Being banned. I followed the posts of people who got into long argument threads and then suddenly disappeared. As many times as I could, I tracked when they were banned by reading the comments of the site adminitrator. In RWB, trolls are banned with much fanfare. Usually the ban is announced by an administrator with a thousand pounds of self righteous indignation, and then the loyal visitors piled on and that is that. In a few cases they were left alone, but generally on RWB, discussions are well within the accepted range of fundamental beliefs. In other words, if you are a Democrat or hate Bush, those are so far outside what is accepted as true that you begin with strikes against you.

Things people were banned for.

For insisting that it is indecent to call 9/11 widows whores and whiners For disagreeing that despite our best intentions, we liberated no one- corollary for daring to say that we actually made Iraq worse than it was before we overthrew saddam For protesting calling John Murtha a coward. For insisting that your republicans shouldn’t call for a war that they will not serve in For arguing that there were no WMDs found. For making the point that Iraq and 9/11 were not conflated events For pointing out that global is an absolute, provable fact, and that the only supporters of the opposition have been paid for their non scientific opinions For saying that US healthcare sucks or that US healthcare is worse than French healthcare For pointing out that dinosaurs were mostly gone by the time man showed up and that to teach creationism to our children is superstition. For insisting that helping Katrina victims should come before painting school houses in Iraq For arguing that the use of force is not "the only thing they understand"- or that torture " is OK with Arabs and its OK with us frankly" ( meaning the site administrator). For pointing out that Arabs, Hamas, Persians, Hezbollah, Al-Quaeda and muslims are not the same people. Also that insurgents are not terrorists For quoting passages out of the Bible and insisting that if you are to take it literally, then an adulterer like Henry Hyde should be stoned to death. For making the point that comparing Bush to Truman and Clinton to Stalin is probably the other way around.

Blind to hypocrisy. As an example, RWB see no reason why they shouldn’t question the opinion of combat veterans when they themselves have never served, have never been to the Mideast, don’t know any Arabs, Kurds, Persians, or said customs and traditions or history. Now there are veterans on RWB, and a few scholars as well. Mostly few and far between. Yet those who never fought, even those who have never been out of the country, or visited the Mideast still sport a kind of Brittany Spears attitude: the President is right anyway. They do not question the advice of Bush who avoided combat or Cheney who avoided it five times.

Blind to irony. RWB do not see why the rest of the country squirms when Bush brags that there are no rape rooms anymore, but bodies showing up by the bushel- most with horrific torture signs means we have achieved little.

They do not see why it’s strange that Cheney’s daughter is Gay and pregnant, yet his administration works hard to take the rights of Gay’s away, or box them in with definitions that prevent hem from raising kids.

They do not see any problem with an administration that makes it difficult for Katrina victims to find homes at the same time we are supposedly painting Iraqi homes. Before the civil war hit the fan, none of them saw the problem with providing Iraqis with free health care when one sixth of all Americans have no insurance.

Honor is more important than facts. Lots of RWB reminded everyone that Jim Webb was disrespectful to the President- no notion or concern that Jim Webb is a hero, an honored veteran. The simple fact that he snapped at Bush is enough for opprobrium. No matter how wrong Cheney is factually, the fact that he is the vice President and trying to "liberate" the Mideast immunizes him against honest criticism.

A corollary that appears constantly is that we have to beat the crap out of our enemies because any appearance of weakness emboldens them. So old memes keep appearing: Terrorist attacks happen to us because Clinton pulled out of Somalia. Any backing down means you get a bomb up your ass, and so forth. Although few remember that Reagan pulled out of Lebanon.

Left wing sites often link to these RWB. RWB almost never reciprocate.

This opinion I found on personaldemocracy sums it up perfectly

By and large, none of the Republican presidential candidates appear to be making a serious effort to garner support online through MySpace or Facebook; nor do they appear to have much outreach to blogs going; nor do any of them have a clue about Flickr. In fact, while several of the Democratic sites have front page links to many of those sites (and others), I don't think I saw one on any Republican site. Is entrepreneurial behavior dead in the Republican party?

link: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/...

No amount of debunking or facts will changes their minds. RWB are far more likely to go back to the same well time and again, even after most of the public has stopped believing it. For example, I have seen discussions that the Mainstream media got the weapons of mass destruction story wrong. Not that Saddam never had them, but that he did, they were found, and by some trick of the press, it was all obfuscated and lost. RWB still believe that Al Quaeda and Saddam were aligned. Why after all this time? Well....

