I am not a political writer. Never have been. If someone did a topic DNA chart of my pieces at Splice, the “Politics/Media” category would be in the minority. I’d always figured as a liberal left-wing borderline Communist hippie, there was no need for me to blather on about politics. I see politics like I see religion: we are not going to agree, so why bother arguing about it? No one is going to convert me to their right-wing Jesus camp any more than I’m going to convince them to stop blaming Obama every time their coffee isn’t the right temperature.
But lately I found a few posts by one of the right wing’s mouthpieces. I read it. It made me kind of sick to my stomach, but out of a desire to be educated, I kept reading, I clicked links to other blogs (see Blogroll, lower right). I was surprised at all the hate poured onto the Internet by the self-proclaimed “Christian” right wing. This is not what Jesus would do. Here are a few of the similarities I noticed among these blogs:
- There are many of them. And by many, I mean there are thousands of them. It’s astonishing.
- Although there are many, there is a core group of conservative bloggers who rely on righty-rant social media circle jerks to feed one another’s propaganda.
- Guns. Jesus, with the guns, people. No one wants your goddamn hunting rifle or the pistol you hide for when Big Brother comes to get you, but being a gun nut and ranting about it when there are mass shootings makes you look like a stupid redneck asshole no matter who you are.
- They are paranoid. Attics lined with tin foil are not out of the realm of possibility. Conspiracy theories are wide in range, deep in passion, and completely short on facts in the real world.
- Conservative blogs are incredibly shitty looking. Seriously, 2004 Blogspot sent an AOL email, and they want their bad design and fonts back because they’re embarrassed people are still using them. Apparently something about being extremely “pro life” doesn’t allow these people to upgrade to a Wordpress.
- Pipe down, Judgey McJudgersons. Why does your political party, as extreme and unforgiving and cult-like as you have embraced it to be, insist on judging everyone? You allegedly love the Bible but seem to have skipped the whole “Judge not lest you be judged” page.
- They keep harping on the same things. Doesn’t matter how long ago their hysterical insert-political-event-here happened, these bloggers will re-live it on their blogs and Twitter accounts year after year.
- Vaginas. Conservative blogs are obsessed with them. Whether it’s a seriously pre-1960s-era-thinking sexist rant about those of us who happen to have one, discussing which methods of birth control should be used for them, or how to pay for children who come out of them, righty-ranters need to step away from the hoo-ha. You’re doing it wrong. Which is probably why many of you aren’t getting laid and are cranky in the first place. You’re the biggest dicks we don’t want in our vaginas, so stay the fuck out of them.
In general (though not always; extremism still exists), liberal blogs are more laid back, because liberals are more laid back. We live and let live, so we don’t have to jump up and down and holler loudly and get in your face and say obnoxious things about the President and use shouty-caps for the words BENGHAZI and OBAMACARE every day. We may not love the job the President is doing (I think he’s being a bit of a pussy myself), but we’re not going to send 624 Twitter rant tweets about it.
-Follow Mary McCarthy on Twitter @marymac.