The Incivility of the Internet

I'm a commenter, if there is such a word, on several political blogs....Huffington Post and Crooks & Liars being the ones I visit most often.

I may quit, though. I don't like what's happening to me as a write my comments. In fact, I am beginning to sound a lot like some of the people that really bug me on the internet.

There are lots of folks who show up on the political blogs of the opposite party, throw a verbal molotov cocktail and watch the results. They are called trolls. I guess it's because they troll the internet looking for people of differing opinions to let them have it.

Some are "patriots", some are "conservatives", some are "religious". Many are just good people of differing views and those folks are welcome. It's the smugly patriotic, conservative and religious that I'd like to work over with a verbal hammer.

And sometime I do just that. After I let some nasty and intolerant nay-sayer have it, I hit the send button and sit back with a little smile on my face. I'm not sure that should be. It makes me feel good for about 30 seconds, but it adds to the incivility of the world at large

Some of the people I find the most infuriating don't know beans about politics, history, or much of anything. Jumping all over them should be satisfying, but it is really an unfair fight. They have their beliefs but couldn't begin tell tell you why they believe what they do. They've heard it on Rush, or Fox News, or Glen Beck. They don't question what they hear, they just believe their sources. They also seem to be under the misapprehension that the government has the best interests of the American people in mind at all times. In other words, they scare me to death.

After a while, I wonder why I would want to even engage them. There is no point, really. I am a stranger on the internet, in their minds some LIBERAL, probably a COMMUNIST. (Really, I promise you, they still use that term.) They would never believe anything I used as a counter argument in a discussion with them.

So, in order to save my skyrocketing blood pressure, my breath and my time, I am going to begin a short moratorium on commenting on the daily political happenings. I will like myself so much better....and feel better about my fellow man, too.