in the herd in the first place? — and so they conform and follow along, believing all the while that they are thinking for themselves, rather than being influenced by others.

This morning a person I’d never heard of re-Tweeted to my attention a message from one of Charles Johnson’s LGF stooges to the effect that I am a “neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire.”

Sigh.

Keep in mind that this was someone with 451 Twitter followers re-Tweeting a stale old message from someone with 109 Twitter followers. I’m reminded of an old joke about the flea who decided to rape an elephant. The elephant didn’t notice, but during the act a coconut fell from a tree and bonked the elephant on her head, causing her to groan, and the flea said, “Oh, yeah, baby, it’s good for ya, ain’t it?”

Being intensely curious both by nature and professional habit, however, I noticed that this particular flea had an actual name — Randall Gross — and when I clicked to see what sort of flea he was, I noticed that he’d linked his blog on his Twitter profile page. Of course, Little Green Footballs was listed on his blogroll, and when I checked Gross’s “About” page, I saw this curious paragraph:

I don’t hate liberals or democrats, I just pity them. It must suck to have devolved to the point where your political purpose and platforms are based minute-by-minute on the output of the 24 hour news cycle and a myths so distant from reality that it must recreate itself every five minutes. (Update 2010 — sadly this position and propensity has flipped since President Obama was elected. It is now the right that hangs on every news cycle looking for the latest minuscule point or position to become overly outraged about. The GOP has gone from being the Adult party in Washington to being hysterical children. Strange what a difference one election can make.)

Eh?

Beyond pointing out that he misspelled “miniscule,”* I wonder how it is that “one election” divested Republican of the status they had hitherto enjoyed of being “the Adult party” in Gross’s estimation. He would seem to be referring to what became the Tea Party uprising, the simplest defense of which was expressed by Jennifer Rubin in February 2009: “The opposition party must oppose.”

People whose understanding of politics is shallow, and who had become accustomed to supporting Republicans as the “in” party — the power-wielding authority in a (small-“d”) democratic polity — never really grasped the challenges that confronted the GOP after their successive defeats in 2006 and 2008. The collapse of the Bush-era Republican majority was a cataclysm which the party leadership did not anticipate, and for which they tried to evade responsibility. Explaining “what went wrong” was a process complicated by the defensiveness of the GOP elite (which did not wish to admit their own errors) and by the misleading analyses offered by the punditocracy.

If Republicans in 2009 were going to heed the counsels of, inter alia, David Brooks and Karl Rove, their response to the existential crisis would look a lot like the “centrist” candidacies of Dede Scozzafava, Charlie Crist and Mike Castle. But if, as Rubin said, “the opposition party must oppose,” the first order of business was to start raising hell: Throw a populist wrench into the machinery of the party Establishment that had brought about the disasters of 2006-08, and which was in early 2009 advocating a collaborative stance toward the newly-installed Democrat regime.

Randall Gross’s understanding of the political dynamic was, alas, even less inadequate than Charles Johnson’s. However zany, haphazard and misguided CJ’s shift from Right to Left between 2007 (when he first attempted to purge Pamela Geller from the conservative blogosphere) and 2009 (when Johnson finally “parted ways with the Right”), it was at least an opportunistic sellout in which Johnson struck his own bargains. Randall Gross was merely one of the witless dupes who drifted along in Charles’s erratic wake.

Anyway, it is amusing to see how, during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Gross’s outrage over the Reuters “faux-tography” incident led him to write a long post denouncing as “gullible sheep” those duped by the mainstream media. It seemingly never occurs to Gross that he (and Charles Johnson and whoever else is now left tending the pixels at LGF) was similarly duped into believing that the conservative response to the GOP’s electoral disasters of 2006-08 was something other than it was.

Randall Gross’s malleable qualities make him a perfect sheep in the Johnsonoid herd, as witness his efforts to provide fodder for the fashionable fanaticism in some samples from his recent Little Green Footballs output, wherein Gross:

Invokes the magic totems of Southern Baptists and “wingnuts”;
Denounces “anti-choice terrorists”;
Abhors Rudy Giuliani’s status as an adviser to Serbian politicians; and
Deplores the Catholic Church for its “opposition to birth control when the world population is quickly on path to 9 billion and Family planning is the only thing with any hope of stemming the tide of starvation, poverty, and misery that overpopulation brings.”

Well, these are all controversial topics toward which people might have differing attitudes. What must be explained, however, is why Gross is nowadays so ostentatiously interested in these particular subjects — Baptists, “wingnuts,” “choice,” Serbia, “overpopulation” — that were almost certainly of no interest to him five or six years ago.

