Is it Wrong to Dox New York Times Reporters and Call Brian Stelter a Potato?

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-23-22 | Brother Bob

[Starman417]

We've seen a few recent stories where Normals hit back against The Radical Left and the stuffy Vichy Republicans would be quick to sniff that "It's not who we are!": and condemn the Normals that they claim to represent. To quickly recap some fronts in this battle, the 47 year old Mistress of Doxxing, Taylor Lorenz, has had friends and family harassed, Candace Owens has been knocking on the door of leaders of the BLM (No, not Burn Loot Murder - it's now Build Large Mansions), while a few members of the Conservasphere have turned XiNN's Brian Stelter into a complete laughingstock. Up until a few years ago I would have opposed each of these actions. Now, at best I'm shrugging my shoulders with a "Meh", and at worst I'm pointing and saluting like Nelson Muntz. How did we get here? Have I morphed into some frothing at the mouth Ultra Maga loon that Grandpa Sponge Brain S*** Pants¹ sees as an existential threat to his crackhead son's son's perma grift, or did something else change? A fair question, and let's dive in.

Let's first look at how America has changed in terms of political values since the turn of the millennium. Back in 2000 most of us Normals weren't thrilled about having Dubya as President, but he was way preferable to Clinton's veep, Captain Planet. And we understood the Democrats' issues with the whole Florida thing, but at the end of the day it came down to them being sore over not being allowed to change the rules after the fact. They never truly accepted Dubya as a legitimate president, but learned to live with with it. Aside from the brief post-9/11 respite, Leftists loved to mock the stupid, inarticulate president, a principle they'd abandon less than 20 years later. But back then Leftists clapped and howled with delight at every joke that Jon Stewart made about Chimpy Retard McHitler's expense. We Normals just rolled with it. While we weren't in love with Dubya, he was a helluva lot better than living under Al Goree or the world's ugliest gold digger, John Kerry.

After eight years of Dubta's "Compassionate Conservatism" (which actually was neither), our side was burnt out while The Radical Left had elevated their Hopey Changey Savior to "Fundamentally transform this country" - his words, not mine. We normals remained cautiously pessimistic, hoping that Barry O's actions could match his rhetoric. In Ron Howard's "Arrested Development" narrator voice, "Actually, he didn't". More interesting than the president himself, was how his disciples behaved. And no, in those early days of his presidency, "Disciples" is not a wrong term to use - check my post from ten years ago on Falling Out of Love With Obama. Suddenly, mocking a president was no longer not funny, and borderline seditious or, much worse, RAAAAAACIST!!!

I noticed the difference the most on social media, particularly Facebook. Leftists were insanely sensitive to any criticisms of their Kwisatz Haderach, and their worship clouded things. Where as just *months* earlier they were guffawing like idiots at any comedian mocking their last president, suddenly they were in jaw dropping horror that anyone would mock their new Messiah. On the Facebook front, I noticed that the political food fights I'd been engaging for the last few years suddenly pulled from the Leftists a lot more nastiness and personal attacks. Being the adult in the room (and a generally antagonistic a-hole in real life), I just shrugged it all off. But the trend continued to get worse. Like the proverbial; boiling frog, it took a few years to truly notice. Then Cheeto-Hitler was elected. And (excrement) got real.

I was one of the many Normals who held my nose as I voted for Trump, only in the interest of keeping The Greater of Two Evils out of the presidency. I won't go into detail of how I disliked Trump as a person long before it was cool, but suffice to say I held my nose as I cast. No regrets, especially given what would follow. But what was more interesting was how The Radical Left would change. If defying their savior angered them, holy crud did denying them the third term of Barry O's presidency that they were entitled to infuriate them. The gloves were off, and now they no longer made any effort to hide how much they despised half of the country. Where the Barry O years would get anger and childish insults, the Trump presidency brought on a new level of viciousness. Where I used to enjoy the verbal sparring with friends that usually ended with them lashing out in frustration, I got tired of trying to dialog with people whose inevitable ending of "Well, you're a big, stupid doo doo head!" was the expected response. The election of Donald Trump took it to another level.

