Right-Wing Assholes

[DanaC]

I've never really understood why 'tailgating' is a problem. Sometimes you just want to keep responses separate.

[Hime]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I've never really understood why 'tailgating' is a problem. Sometimes you just want to keep responses separate.

I do it sometimes because I think of something a while after posting, and want to add that thought. I guess it could be a problem if everyone was tired of a particular thread, and one poster just wouldn't let it die.

I think that sometimes extreme conservatives, at least in what passes for mainstream political discourse, seem defensive because it's in the very meaning of the word conservative -- while progressives welcome social change, conservatives see the majority of changes to tradition as a negative. Therefore, even at times when conservatives are in the majority in the sense that most people vote republican and support conservative issues, they are still fighting against the current.

I strongly believe that eventually, inclusive sex education in all public schools will be considered as shocking as hearing the word "crap" on TV is now, and gay marriage will be about as protested as interracial marriage is now. The overarching trends in social change are liberal. Someone like Bill O'Reilly managed to seem angry all the time even when the President, most of Congress and more than half of the American people agreed with him, because this is not the world he grew up in, and his children and grandchildren are going to grow up in worlds even farther removed from that "innocent time." Anger and defensiveness are an understandable reaction to that reality.

This isn't a commentary on TheMercenary, whose posts I mostly haven't encountered. I generally feel that he who has never been an asshole on the internet should cast the first stone, and heaven knows that isn't me. But it's my personal explanation for why conservative pundits tend to seem like their arteries are about to burst.