Something about the way the polemicists of the right operate has been tickling my consciousness for a long time. Something of their methodologies or phrasings was just so, so familiar. Besides the obvious Fascist/Stalinist overtones, of course; something personally familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Until today.
They remind me of ex-spouse Voldemort.
What finally kicked the recognition into gear was Jesse Michelle Malkin’s most recent example of vileness (source postings at Reason (and followup)).
You may have missed this story, but it’s worth a look. It appears that Michelle Malkin is taking some heat from her compadres on the right because she failed to apologized after heaping a great deal of vitriol on a woman who subsequently committed suicide.
Well, now Malkin has lashed back at her critics. Her response? She smeared the dead woman again, calling her a “corruptocrat.”
What do you do when you are criticized, particularly when you are completely in the wrong? Why, if you’re sockpuppet Malkin or Voldemort you attack, of course! Even if your defensive lashings are ridiculous on their face, groundless, and result in the confirmation of your batshit-insane and junkyard dog-mean status… do it! Because failure is not an option. Because even considering that you may be wrong is so beyond the pale that you must obliterate the fools who even made you question your own actions for even a second. Discussion? That’s for weaklings. What these types lack in reason and virtue, they make up in bullying aggression.
I should have known that relationship was doomed.
Their bluster and bully strategy only works if you cave in, of course, and laughing at the ridiculousness Malkinmorts of the world is the surest way to both eliminate their power and eliminate your relationship. Kind of a double bonus, really, unless your goal was trying to coexist with raging harpies such as these.
The self-image cathedrals people build are oftentimes fragile creatures. Weak foundations, with walls held up by hope, wishful thinking, and fiction. More houses of cards than cathedrals of stone. Some, particularly the blustery overcompensating cocksure types, have such fragile constructs that the merest quake can threaten the whole structure. Typically, these are the ones who think they are Notre Dames when they’re really Appalachian outhouses. So they attack, lest their foundation give way and they have to face their own inadequacies.
For someone like me, who questions and picks and analyzes and reshapes all the time, enjoying the fluidity and transience of it all, these are difficult personality types, since I neither engage in the aggression nor cower to theirs. Working with them is like dancing with a bulldozer; it really only takes a couple sidesteps and you’re in the clear. While you’re trying to talk to them about their diesel particulate exhaust, they are revving the engine. When they try to bulldoze your self-image construct, they find that it’s a nomadic, malleable structure that is difficult to eliminate. They do aggression, we do judo. They do frontal assaults, we do guerilla tactics. They want unity, we want diversity. They want silence, we want cacophony. They obey, we question. They want to dominate, we want to cooperate. They want to win, we don’t think there’s even a conflict ongoing. Is that a sufficient number of metaphors for one paragraph?
Their internal constructs (however they happened to have been created or ossified) tend lend themselves to the tactics of the right. And if Voldemort isn’t a GOoPer today, then my name is Tom Servo. This is not a pejorative assessment, simply a statement of fact. Those who are more comfortable in rigid hierarchies and value order and correctness above all are almost invariably on the right and/or members of a proselytizing religious sect. It’s easier for them to organize and act with unity than it is for the herd o’ cat lefties. Note: I consider the radical right and radical left to be the same doctrinaire authoritarians. The point on the circle where they meet might as well just be null space for the right/left discussion. And in the later years of the relationship, Voldemort was most certainly a lover of authoritarian certainties.
… and that’s what Malkin reminded me of today. A weak, insecure fucktard who is so filled with a self-righteous God complex that rather than acknowledge and express condolences for the suicide of someone whose misery was increased by their actions, they attack the victim even after they are dead.
Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside don’t it?
I’m not saying Voldemort and Malkin/Coulter/etc are identical, just that one aspect of them reminded me of my past. There are plenty of differences. For one, Malkin’s way more addicted to her ragegasms than Voldie. Also, Voldemort never thought it would be a cool thing to put brown people behind razor wire. For another, Coulter’s a man.
Of course, everyone is batshit crazy, each in their own special way. The key is figuring out where the guano lies. And avoiding the caves that are knee-deep in it. Apparently, I’m not very good at that latter bit. If you have any tips, let me know.
