Rhetorical cliches
June 09, 2009
8 comments
There are certain words and phrases that stick out to me in commentaries and blog posts as warnings that the content is going to be emotional, hackish or just plain irritating. Some of them are "vile," "fever swamp," "wingnut," "moonbat" or any anti-prejudice "ist" label. The moment that I see people use terms like that, they automatically lose at least a third of my attention and open-mindedness because I usually see words like those thrown about people I don't respect. The more readily they are thrown out, the less likely I am to continue reading what you have to say.
A lot of this is just me being jaded, but I know that most of the outrage that is routinely unleashed in politics, religion and philosophy is no more sincere than the tears shed by an actor in an A budget movie.The average liberal is not genuinely outraged by racism, sexism or genuine hatred toward gays; they just use it as a cudgel with which to beat their opponents. The average conservative only gets outraged on spending, violations of federalism and intrusive government when their side isn't the one controlling how it works. Most "outrage" is just hypocrisy and an effort to pull others down to make themselves look better. I sincerely doubt that most people involved in politics, religion and philosophy even feel genuine outrage on any issue.
A lot of this is just me being jaded, but I know that most of the outrage that is routinely unleashed in politics, religion and philosophy is no more sincere than the tears shed by an actor in an A budget movie.The average liberal is not genuinely outraged by racism, sexism or genuine hatred toward gays; they just use it as a cudgel with which to beat their opponents. The average conservative only gets outraged on spending, violations of federalism and intrusive government when their side isn't the one controlling how it works. Most "outrage" is just hypocrisy and an effort to pull others down to make themselves look better. I sincerely doubt that most people involved in politics, religion and philosophy even feel genuine outrage on any issue.
It is a useful screening tool. It is reliable indicator that the person you are listening to is merely spouting someone else's talking point and that is usually only skin deep. Nothing there reven interesting to talk about.
I hav started listening to NPR radio, not because I agree with their opinions, but because they can express thier opinions in long paragraphs, lasting several minutes, instead of just the one sentence summary of most issues on the regular news.
Good conversation is a valuable thing, but only if both parties hold up their part. In the absebce of that, it is just 5 year-olds squabling ovcer whose turn it is to use the slide next.
That's why I rarely add a new blog to my RSS reader. Any blog that resorts to tactics like deleting comments without a very good reason, and "I find your opinion offensive" is not a good reason, is one that I would only ever read as a sanity check.
Ouch. I think I've used "vile" and "fever swamp" once or twice over at my joint.
But I still like to think of myself as not the average conservative.
Hopefully I remain readable.
I deleted an entire post once because of the comments, but that was an extreme case and had gone to nothing but personal attacks. Other than that, I haven't deleted a single comment (technically the comments for that post are still there, somewhere) I like Vox's commenting policy and follow it with the exception that I don't ban people. I'd prefer that people are open to speak their mind esp. since we are all constrained in our daily lives from doing so and since I only know you guys based upon your posted opinions deleting comments would stifle that.
Its funny how we vile intolerant right-wing nutjobs are the only ones who seem to have open commenting policies.
Your blog doesn't have a problem with what I'm talking about.
I have a similar policy. I only delete comments based on them containing illegal content or if they contain content that someone has a good explanation for why it should be deleted. I also reserve the right to make fun of commenters, and if someone is blatantly trolling, I also reserve the right to edit their comments like Bane used to do.
I used to edit vulgar language by replacing it with near-synonymous non-vulgar words or sometimes random words that were more entertainng thanthe originals.
But the only people I deleted were spammers, "you have a great site, visit mine at URL", and those guys who paste 500 words into your comments that have nothing to do with you, your blog, or the topic at hand.
The only one I ever banned was my wife. She could not get the whole private profile != public profile thing. Nor did she quite get that I was coming home every night and she could say whatever she wanted then, or by calling me on the phone, or sending me an email.
I used to get carried away with stringing together as many vituperative adjectives as creatively as I could, buillding a long and inpenetrable wall of furiouis noise.
It was a Usenet phase I went through and sometimes (often?) didn't make a lick of sense.