![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Crushing Dissent
Jun. 24th, 2004 11:26 pmhttp://www.lileks.com/bleats/
Finally: yesterday we had fun with Rex Reed, who’s a gassy dolt. Glib Nazi comparisons. Ooh! Naughty. But today we had something different; today Al Gore upped the ante. He coined a new term for the Internet critics of his positions: digital brownshirts. Yes, yes, it’s over the top. But it’s not the sentiment that raises eyebrows, it’s the position of the person who’s saying it. We don’t expect presidential candidates past or present to indulge in Usenet flame-war lingo. We don’t expect serious party elders to call the other side Nazis, and for good reason: it’s obscene. The brownshirts were evil. The brownshirts kicked the Jews in the streets and made the little kids put their hands on their heads as they stumbled off to the trains. The brownshirts were not interested in refuting arguments. They were interested in killing the people who dared argue at all.
At some point, I fear, the political discourse of 2004 is going to seem horribly irrelevant and misplaced in the face of some loud new wretched horror; it will seem as oddly disconnected from reality as the Condit / Killer-Shark news reports of August 2001. An indolent luxury.
Digital stormtroopers. Tell me again who’s stifling debate? Remind me again who’s questioning people’s patriotism?
Finally: yesterday we had fun with Rex Reed, who’s a gassy dolt. Glib Nazi comparisons. Ooh! Naughty. But today we had something different; today Al Gore upped the ante. He coined a new term for the Internet critics of his positions: digital brownshirts. Yes, yes, it’s over the top. But it’s not the sentiment that raises eyebrows, it’s the position of the person who’s saying it. We don’t expect presidential candidates past or present to indulge in Usenet flame-war lingo. We don’t expect serious party elders to call the other side Nazis, and for good reason: it’s obscene. The brownshirts were evil. The brownshirts kicked the Jews in the streets and made the little kids put their hands on their heads as they stumbled off to the trains. The brownshirts were not interested in refuting arguments. They were interested in killing the people who dared argue at all.
At some point, I fear, the political discourse of 2004 is going to seem horribly irrelevant and misplaced in the face of some loud new wretched horror; it will seem as oddly disconnected from reality as the Condit / Killer-Shark news reports of August 2001. An indolent luxury.
Digital stormtroopers. Tell me again who’s stifling debate? Remind me again who’s questioning people’s patriotism?