Obviously these subjects concern Gross now for the same reason Lebanon concerned him in 2006 — they are fashionable topics with the herd — which is the same reason that he suddenly took an interest in me. Having poked one of his fellow Little Green Sheep who libeled me yesterday, I’m the Enemy of the Day, cast in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein in Big (Ponytailed) Brother’s re-enactment of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Charles Johnson Internet Center for Mediocre Conformity has attracted many inept dullards over the years. Those who are willing to bend their ideas to fit whatever species of fanaticism strikes CJ’s whimsical interests are always welcome at LGF, and only those who have the intelligence to detect falsehood and the courage to fight for firm principle will ever find themselves consigned to the Legion of the Banned.

Standing up against the herd instinct is not conducive to popularity. If what you crave is the admiration of the ignorant, the undiscerning and the dishonorable, nothing is easier than to follow the herd, striving to make yourself conspicuous as a compliant follower.

As the price of his membership in the herd, Randall Gross is willing to show solidarity with the vicious liar Daniel Vergara, and to justify this most dishonorable alliance by telling himself that I deserve to be defamed, in that I am a “neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire.”

Very well. Let fools think what they will.

Let them choose other such fools as their friends, and never pause to wonder why this unthinking course of action seems acceptable to them. But these fools are sadly deluded if they think they deserve from me any explanation for my own course of action — any excuse, apology or friendly word of warning — as I watch them scurry along, resembling sheep rather less than they do a much smaller species of mammal.

No point praying for the godless lemmings, as they hurtle toward the cliff.

UPDATE: Speaking of throwing a populist wrench into the Republican machinery, the latest update from Professor Glenn Reynolds:

TEA PARTY FORCES ORRIN HATCH INTO PRIMARY. That’s huge. More here.

These “neo-Confederate wackos” are everywhere nowadays.

UPDATE II: Dave Weigel reports on the Battle of ~~Bull Run~~ Sandy, Utah:

The Tea Party movement is alive in Utah. With representatives from FreedomWorks in the audience, delegates at the Utah Republican Convention managed to force Sen. Orrin Hatch into a June 26 primary. He got 59.2 percent of their votes against Dan Liljenquist, a 38-year-old state senator. Hatch needed 60 percent to avoid the primary. He couldn’t do it. In two rounds of voting, he went from 2,243 votes to 2,313 votes. If he’d gotten 32 more votes, he would have wrapped this up.

Thirty-two votes! Allahpundit writes:

59.1 percent sounds hopeless for Liljenquist if it’s an accurate reflection of Republican voters in Utah, but there’s bound to be a burst of tea-party enthusiasm for him now that he and Richard Mourdock are the last best chance to tilt the GOP further right at the federal level.

Oh, hell, yes. Dan Liljenquist just became a hero to millions of people who never heard his name before today. GO GIVE HIM MONEY NOW!

——
* Duly noting that “minuscule” is the older and original (and probably racist) spelling of the word.

Category: Charles Johnson, Media Bias, Tea Party

Comments

54 Responses to “Little Green Sheep: A Telling Update”

richard mcenroe
April 21st, 2012 @ 4:04 pm

In breaking news, the dead and irrelevant Tea Party just forced Orrin Hatch into a primary, even though he spent over $5mil to prevent it.

Oh, and Randy mispelled “mythos”, too.
robertstacymccain
April 21st, 2012 @ 4:21 pm

Thanks for the bulletin. I don’t dislike Orrin Hatch but damn, he’s hanging onto his Senate seat with a petulant ferocity, isn’t he?
rcocean
April 21st, 2012 @ 4:53 pm

Never understood the respect for Charles Johnson or LGF. Just a bunch of dumb people posting a lot of dumb stuff. As for CJ himself, he’s never written anything longer than a postcard that made any sense, and his BHTV appearance was pathetic.

But I guess if enough idiots follow an idiot he has power.
Adobe_Walls
April 21st, 2012 @ 4:54 pm

I’m extremely suspicious of anyone who counted Ted Kennedy as a friend, and Hatch has been there way too long. All of the politicians on the hill who have gauzy memories of the “good old days of bipartisanship” need to go.
richard mcenroe
April 21st, 2012 @ 4:59 pm

Hatch’s true feelings came out last night, Stacy. He doesn’t dislike you, he despises you, and all of us who dare think it’s up to us who gets HIS seat for life.
robertstacymccain
April 21st, 2012 @ 5:09 pm

I’m extremely suspicious of anyone who counted Ted Kennedy as a friend

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
JanetC
April 21st, 2012 @ 5:19 pm

Ten plus years ago CJ by merely linking and printing what the Islamo-fascists said themselves about themselves was a great purveyor of truth. I’ll give props to him for that.

