The age of argument is dead.

David Harsanyi nails it in this piece at The Federalist:

Conservatives might be ethically compromised, uninformed, or—if liberals are in a generous mood—mentally unstable, but they can’t be for real. At least, that’s the sense I increasingly get from the Left these days. Blame it on social media.

When a group confuses its politics with moral doctrine, it may have trouble comprehending how a decent human could disagree with its positions. This is probably why people confuse lecturing with debating and why so many liberals can bore into the deepest nooks of my soul to ferret out all those motivations but can’t waste any time arguing about the issue itself....

Don’t like big government? You’re a nihilist (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc…). Forget what your policy does, watch your tone. Transphobic. Homophobic. Eleutherophobic. Sure, you may claim that you want to save unborn girls from the scalpels of Planned Parenthood, but your real goal is to control women. Even if you’re Carly Fiorina. Even if you’re a majority of women in the United States.
Or maybe you can’t see things clearly because you’re hooked to the most addictive opiate imaginable, religion—which, let’s face it, you probably don’t properly understand or adhere to correctly. Here, let them tell you what Jesus would do. (Hey, Vox, what’s up with Jesus?) Are you part of some regressive denomination that follows doctrine and hasn’t been poll-testing on the Left, that isn’t always pleasing to millennials’ ears, that hasn’t evolved properly, or still clings to “religious freedom?” You’re a modern-day Orval Eugene Faubus, probably. We can sue you into compliance or we mock you into the twenty-first century, because clearly you’re too selfish to be part of our future.

What conservatives (and some libertarians) possess aren’t arguments, but corrupt and nefarious ambitions. Defend yourself. What you can’t possibly have are legitimate differences of opinion.

Precisely. Exactly. So much this, or whatever the hep yutes say these days.

And religious "discussion" is poisoned by the same problems. I'm no stranger to hyperbole, but I can't run on it 24/7. Port is an excellent beverage, but I don't pour it on my Honey Nut Cheerios every morning. 

The culprit is social media, and its bullshit meme thinking, running from the comparatively benign (but still problematic) latest missive from Bernie Sanders (who at least has the integrity to make his case respectfully before an opposing audience, who proved to be equally respectful themselves) down to the poisonous frauds which presume the moral superiority of those who agree and lard them with, shall we say, non-facts. The Christian-hater pages swarm with these. 

And it doesn't take a flashcard from an a-hole to prompt it--most comment threads in Zuckerbergia that involve politics or religion degenerate into a Two Days Hate worthy of the Cultural Revolution. When such tactics and "thinking" become a staple of self-identified Christians--and they have--it is gruesome. It was one such thread that became the pile of anvils that broke the camel's back for me, when the questioning of a fellow Catholic's sanity was met with baying approval. 

So, while Harsanyi's points are well-taken as re: the tactics of the Left (who are not liberals in any traditional sense of the term), they are sins which beset everyone. 

I am pretty well convinced that Hell has a robust--and mandatory--social media platform.

However...

...if you are interested in matters Catholic, I strongly recommend my friend Steve Skojec's One Peter Five website and blog, along with the fine gents at The American Catholic. Negative? Well, yes. I'm a man of Stygian gloom much of the time.

If you'd like something more conventionally journalistic, there's the estimable John Allen (even though I think he's lost some velocity off his fastball in the last few years).

Steve was interviewed in the Washington Post recently re: the pontificate, but I can't find the farging link. Anyway, he did a fine job. [Update: here's the WaPo interview with Steve--thanks, Michelle!]

For Steve.

And, to clarify a bit from below: it was the religion/politics environment at FB that turned into a daily dose of plutonium. The stuff about kids, events, cat pictures--I miss that a bit. But Catholic matters? I only miss that in the sense of "but my aim is improving." Too many discussions ended with me trying to correct that hour's Ron Burgundy.

Or at least wanting to. And there isn't enough time in a day for that.

So, here I am, yapping into the void. Not so bad, really.

That their grief may not be compounded.

At long last, the editors of America endorse a constitutional buttress to the culture of life.

Supporting the Human Life Amendment? Surely you jest. Politics is strictly about the art of the possible when it comes to abortion.

No, no--one must be realistic about such things.

Instead, we need to repeal the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

The reason: something must be done so that urban, left-leaning Jesuits can feel better about themselves:

The disturbing feeling that we have failed to do everything in our power to remove the material cause of their deaths, however, will no longer compound our grief.

For some reason, there are exceptions:

This does not require an absolute ban on firearms. In the post-repeal world that we envision, some people will possess guns: hunters and sportsmen, law enforcement officers, the military, those who require firearms for morally reasonable purposes.

