[Vision2020] name calling

[Melynda Huskey]

"Stinky Weaseltits" is actually an allusion to a heartbreaking work of genius now lost to general view--I refer, of course, to "Ren and Stimpy."   

Your vandalism experience is deeply regrettable.  Some weeks ago, our car was smeared with dog turds, which suggests that vandals in Moscow don't discriminate on the basis of ideology, although it's easy to jump to conclusions.

Your assumption that conservative listmembers are likely to be harmed if they don't toe what you call "the party line" is unwarranted, just as I can't fairly assert that conservatives targeted my car because of my politics.  Vision 2020 doesn't have a party line, or even a party, unless this picnic gets off the ground.  It's just a bunch of people from around here.  We come and go; we get irritated or pleased; we say what we like.  Nearly everybody goes too far sometimes.  Naturally enough, the list self-selects in favor of people who like to hear themselves talk--you and I, for example.  And while we can walk away from intrusive, annoying, or ignorant people in real life, in this forum everybody stays as long as he or she wants to and says whatever's on his or her mind.  No credentials (intellectual, grammatical, rhetorical, factual) are required.

This is the case in all kinds of local on-line dialogue:  the fellow who called me a "socialist asshat" on his blog has never met me (if he had, he'd have known that "Christian Fabian Asshat" is more accurate).  Neither do the folks who've called me a concubine or a whore, or gloated that my children are bastards, or my mother's going to Hell.  They're just looking for a place to be ugly without too many consequences, and on line is good for that.  Vision 2020 at least offers the possibility of free exchange, as opposed to the echo chamber of the blogosphere:  you're calling names in front of people, knowing that they'll read it and respond.  

One internet theorist (Clay Shirkey) claims that listservs are a technology for producing conflict; I think there's a lot to be said for that idea.

Melynda Huskey