antidote

i usually don't plug things that are already plugged on eschaton. i used to, but now i figure that most of my entire readership reads that site* and so there really is no point. today i'm breaking that rule. you've probably already seen it. but this post from the poor man is really brilliant. go read it if you haven't already via the big A. my favorite part is this bit:

Understand that the people killing us in Iraq aren't motivated by Gore Vidal or inspired by Susan Sontag or organized by Michael Moore or in cahoots in any way with any of the right's celebrity piñatas - not literally, not metaphorically, not if you look at it in a certain way, not to any infinitesimal degree, not in any sense, not in any way at all. They do not lead a clandestine international conspiracy of Evil which has corrupted everything in every foreign country plus everything in America not owned by loyal Bush Republican apparatchiks; nor are they members of such a conspiracy; nor does a conspiracy remotely matching that description exist. To think otherwise is, literally and to a very great degree, insanity. It is insane.

you may or may not have noticed, but i like arguing with people online. i consider myself to be the liberal coalition's unofficial anti-troll hit man. and i have also occasionally wandered over to sites on the other side of the great left-right blogistan divide to pick fights over there. fighting with the other side is just good old-fashioned fun.

one thing that comes up again and again in my online arguments with the right is michael moore.** it's really quite mysterious. we can be arguing about virtually anything. and yet all roads in the average online right-wing brains seem to lead directly to moore. even if i never bring him up. even if he's not relevant. and, in fact, he so rarely is.

it's hard to know to to respond to something like a cry of "michael moore" out of nowhere. i can try to defend moore,*** but that just facilitates my opponent's attempts to change the subject. i need some quick way to swat a moore-eruption down. a short way to demonstrate just how ridiculous my opponent is being without really getting into it so it derails me from the original track of the argument. like the above block quote from the poor man. like the permilink to this post.

problem solved

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* yes cathy i know you don't read most political blogs. you can stop telling me that.
** oddly moore almost never comes up when i discuss politics with conservative people in real life. the arguments of off-line conservatives are also often a lot more reasonable too (albeit ultimately wrong IMHO). coincidence?
*** while i do not think moore is perfect he has become a shorthand for "liar" on the right that goes far beyond anything he actually deserves