As an aside, please, please, I beg you: stop pretending you give a rat's fanny about hunting. Deep down, we know you hate it, but somehow you feel compelled to offer insincere boilerplate respect. You can stop now. Besides, hunting firearms are more devastating than ones that make you queasy. Just flop your cards on the table and admit you don't approve of any significant private ownership of firearms. Dialogue requires openness, don't you know?

Anyway, there's a yawning logical inconsistency here: why should an off-duty approved firearm owner be allowed to keep it when he is off the clock? At the end of the day, such individuals should turn them in to a secure area until they punch back in. Even soldiers aren't toting weapons around all the time outside of combat zones. As the editors note, original sin (!) ensures bad things will happen, and cops are quite capable of misusing firearms, as we have been recently reminded. Thus, in Americaworld, there is no reason anyone to own a firearm off duty.

Go after violent media? Nah. That's Legion of Decency, Catholic-ghetto stuff. Shudder.

Revisit our oft-idiotic drug war? Piffle. Nope.

What it boils down to is that nobody at America owns a firearm or likes anyone who owns one. In policymaking, this is known as the It's Time We All Start Making Sacrifices, Starting With You, Of Course! manuever.

Did it ever occur to them to, you know, actually talk to an actual gun owner before promulgating this un-papal bull? Apparently not. Dialogue's only for people the Catholic left respect, I guess.

Nope--it's time to tear an Amendment out of the Constitution and unchain Caesar to kick doors in to remove unapproved firearms from our midst. If you like the drug war, you'll plotz over the gun war.

However, to be fair, there is a moral upside to the proposal: should, in this post-Second Amendment dream world of the America editorial board, your family or friends be harmed by a criminal who could have been stopped by a firearm, at least the editors' grief will not be compounded by the knowledge that unapproved citizens owned guns. That’s a comforting thought for hospital visits and/or the funeral Mass, don't you think?

Cheer up, Democrats!

Sure, by all accounts, the President was less-than in the debate last night.

But the good news is that you have Joe Biden warming up in the bullpen.

I realized I was about to say this incorrectly.

I was going to say "You're a sack of shit, Egan."

But that would be improper.

The correct statement is "You're a sack of shit, Your Eminence."

I genuinely hope for the sake of his soul that he's going senile, because Mr. Dougherty is right--this is monstrous.

Learn something new every day.

Did you know Münchausen syndrome by proxy is a "new model of Church"?

I sure didn't. Interesting.

It's the Artists!

Some are describing this as "vandalism" or even "violence":

A truck driver from Montana who is accused of destroying a controversial piece of artwork at a public art gallery in Loveland was scheduled to appear before a judge through a video link on Thursday afternoon.

Kathleen Folden allegedly screamed "How can you desecrate my lord?" on Wednesday at Loveland Museum and Art Gallery just before breaking some plexiglass surrounding the print of "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals" with a crowbar. She then allegedly tore the print and sat on the floor until police arrived.

"Romantic Cannibals" was a 12-panel lithograph that depicted Jesus involved involved a sex act and it also included comic book characters, Mexican pornography, Mayan symbols and ethnic stereotypes. It was part of an 82-print exhibit by 10 artists that opened in mid-September and was scheduled to run through late last month.

"Criminal mischief." Feh! How narrowly bourgeois. How typically philistine.

Nay! Miss Folden is an artist herself! Mischief? Nonsense! She was engaged in a transgressive dialogue with Prof. Chagoya, expressing her interpretive viewpoint via sound, motion, blank verse, creative impact and metaphoric exploration. Clearly Chagoya is suffering from a cramped, narrowly conventional viewpoint which needs to be shaken up by bold new approaches and vistas. Open your mind, Chagoya! Shatter the mental shackles of your quaintly upper middle class academic lifestyle, and interact with the real working class, as exemplified by daring avant-gardists like Folden! If you dare.

Okay. Sarcasm off. If only Chagoya could take off the clown nose for five seconds:

Chagoya told CBS4 by phone he was upset to learn the news that his art had been attacked. He says his work is a critique of corruption in religious institutions, not people's beliefs.

"I don't expect people to agree with me but let's have a civil discussion, you know. I've been getting a lot of hate mail that doesn't have any logical discussion behind it," Chagoya said.

Yeaaaah. He was not trying to attack beliefs by portraying Jesus in a sex act, but rather attacking institutions. That might work on Anne Rice, but if you are getting more oxygen, it's bullshit.

