Disappointing.

So, the other day my roommate did a post about the disturbing mindset behind that spittle-on-the-screen rant (and its cheering commenters) about how Republicans were the subhuman goat-raping source of all the evil on the planet, and how that "Two Minutes' Hate" mentality was an ill omen. It's no longer disagreeing with someone's positions, beliefs, or actions, but with their very existence; it's not a plan of attack, it's a scream of incoherent rage. It's the script of the fag-bashing, the lynch mob, the einsatzgruppen; the kind of othering that leads to the "group monkey dance".

Charles Hill at Dustbury linked to her post as his "Quote of the Day" and, perhaps unfortunately, opened it with a sentence containing the word "civility".

Bill Quick, proprietor of the blog Daily Pundit, apparently read the word "civility", bounced ahead to the word "pogrom" in the linked quote, threw his word processor into four-wheel-low, and mashed the gas on Standard Anti-Civility Rant #27. This despite the fact that nowhere in Bobbi's post are to be found the words "compromise", "civility" or... well, pretty much everything else that Bill was railing against.

Since Mr. Quick had lectured my roommate about not being afraid of deeply-held disagreements, she promptly had one with him, which was, to my way of thinking, entirely understandable. I mean, if I got swung at from left field by a complete stranger for things I hadn't even said, I'd probably be a bit miffed too.

In closing, since Mr. Quick is an author of Speculative Fiction, I would like to drop an appropriate quote by another writer in the same field:

"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate--and quickly."

-R.A. Heinlein