Over on my other blog a commenter noticed that the rantings from the Right have been getting more intense and crazy and his comment led me to think about the overall pugilistic air hanging over everything. In light of my recent contretemps with Sir/Madam Anonymous over here, I’ve also begun examining why I’ve been losing my temper so easily recently. It’s not like people have never disagreed with me and, while I admit I have an issue with criticism (I always have and it always made presenting conference papers a dicey deal), my inability to rein in my anger is a new thing.
Anger, which has generally always floated up towards the power structure from a very deep well, now skims the surface of everything like an oil slick. Any match – a newstory, a blog post, an unframed comment – will set it off. And it’s just not me – we can see it everywhere, from Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez’ assassination to our side calling Roberts the incarnation of the devil. What’s happening to us?
When I shut down Anonymous in an earlier thread my heart was beating faster, my breath was short, my fingertips tingling, my temples pounding. If the context had been different I’d either dropped a really good tab of ecstasy, had a stupendous fuck or been in a fight. And that’s what it is – the adrenaline of aggression.
Most of us who stop here think Bush is a tool and his administration’s handling of, well, everything has sucked and sucked hard; preemptive war makes us nervous, the with us/against us binary fills us with fury and the general jingo/xeno/nationalistic fervor in our culture makes us sick to our stomach. In other words, we hold ourselves separate from the ideologies spewing from the White House. But like it or not, I think we’ve internalized them, too.
We’ve swallowed their flaming sword and the thrill of using it pushes us closer and closer to where They are. Don’t get me wrong; being a shrinking violet has all the appeal of wearing white pantyhose for me. And there is something heady, sexy, arousing to losing one’s temper and letting fly with all the invective you can muster. You feel all…manly. Like you have the biggest prick on the block.
Maybe I don’t have room in my pants anymore for a prick.
2 comments:
That's the evil of trolls. You're just sitting around being eminently reasonable, the troll shows up to lower the level of discourse, and you'll be damned if you'll be Swift-Boated and not defend your side. Next thing you know, you've whipped your dick out and slapped it on the table, even though you're female. I hate it! Fortunately (?), I get so little site traffic, I don't get pestered by trolls at home...
you're right. i've always ignored trolls but this one just kind of got to me. i wasn't in the mood to be rational. i just wanted to inflict damage and vent my spleen.
if they'd been eating dinner at my house i would have snatched up their plate, thrown it away and chucked them from the apartment. not charitable.
but, thankfully, it's over and i'm back to normal.
hm. wonder if that was blog-induced PMS?
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