When Hillary Bros Throw Big Words Around… | Uncivil Discourse on Blog#42

I get a fair amount of heckler and hate mail from people who have impulse control issues. I guess it’s a symptom of the polarized society we live in. I’ve gotten everything from “you’re a traitor to your own race,” from someone who made assumptions about my background, to “I’ll have to have a good friend I trust read your essay to determine whether or not it is anti-Semitic,” to today’s gem “While you write well, you clearly lack the rigor that comes from deep academic training in philosophy, economics, history and the social sciences.” Whew!

Mr. McDonald used the term “academic rigor” interchangeably with intellectual rigor. The two are not the same. The former has to do with a degree of scholarly discipline that is expected of writers and researchers in academia, while the other has to do with the intellectual capacity to form higher order thoughts.

Intellectual Rigor

“Intellectual rigour is having clarity in thinking and an ability to think carefully, deeply and with rigour when faced with new knowledge and arguments. This capability involves engaging constructively and methodically when exploring ideas, theories and philosophies. It also relates to the ability to analyse and construct knowledge with depth, insight and intellectual maturity. A student develops this attribute as part of the challenge of ongoing and systematic study. Intellectual rigour is encouraged for example during an assessment exercise where a debate or discussion occurs about a challenging topic. The challenge for the student is to have the ability to consider other points of view and make a thoughtful argument.”

Credit: Southern Cross University

Mind you, this comes from someone who had never engaged me before in the pages of the New York Times or elsewhere, and found offense in the notion that centrism as it has been used since the 1990’s is a main culprit in the deterioration of the middle class.  But in true Hillary Bro fashion, my heckler hurls insults and accusations without advancing any counter-arguments.

Which brings me back to the whole Bernie Bro idea that was thrown around during the primary… Isn’t it funny how we now find out about fake Russian accounts from which $100 K in advertising was purchased to spread fake news in an election cycle in which over $2 billion was spent, and we are supposed to believe that those $100 K, precisely, are what inexorably changed the fate of the entire election?

How To Recognize a Bro

A blogger on The Hill writes about drafting Michelle Obama:

“As I’ve said before, the Democrats need an alternative plan to rebuild and unite the party if they have any hope in winning back seats in Congress in the 2018 midterms, nonetheless the White House in 2020.

This alternative plan requires a new, united opposition, led by a political leader with widespread popularity.

The only person I can see accomplishing this would be none other than the party’s most popular political figure: Michelle Obama.

Let me be clear: This is not an endorsement. I have been, and still am, critical of Barack Obama’s presidency. Michelle Obama would not be my candidate, and I do not agree with many of the positions I believe she would advance. But as an analyst, Michelle Obama is clearly the Democrats’ best chance to reunite the party and win back the White House in 2020.

Michelle Obama is perceived as a strong, well-qualified leader with immense national popularity. Broadly, the polls show she is respected by the American people and by the near-entirety of the Democratic Party.”

My heckler writes:

“With respect to Sanders, I am a fan, I was horrified however, that the FOX news characterization of HRC permeated the minds of Sander supporters to the point that they were willing vilify HRC once she got the nomination and bow out of fighting against a Trump victory….”

See the similarities?

Hillary Clinton has been a divisive figure for decades. This isn’t Fox News’ doing alone. Here, again, is the clip from Frontline I included in my post on the origins of centrism as we know it today:

I remind you, this clip is from a Frontline episode on PBS and NOT Fox News. The speakers, whom you should all recognize, are all former Clinton administration officials. The idea Clinton’s detractors most associate her with is triangulation. That is the main source of the public distrust in her. The Wikileaks emails did nothing to help her in this regard and while they may have been obtained in one fashion or another, their publication was never addressed by the Clinton campaign, from the point of view of what it was they conveyed.  The Clinton team attacked WikiLeaks, never explaining the content of those emails, leaving readers with the same biases they’d held for years.

So, my heckler’s attempt to associate me with the Fox propaganda machine either betrays his own lack of ability to decipher what he read or he’s just lobbing unfounded accusations to defend the indefensible. Oh, and my heckler encourages me to check his Google credentials this morning. He apparently has something to do with the Wealth & Giving Forum, an organization whose website claims to encourage wealthy people to give responsibly.

What I write about offends the .001%, and so it is no wonder Mr. MacDonald lashed out.

I don’t mind it at all when readers send me their thoughts through this blog’s emails or in social media. But using those as a means of retribution, in anger, is precisely what the Clinton campaign was describing when referring to the mythical Sanders supporter. I say mythical because in my years of engaging people in social media, I’ve yet to encounter a Bernie Bro, while I’ve encountered plenty of rude Clinton fans who simply cannot find it in them to engage those with whom they disagree in a manner that is respectful.

These kinds of engagements are designed to throw kerosene onto fire, rather than engaging in civil discourse. Projecting one’s behaviors onto others while accusing them of it is not new. We’ve been seeing the phenomenon from the conservative end of the spectrum for quite some time now. It’s ugly, no matter where it comes from.

Speaking of philanthropy…

Your contributions help me and my family get by during these harsh times and allow me to produce this blog. Thank you for your ongoing support!

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Addendum

Mr. MacDonald doesn’t seem to be able to let go, as evident from additional emails…

Mr. MacDonald,

“Perhaps it’s because when I read nonsense that others might read and accept…”

You insult, throw criticism without so much as your own counter to any of the things you claim I get wrong? What I write is referenced, cross-referenced and include quotes that are linked to the original writer.

So far, the sum total of what you’ve written to me, publicly and in private over the last two days doesn’t amount to one coherent thought, save for the self-aggrandising and name dropping you’ve engaged in. The many paragraphs of text you have written to me mean absolutely nothing. They neither display your supposed mastery of the topics you claim to be expert on or correct the writings you claim to dispute.

But more than anything, your repeated emails – past the point where you were asked to stop – only go to show that you may have a serious problem with reading comprehension, in addition to a lack of ability to show any self-restraint – just like the Bernie Bros you described in your original email. If anything, with each email you send, you further solidify my point about the tendency of people with your bent to project their issues onto the world around them. Your behavior is typical of a Bro: harassing.

https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/09/09/when-hillary-bros-throw-big-words-around-uncivil-discourse-on-blog42/

This is the final time I ask you to stop sending me emails.