The other side of commenting, of course, is the opportunity it presents for bullying. Freed of the obligation to name himself, a commenter can indulge his inclination toward abuse. And boy, do they ever. And boy is there a lot of anger out there, balanced on tripwires. And yes, most of them seem to be men.
They swarm like bees at every utterance of Will Bunch, the lefty Daily News columnist, impugning his motives, manhood, allegiance and intelligence. Some of them clearly aim to provoke. One of Bunch’s more satisfying tactics is that he is not provoked. He will very occasionally respond to a comment, but always with humor, a light all-purpose sarcasm. He never rises to the bait. They always do.
There’s entertainment value in that. Still, to scroll on and on through the numbing chatter can only be depressing. Who knew there were so many crude, angry, abusive, and unthinking people breathing out there in the ether? Reflexively they rattle off the same angry talking points, berating each other as much as their host, a mob of bare-knuckle midgets spoiling for action.
More depressing still are the defenders of the faith, self-appointed attack dogs of the Catholic right who see it as their mission to bring down any whisper of modernism, never mind progressivism. They are as unpleasant as they are certain, and they too will trot out the same unthinking responses from the dusty sets residing in their closed-off minds. I am only a little bit unfair to these trolls, most of whom will drag down and muddy in the name of love.
Maybe it’s my selection of sites, but it seems to me that this crude bullying is predominantly a tactic—the tactic—of the right. It’s what these “foot soldiers” have been taught and learned from each other. It’s how they’ve been encouraged to fight back.
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