I’m sorry he descended into such nuttery.
Dianna Deeley
April 21st, 2012 @ 5:20 pm

Stacy, you might want to have a look at page four of the comments on yesterday’s fake retweet.
Tennwriter
April 21st, 2012 @ 5:52 pm

Tennwriter’s Creationist Theory of Conservatives says that a Conservative may well be a good Conservative, and strongly disagree with Creationism, but that if they start making a big deal out of it, it is the canary in the coal mine, and they are soon to become liberals.
ThePaganTemple
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:01 pm

Could be possible, I guess it depends on what way exactly they’re making a big deal about it. It could also be possible some creationists might be-well, making something out of nothing.
Dianna Deeley
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:14 pm

Picking on an irrelevancy? Yes.

The only time I heard much about Creationists was in college until Charles started harping on it – though I think I’m simply going to blame Ben Stein for getting that ball rolling.

Seriously, it’s just not a topic you run across all that often.
Paul DiGiovanni
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:18 pm

Jeez, I hate to do this, because I am with you on the larger point, but, um, minuscule is spelled minuscule. It has been misspelled miniscule so much that that is accepted as a variant spelling, but the word derives from “minus”, not from the root “scule” with the modifier “mini” in front of it.

I remember this entirely because my chemistry teacher my freshman year in college, Dr. George Beichl, who had also taught my father, pronounced it with the accent on the second syllable: mih-NUSS-kyool. Hard to forget how to spell it correctly when it is pronounced that way.
Evilbloggerlady
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:21 pm

I enjoy being part of TOM herd. We have a Wombat, a goat (Smitty), a cow (me), and I guess Stacy’s totem is an elephant (Alabama not GOP). Do wombats travel in herds?
Dianna Deeley
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:30 pm

Nice tip, and I shall remember it. I fear I’ve been using “miniscule” for years.
Wombat_socho
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:48 pm

Not at all. We’re solitary, extremely territorial and likely to chew your foot off if you look at us wrong. Still better than those damned drop bears, though.
*shudder*
Wombat_socho
April 21st, 2012 @ 6:54 pm

If some of the comments need moderating, give me a holler. It’s part of what I do.
ThePaganTemple
April 21st, 2012 @ 7:47 pm

Somebody posted that guy’s address and phone number on page four of that posts comments. Maybe not a cool thing to do, not that I give a big shit about that guy, but it could cause Stacy some problems.
Dianna Deeley
April 21st, 2012 @ 8:57 pm

I flagged – or thought I did, anyway – a couple comments that had some personal info. In future, I ll send up a flag to you. Thanks!
robertstacymccain
April 21st, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

Yes, indeed: A word I’ve seldom had occasion to use as a writer, and which has two nominally “acceptable” spellings, struck me as looking funny. Not bothering to check (because I am naturally a good speller), I jumped to a mistaken conclusion. Now that it has been called to my attention, I’ve carved it into my memory.
robertstacymccain
April 21st, 2012 @ 9:39 pm

In a sense, it’s like immigration. Republicans who aren’t solid on immigration enforcement are usually wobbly on other issues, as well.

Why? I think it betokens a sensitivity toward liberal opinion — they don’t want to seem “extreme.”

Don’t even get me started on Darwinism. About all that needs to be said on that topic is II Thessalonians 2:11-12. Now let us sing:

Stand up! Stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross!
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss.
robertstacymccain
April 21st, 2012 @ 9:42 pm

The Wombat lives for the pleasue of troll-stomping.
JeffS
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:41 pm

Did he ever share a sandwich with Dodd?

Inquiring minds DON’T want to know.
JeffS
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:44 pm

This is not a herd. It’s a pack.

And CJ’s crowd ain’t even a pack. More like a gaggle. A noisy one.
Weird Science | Copious Gasser
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:53 pm

[…] Twitter wars – Not sure what the hell Stacy is talking about. […]
Adobe_Walls
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:55 pm

I very much doubt that he did, his personal morals are probably impecable, that he could overlook Kennedy’s personal and political morals to just to get things done (things of extemely problematic value) makes one question Hatch’s political morals.
Garym
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:57 pm

I will fight anyone to the death who tries to take someones religious beliefs away from them, and that includes peaceful Muslims (if I could find any), however I will remain conservative and an evolutionist. There are conservatives who are not believers. I don’t even like to call myself an athiest even though it is the proper definition. Athiest have hijacked that term, as people who want to trash and take away peoples beliefs (except for Muslims). I can’t stand those people.
Garym
April 21st, 2012 @ 10:59 pm