Let's try it this way: I want to dialogue with Chagoya about his Mexican clown pr0n, using his approach. I'll have to open the "civil discussion" with "Hello, Professor. I understand your mother was the town bike before she died of syphilis and your dad was an energetic molester of dairy cattle. What were you thinking when you barfed up that crap you miscall 'art'?"

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As I said to my eldest daughter when we were buying cabbage on Saturday afternoon:

"I understand this is a really big deal for you people."

Your PSA for the year.

Happy belated birthday to my brother, Doug!

Even though he's bigger than I am and carries a gun for a living, he'll always be my little bro.

I sure hope you had help blowing out all those candles.

One generation of imbecile is enough.

[Strong Foul Language Warning, most of which is not mine.]

John Edwards' (remember him? Yeah, it's getting tougher for me, too) former campaign blogger, the incomparable Amanda Marcotte, has propagated another intellectual car wreck attracting gawkers. You may remember Marcotte as the originator of such crippling idiocies as:

Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? [her response to the Duke lacrosse case--whoopsie!];

Of course, if you’re a perverted religious nut, the blood and the pain of 'cherry'-breaking is probably a de riguer part of a woman’s life, both to give the man a cheap thrill of actual blood while enacting the sex-as-violent-possession construction that is part of virginity fetishization and to remind the woman of her religious teaching that womanhood is suffering (see: Genesis);

[I]t appears the wingnut opinion on the proper lifecycle of the womb-body is–one begins as a bright-eyed, innocent virgin, loses your virginity in some weird post-wedding masculinity rite, preferably with maximum blood, fall pregnant immediately, and then die in childbirth so everyone can remember you fondly.

And my personal favorite, ranting against the growing movement to ban contraception:

[Here we'll break to let you push your retinas back into your eyesockets. Done? Good--on to the quote]:

One thing I vow here and now–you motherf*ckers who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will f*ck without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won’t be able to stop it. Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherf*ckers. I’m not going to be "punished" with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You’ll never catch all of us. Give up now.

[A Message from the Office for National Drug Control Policy: PCP is bad. But it's really, really bad to mix PCP with The Handmaid's Tale. Just don't.]

So, as you see, she's the feminist blogger answer to Andrew Dice Clay, hickory dickory dock.

If I ever find out who asked the question, I'll shoot him dead.

Notice a common thread? Yep--babyphobia. Mandy's pretty adamant the only fleshy thing that's ever coming out of her vagina is the wilting schwantz of her current inadequate boyfriend.

FEAR ME!

Her latest missive from the world of "The Patriarchs Are Coming After Us With Turkey Basters Full Of Semen!" is further proof, and probably tops the rant in the moron sweepstakes.

THE STUPID! IT BURNS!

The theory that women have a natural urge to have babies is one that’s got a long and ignoble sexist history, [...] None of that is to say that the urge to have children that some (but far from all) women experience isn’t real, and that’s my other giant problem with the ongoing preoccupation with evo psych theories to explain things that are cultural constructs. That something is a cultural construct doesn’t make it less real, it just means that it’s more changeable. This seems like a small distinction, but it’s an important one. I am routinely accused by evo psych fans of denying that men and women are different. I do think there are major culturally constructed differences, and I think most of them exist to demean and oppress women and should be changed in the culture. That’s not to say that they aren’t real, but just that they’re changeable.

As someone else noted, "In her world, a desire for children is a cultural construct, but transexualism and homosexuality are immutable."

No, she's not a top-rank commentator. Basically, she's a wholly derivative and shrill ideologue without a shred of real humor in her. But it's because she's so derivative (not to mention loud) that this latest foray into idiocy is important--she couldn't have dreamed it up on her own, which means there's a geyser of academic decerebration about to erupt under our feet. Coming soon to a Borders and NY Times puff piece near you.

Oh, and really, Ms. Marcotte--we get it--no babies for you! For which we thank the benevolent hand of Providence. Whatever it takes--tied tubes, diaphragms, hysterectomies involving backhoes--whatever. You have our blessing. And society's thanks.

Aunt Esther reminds us that lookism is bad.

Michelle Obama says voters need to decide this election by examining the issues, not because they like a candidate or think ``she's cute.''

Obama spoke in Charlotte on Thursday morning at a women's round-table on economic issues. The crowd roared at her remark disparaging voters who might cast a ballot because of a woman's looks, a clear jab at Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin.

Obama tried to clarify her remark with a smile, saying she was talking about herself.

H/t to a commenter at Hot Air for the idea.

I'm also coming around strongly to the idea that the pig/lipstick comment was not an innocent mistake.