I became an atheist, and joined in with others, because I wanted to belong to a Community of Reason. This current (and lengthy past!) shit I see going on with the flaming, mob targeting, jargon-slinging, code-wording, character assassination, labeling and pigeonholing — I hate being even on the edges of it, because the people doing it are as stupid and evil in their own way as the righty-religious community I escaped from. Waaaaay too many of the people I once thought were members of my Community of Reason are instead flaming, vicious assholes, working to hurt or silence people — sometimes relative innocents — for their own nasty pleasure. Or for blog hits (money), which is just as bad.
Something I’ve said many times: “Under the lash of strong emotion, humans become less intelligent.” I’ve characterized Fox News as Entertainment of Outrage, and I despise them for it, for controlling and parasitizing their audience with constant high-emotion stories that do nothing but ramp up the fear, anger and hate, leaving their viewers, stuck on a constant Fox diet, unable to reason even at very simple levels.
But in the past year or so, I’ve realized that a lot of what gets projected at we liberals is the exact same thing — stories of outrages done to women, to the homeless, to black people, to kittens. Blogging — and blog commenting! — conducted with blaming and finger-pointing AT MEMBERS OF OUR OWN COMMUNITY, all delivered at the level of an outraged scream. We’re being poisoned with anger, not just against rightful targets of that anger, but against each other — to the point where too many of US (!) can no longer think rationally, or plan and conduct long-term, broad-scale campaigns to right things — and it’s being DONE to us by people we think are allies, but who are really just more parasites.
The end result of all this? We’re that bucket of crabs that pinch and push and fight EACH OTHER, while people operating at levels of power and influence and deadly action far above us are continuing to conduct wars, poison the planet, lie, cheat, steal, murder, etc. … unimpeded.