Truly, truly, truly outrageous

[agrumer]

Arg, no thanks to John Gruber, I spent some time this afternoon perusing Eric Raymond’s blog. No, he hasn’t gotten any better.

I was amused to see a few election-related posts - all dating from that brief period around the end of August and early September when McCain’s numbers looked good - gloating about how Obama’s campaign is doomed, doomed.

Comments

[bigscary]

I blame you for linking him. Goddamnit, now I'm angry. He's so wrong about "energy density" I want to smack him in his ugly misshapen face.

[bugsybanana]

Ressentiment has the subtext of feeling weak or inferior to the object of the ressentiment. Do you really feel weak or inferior to the right wing? It's the mushy middle that enables, and takes advantage of the depredations of, the right wing who make me feel powerless.

[nancylebov]

I like to think he's gotten worse. I don't remember him having that mean streak twenty or thirty years ago.

Are you sure ressentiment is the right description for either you or Eric? In Eric's case, he's said that he enjoys annoying left-wingers.

[redbird]

So he's practicing garden-variety emotional sadism on the unsuspecting?

[nancylebov]

That's at least a part of it, but why "unsuspecting"?

[redbird]

"Unsuspecting" on the admittedly untested assumption that he is looking/addressing people who are expecting honest argument and instead getting deliberate nastiness. By honest argument I mean that someone is defending a position they in fact hold, and trying to give valid arguments for it. They may be using mistaken information, but not deliberate lies; they may argue that X is bad because in the past it led to Y, but not if X has never been tried or did not lead to Y.

From another angle, honest argument is intended primarily to convince. It may, especially in public fora, be meant mainly to convince the bystanders rather than the person addressed, but if I am arguing honestly, I would be pleased to change the other person's mind and displeased if they responded by screaming insults at me. If the goal is not to convince, but to anger, the other person, it's not honest argument. Outside a Monty Python sketch, that feels dishonest.

[sarah_ovenall]

Those gloating posts are a pointed reminder why Obama supporters shouldn't start celebrating now, no matter how good the polls look. Thank you.

[agrumer]

Well, it's certainly true that the election ain't over til it's over, but the cases aren't truly parallel. What ESR was celebrating was a brief period when McCain's numbers were slightly higher than Obama's, due to McCain's choice of a surprising running mate, and that period ended when people got tired of the new shiny. The general trend of the past several months has been in Obama's favor, further goosed by the financial crisis, and it would take something unusual and dramatic (or massive vote fraud) to change that trend.

[sarah_ovenall]

True, all true. And I do feel pretty confident. I think any Obama fan who reads 538.com every day has got to feel confident at this point. I just don't want to be calling the race and celebrating a job well done three weeks early, when there's still so much to do. And seeing Raymond look like a total fool with his premature victory lap is extremely helpful to prevent complacency.

[redbird]

Also, his argument about having had a black lover might convince someone he hadn't been a racist then (I hope he wasn't, for her sake). Unfortunately for him, having at one time had a black girlfriend merely puts him in the same category as Strom Thurmond.

[mindstalk]

Nnng. He's got a real point about classism. "Fat and sloppy" SF fans might get a pass because they're *SF fans*; "fat and sloppy" redneck whites in trailers parks might elicit the same reaction of disgusted as the slum blacks, but if he's urban he might not see them as much.

And I note he didn't seem to say blacks had genetically lower IQ, just that they score lower on IQ as a group, which AFAIK is true, with many plausible reasons other than genetics. But if one is an IQ-elitist, what will matter for interaction is someone's intelligence now, not what it might have been with better nutrition and upbringing.

That he might genuinely be a classist (or culturalist) and IQ-elitist, as opposed to a racist qua race, seems perfectly plausible to me.

[redbird]

I don't see the connection between what you're saying and the comment of mine it appears to be a reply to.

[mindstalk]

You seemed to be saying he's racist now.