This incivility is hardly a liberal-based problem — or even conservative-based, though god forbid you write something that gets you on the bad side of the Freepers. It’s all over the web, presumably because the anonymizing effect of the web makes people feel like they have carte blanche to be as much of a jerk as they please.

Specifically to political discourse, though, I think the tone of the overall discussion has deteriorated considerably over the years, but if I were going to try to trace it back to a source, I think I’d have to say that it was Rush Limbaugh that started it all, with his gleefully malicious mockery generally not backed by facts. Bill O’Reilly followed, and I have to suspect that if left-wing discourse has become more uncivil, it’s in response to the fact that being civil didn’t do us a fucking lick of good in defending ourselves against the logic-free attacks of right wing pundits who weren’t concerning themselves with such niceties. (Which would, in the public service announcement on this subject, lead up to a young liberal child shouting at his neocon father, “I learned it from watching you!”)

No, Todd is just a promising LISP writer (there’s that indicative capitalization and parentheses))

A D&D and a Lord of the Rings reference in the same comment. Nice, Bill!

Well, I never! Where’s my fainting couch?

Ignorance and vitriol know no ideology.

The fight should be against ignorance and hate. I lean left and disagreed with the opinions in that book review, but I was disturbed and disappointed at, (but mostly bored by) the comments against it. That review, if nothing else, should have been a springboard for a stress test of ideas. It would have been more enjoyable than a bunch of people calling each other morons and murderers.

By the way, the commenter who said “What a moronic post” offered no less of an explanation than the commenter who said “Very well done.” Dumbing down isn’t only bad when a group of others does it.

Anyway Todd, keep up the good work. I enjoy the blog.