Pigeons come to mind.
Adobe_Walls
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:02 pm

There is nothing wrong with those comments or putting the nitwits home address, phone number and where he works out for all to see. Better AT it than they are. His children should be off limits and perhaps his wife depending on her level of activism.
Tennwriter
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:28 pm

PT,
The way Charles Johnson, and I think Balloon Juice did. They both, if memory serves, went ballistic about it. If every third comment you start making here at TOM starts becoming about how nutty Creationists are, I’m going to be expecting you to be shortly announcing your liberalness in about a year.Clear as mud?

Diana, interesting. We must run in different circles. I don’t think Creationism is irrelevant. I think its foundational. You can’t destroy the Left without restoring a moral foundation, and you can’t do that without Creationism.RSM gets closest to what I’m saying., but I’m trying to avoid throwing down the gauntlet here. I’m just making a gentle point (instead of shouting the obvious truth that Darwinism is a pathetic attempt at brainwashing, and only slightly more scientific than Star Trek’s time travel.)

Thank you Gary. My original post was agreeing with you. Of course, I don’t agree with separate magisterium. Facts are facts.
ThePaganTemple
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:34 pm

Uh, yeah, actually there is something wrong with it, if somebody gets crazy and torches the guy’s house or repeatedly harasses him over the phone, or does anything that could be considered stalking, either towards him or his family.

The courts wouldn’t take a very cavalier attitude about that, and moreover if Stacy is honestly thinking about suing this guy, he could be cutting his own throat if he allows that to stay up and something happens.
Adobe_Walls
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:35 pm

As usual the Tasmanian drop bear is even more vicious than the Australian species.
ThePaganTemple
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:36 pm

So let me see if I understand this right. I believe in a form of evolution. And I believe this because God is making me believe it?
ThePaganTemple
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:50 pm

My only problem with creationism is the idea that it’s “science” and should be taught as such in public schools. I don’t care whether or not anybody believes it, and I sure don’t judge them as “nutty” for doing so. I don’t think its possible to “know” for a fact how the universe came into being, or was created, or however you chose to think of it. Maybe someday somebody will figure it out, and maybe that will or will not have something to do with God. Until such time as somebody can offer a coherent theory as to how God managed to do this, to say nothing of how God came to be himself (or can explain how exactly he is eternal and an uncreated being) then such ideas have no place in science classes, because it defies logic, or any other scientific standard.

Evolution, though perhaps flawed, offers a baseline at least to delve into how it might have all unfolded. Saying God just decided he wanted to create it, and that’s all there is to it and there’s no way to explain it, that’s all well and good if you want to believe that, but there’s nothing scientific there that I can see.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 21st, 2012 @ 11:58 pm

Has he been speaking with Tabitha Hale again?
Adobe_Walls
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:13 am

Better AT IT than they are.
Garym
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:15 am

Fair enough.
I actually stopped reading LGF when he started railing on creationists. He used total visciousness and hatred against many of his longtime commenters and then started banning them for arguing with him. I believe all theories and beliefs should be taught in all public schools. Kids need to know that there are other belief systems, including evolution. I would rather they get all the info and when old enough to understand (with guidance from thier parents), should make up thier own minds.
richard mcenroe
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:19 am

“I despise these people…” http://tinyurl.com/cr5v4rg
ThePaganTemple
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:39 am

Also, what if the guy keeps tracks of the prank phone calls and letters he gets, and some of them are threatening? Maybe he has the phone company keeping tabs so they have it on record? Then he decides “you know, I could really use an extra two hundred thousand or so”. Then he goes off one day and has somebody burn his own damn house down (or apartment). He doesn’t have to worry about the arson investigators, hell he’s got somebody to pin it on. In the meantime, maybe one or more of his neighbors are burnt up.

People need to think about shit like this instead of just shrugging if off with a handy one-liner.
Tennwriter
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:43 am

These conversations tend to get out of control, and four weeks later, you find you’ve spent sixty hours making arguements, and your laundry needs doing. At the same time, it is a vital topic.