For all that The Radical Left likes to accuse us Normals of having shifted to the far right, we're not the ones who shifted. While the differences could make for a separate 10,000 word post, I have a simple, personal example. 20 years ago I remember debating Gay Marriage with some Lefty pals. I held the then center-left position of not supporting gay marriage, but instead civil unions (which I still do - I support legal rights without disrespecting anyone's religion). Nowadays such a barbaric opinion is the equivalent of burning a rainbow-wrapped cross on Harvey Milk's grave. This is just one example of many I've experienced, but you get the idea. I'm guessing you have your own, and I'd love to hear them in the comments. The point of this brief aside is that for all that The Radical Left likes to scold us Normals as having shifted to the right, we haven't gone anywhere. It's the political party that now wants to let creeps into girls' girls bathrooms and normalize child rape that's telling us that we're the extremists. I wish I were making this up. The point of this aside is that as the ground beneath our feet violently shifted, I was among the many who didn't notice it right away. And while we were late to the party, we're quickly getting caught up.

Back to when The Donald became President, I grew tired of engaging Leftists by reading the links they'd post, considering their arguments, posting well thought out counter points only to end with getting personal attacks, dopey straw man arguments, or badly regurgitated Jimmy Kimmel / John Oliver / Colbert hurled back at me. So I adopted the philosophy of the world's second greatest Cooler, Dalton - "Be nice. Until it is time to not be nice." I'd still engage Lefties, but instead of allowing them to drag me into a quagmire I'd debate honestly until the Libtarditude came out. At the point where they decided that honest conversation was done, I moved to end things. And it was easy - I still only used facts and reality, but I'd use the same tone that my Lefty friends would use. And hoo boy, Lefties do not take kindly to being addressed in the snotty, condescending tone they use with us Normals. In the span of a week on Facebook I got blocked by a friend of 20 years (who had been going straight to insult for a long time) as well as a connection to an old friend who made the mistake of trying to call me a racist. The program is working. But it would take one more incident to truly bring home how much America had changed.

Although I left Facebook in the fall of 2018, I still have to log into it almost every day. It's mainly for two reasons - one is that there are a few local groups I need to track for my family, and that I'm slowly but surely deleting my history. So I was a bit surprised when I saw in late 2020 that an old friend had tagged me in a post. Usually when that happened it was just a friend sharing something fun out of habit, unaware that I was long gone. But that was not the case here. When I clicked the link to the friend's post, what I got was a lengthy, incredibly nasty tirade. The friend had tagged @ 15-20 contacts (as best I can remember) and basically accused us all of supporting White Supremacy and demanding we denounce such. This was disturbing on many levels - This old friend had been a cool, fun loving person who was a guest at my wedding, and me a guest at theirs (I'm intentionally using ambiguous pronouns to avoid identity). The tirade itself was not just some drunken rambling - the tag list was a select group out of their many FB friends, an the post itself was too long and well articulated (however insane the ideas were) to be chalked up as an accident. The hatred was real and deliberate.

The least interesting detail of this story is actually my response. I waited two weeks - no point in suggesting that FB was a good way to engage me. I was tempted to respond rationally and smack down all of their points (waste of time - don't debate the insane), respond at length with the same tone (would waste many more hours of my time), just ignore it (nah, can't let an insult of this level pass), and finally went with a simple response along the lines of, "Started reading your post - TL/DR (Too long, didn't read). I've had my hands full dealing with people who are telling me I'm a horrible human being for fighting to get Little Bob out of virtual and back into in classroom schooling. Not sure if this answered your question, but hopefully it helped." It was an uncharacteristically subtle smackdown of, "I'm too busy dealing with (rectal cavities) like you to waste time on this." I did get a response of, "It doesn't, but best of luck to you and your family."  Yeah, my response sailed clear over their head, but I made my point while minimizing my time spent. And I think that this brings us back to the point of this post.

[StAnDeliver]

"The least interesting detail of this story is actually my response. I waited two weeks - no point in suggesting that FB was a good way to engage me. I was tempted to respond rationally and smack down all of their points (waste of time - don't debate the insane), respond at length with the same tone (would waste many more hours of my time), just ignore it (nah, can't let an insult of this level pass), and finally went with a simple response along the lines of, "Started reading your post - TL/DR (Too long, didn't read)."

He justified not punching down, instead of just ouright quitting FB, which was (D) The Correct Answer.

It's just like every FRacebooker's non-excuse for not quitting FB. Hilarious.