The Sweet Taste of Victory

A few years ago, there was an avid reader of this blog who would sometimes post comments. I've spoken of him before, and how he would email me his ultra conservative thoughts. He would accuse me of having liberal guilt, and that was the only reason I could like Obama. He also claimed that the only reason I was mocking Sarah Palin was because I was scared of her, that she was going to take down the Democrats.

Which obviously, is all very funny.

It was also fascinating to me. I had never come across people like this. I've watched O'Reilly and Hannity and these guys, but I assumed it was a bit of an act.

I even wrote the 1 hour pilot that has done amazing things for me about conservative media personalities like this, and how they secretly love Obama because it's great for ratings. It's no fun complaining about people who aren't in power.

I couldn't let this drop.

He seemed to have some intelligence, so I wanted to find out where he was coming from. And I probably also thought at some point he would admit that he didn't really believe these things, but just doing it for comedy or something.

In our back and forth, I discovered that he had a blog of his own where he wrote all of his extremist conservative rantings. He even got hired by a small conservative website to blog for them. Since he had so generously followed me, I kept up with this posts. Occasionally, when he made errors, or outright lied, I would post a comment to correct him.

Before I move on, is this considered trolling? I've heard this word before but don't really understand it. Pamie explained it to me once, and told me I shouldn't post argumentative things on other blogs, but I don't really get it.

If someone writes a blog post that is just blatantly wrong, why is it not okay to correct the record? Well, I think it is. Call it trolling or whatever, but I don't think it's cool to just let stuff slide. Plus, these kinds of folks are often living in a bubble, and they should at least hear the other side of the argument.

Okay, back to the story.

So I would post a comment sometimes. The other commenters of course would yell at me. Although some, even as they disagreed with me, would follow me on twitter and be friendly and it seemed all well and good.

Again, I enjoy this debate. This was great fun for me. It's interesting to hear their insane take on things (science is bad! Santorum is good!). That being said, I respect the other side, what I don't understand, and what I'm constantly confused by, are the people who are so blindly partisan that they cannot concede points. They can't admit that their side fucked up. They can't take news and look at it as it is, they can only look at it and think of how they can use it as a weapon against the other side. This baffles me. Why would anyone want to live this way?

Through this guy I discovered this whole world of conservatives on twitter. It is the most interesting thing in the world to me, and I can't get over it. I want to just talk to these people all day long and figure out where it went wrong for them (interestingly, for most it was 9/11. At some point, history going to look back and really see how 9/11 frightened and radicalized a lot of people. Just look at Dennis Miller).

One of this blogger's favorite things to say, and he writes it over and over again, and I mean, over AND over again, is this:

"Liberals want us to shut up, conservatives want liberals to keep talking"

A constant refrain. Another one: Obama wants you to shut up. He will not tolerate dissent. Another one: Michelle Obama cannot tell us what to eat! She's a fat ass! How dare she tell us not to eat cheeseburgers when she eats the whole menu of McDonalds!

And then his hero Andrew Breitbart died. He got really sad about it. And he wrote a post about the dangers of working too hard, and not paying attention to your health, and eating right.

So I went on there, and I wrote "jeez, with all of this talk about working out and eating right, you're sounding a lot like Michelle Obama".

For some reason, that was the comment that broke the asshole's back. He deleted the comment and banned me from his blog!

The crazy thing is, this is a huffington post type blog. Anyone can comment on there. There was a guy posting comments calling everyone sluts. Literally, every liberal woman was a slut. But my Michelle Obama jab crossed the line for some reason.

Honestly, I couldn't have been happier. I broke him! The bully backed down. He can dish it out, but he obvious can't take it. It's a victory. And even better, I don't have to comment there anymore and can return to my life.

The only thing that bums me out is that the friends I made over there don't know any of this, and are going to think that I just gave up. I didn't give up, he did! So that sucks. I wish they knew that he wants liberals to shut up.

What I've discovered through all of this is that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much sense you make, no matter how many facts you have, you can't make these people admit they are wrong. Ever. So there's really no point in trying.

But at least you can force them to surrender, so I'll take that as my small victory.