Both Evolution and Creationism have a Miracle or a Singularity. Ask your physicists if the rules of science apply before the Big Bang.What we would discuss in science class is what happened after the Singularity. This can be dealt with scientifically.
Adobe_Walls
April 22nd, 2012 @ 2:27 am

If in the “unfortunate” event something bad happened to the nitwit or his house or he was “harassed” on the phone All of the information Charles M posted was readily available on the internet. His fake retweets were reported on and linked on other sites. That’s how “they” play this game, once one knows the rules one can win the game.
SDN
April 22nd, 2012 @ 8:35 am

Of course, some of us would say that the only thing that makes the Creation recounted in the Bible inconsistent with the observations of the science is that the God who laid down the cosmos and the rules it runs by picked a metaphor for the time involved that could be comprehended by a group of farmers and herders who didn’t have the zero yet.

YMMV.
SDN
April 22nd, 2012 @ 8:36 am

There’s a reason they were exiled to a small island away from their fellows…
ThePaganTemple
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:00 pm

@Adobe_Walls:disqus

Oh, I get it, I think, but let me make sure I got it right.

So say something happens to this guy, his house/apartment, his family, his pets, etc., or even to his neighbors who happened to get caught in a fire that spread from his own abode and which he himself might have set for the insurance money.

You’re saying the news reports wouldn’t necessarily blame “followers of Neo-Confederate right-wing extremist Robert Stacy McCain”, who happened to have the guys phone number and address posted on his blog which gets thousand of page views per day.

They would probably just blame some right-wing nut in general who just happened to come across his phone number and address over the net and decided to do it for shits and giggles, or just because they know he’s one of millions of leftist asshats.

Yeah, I get it now.
ThePaganTemple
April 22nd, 2012 @ 12:03 pm

Of course the rules of science would apply, why wouldn’t they? For one thing, there wasn’t any sun or stars, or any other source of heat, so I’d imagine it would have been pretty damn cold, wouldn’t you?
Tennwriter
April 22nd, 2012 @ 1:17 pm

My mileage does vary. The first attackers against Darwin were not pastors who were mostly kinda okay with it, but paleontologists.

PT, there are a lot of variants on theories, but the mainstream Big Bang can be fairly described as ‘there was Nothing, and then it Exploded’. Before the Big Bang, there is no space nor time, nor rules of science. Both Creationism and the Big Bang rely on a Singularity. Which is one reason materialist scientists hated the Big Bang. They preferred varieties of the Eternal Universe.
Tennwriter
April 22nd, 2012 @ 1:23 pm

I think it would be a great way of teaching kids how science actually works, instead of just indoctrinating them with the ‘approved facts’. Science, contrary to the AGW freaks, is not consensus. It is logic, hypotheses, and experimentation. Historically based sciences like Forensic Medicine, Archeology, and Cr/Evo are a bit less scientific than say Electromagnetic Theory as making a really good experiment gets harder or sometimes impossible. Imagine a science program where the kids can prove gravity is such and such because they discovered it on their own, and did multiple experiments to prove it. That’d be great.
ThePaganTemple
April 22nd, 2012 @ 2:17 pm

An eternal universe would imply matter is eternal. Scientists don’t know, all they have is theory and guesswork. But there has always been “something”, we just don’t know what circumstances and conditions lead up to the Big Bang, or for that matter if there was a Big Bang.

Some people think the universe just spread out from a common point of origin and keeps on spreading. I tend to believe in the Big Bang, but its not an article of faith. Nor do I take everything science says for granted.

Scientists say, for example, that the universe is still constantly expanding in a straight line (actually multiple straight lines in all directions) and will continue to do so and pick up speed as it does through lessening of magnetic pull. I think it no doubt expands, but probably actually moves in an outwardly expanding circular motion, though not perfectly circular. You can see this through observations of the galaxies, and our own solar system. Scientists are taking one infinitesimally, unimaginably small snapshot in time and space and applying it to all of the universe from the very beginning and going forward. I think that’s very short sighted.

But then again, I’m not a scientist, I’m just a guy who likes to think for himself, what the hell do I know?
Wombat_socho
April 22nd, 2012 @ 2:30 pm

Enlightenment!
Teeing it Up: A Round at the LINK (Ted Nugent Edition) | SENTRY JOURNAL
April 22nd, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

[…] THE OTHER McCAIN: Little Green Sheep: A Telling Update […]
Bob Belvedere
April 22nd, 2012 @ 7:06 pm

I think these words quoted in the article you link were said on Greta’s show. When he said them there, I nearly flung my boot at the TV – Mrs. B. had to calm me down.

Here’s the quotes:
“These people are not conservatives. They’re not Republicans,” Hatch angrily responds. “They’re radical libertarians and I’m doggone offended by it.”

Then Hatch, a former boxer, turns combative. “I despise these people, and I’m not the guy you come in and dump on without getting punched in the mouth.”

Mr. Hatch, it’s dog track time.