All the climatologists in the world are wrong about Global Warming when compared to the paid-critics who deny it. Valerie Plame sent her husband to Niger and she really was not a secret agent.

No Nuance necessary. Our enemies are all the same. The RWB pretty much lump enemies into the exact same basket, no matter how diverse they are. Anyone who tries to take the "enemies" point of view is jumped on like a steak in a kennel. This seems like the biggest signature mark of the RWB: Muslims, Al-Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Chechnyans, insurgents, Sunnis, Shiites, Persians, Yemenites are not that different. To the RWB, they are all terrorists who hate us.

One can see this when you go on a RWB and call our involvement in the Iraq war as an occupation. "It is not an occupation, one RWB poster says. "It is a liberation , you dumb fuck."

People who don’t like Bush or want the troops to come home are form the far left. Forget that those opinions are actually from the middle of the country.

RWB Will not cross certain boundaries. They will not allow any argument that tried to understand why we are so hated. The answer to that is well- known. We are rich and powerful and they hate our freedoms. "They" are mindless primitives, they know we support Israel, and that’s why that attack us, and they should be grateful we liberated them and so forth.

They will not let posters stay around if they call Bush a liar or a coward or overtly criticize him for being inarticulate and confusing.

RWB are the America-is-always-right crowd. They cannot criticize the US, no matter how inept we handle a situation. Criticism of Bush, no matter how honest or correct is tantamount to sleeping with the enemy and emboldening terrorists.

Guilt by association A picture of John Kerry talking to Khatami is all the proof one needs that left hates America. Obama attended a Muslim school as a child, and therefore he is league with the terrorists. Anyone who talks to Michael Moore hates America. Hollywood is for anti-American lefties and most actors are anti-American.

Armchair Military Experts/Generals. A small group of RWBloggers love to read history and confuse the current war with wars that have no real analogy. For example, Clinton was just like Neville Chamberlain. Iraq was just like World War II. Insurgents are like Communists, and so on. These RWBloggers will make references to famous land battles like Arsuf and the Somme, and the Third Crusade. It all sounds great. But little holds up under scrutiny. Like an old college professor once said, If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. I imagine pipe smoking, bow tie wearing keyboardists, totally satisfied with their academic prowess. The astonishing thing about RWB is how little they actually know about the subjects that they write about. Few of them know the difference between the Sunnis and Shias. Most have never heard of Sunni or Shias, but this does not stop them from lecturing you on this.

One poster said "Let me tell you what is wrong with the Muslim religion..."

I asked him " Can you tell me ANYTHING about the Muslim religion?"

"Yes," he answered, "they are all terrorists."

It’s kind of hard to go from that to intelligent discussion.

The only science is the science they agree with. The world is 10000 years old, and Global Warming is bullshit and Gay behavior isn’t natural. The actual evidence to the contrary be damned. One guys was writing about how young the Universe really is...no more than 10,000 years. Yet in a paragraph that followed, he argued that we were the only life in the universe even if we looked millions of light-years out. I posted a reply saying that if the world is only 10000 years old, then an object millions of light-years away would have to be millions of years old. My comment was erased, and therefore, I suppose, he won the argument.

RWB reach wild conclusions, and claims. – FDR caused 9/11, Clinton caused 9/11, the press caused 9/11, liberals caused 9/11, Gays eat feces, the world is only 10000 years old. As one state representative said "it’s either America...or it’s Al-Quaeda." Also they hold dear other false memes that once repeated are believed to be true. Reagan defeated the Soviet Union is one of those overly simplistic, mostly untrue notions that they and their corporate press like to fan.

RWBloggers are angry in general, and more angry than ever. RWBloggers often write comments in long threads and threaten to kill Michael Moore, suggest that Gore and Kerry be jailed, Barbara Streisand should be pilloried. Attacks on RWB are rarely just on principle. The attacks are on people, and/or groups of people who should all be jailed and tortured by Keifer Southerland. It’s vitriol maximus on RWB. Not much decency and almost no actual discussion unless it’s just an agree-a-thon. Ann Coulter could shit in their dinner plate and they would eat it.

RWB are havens for prejudice and bigotry and racists. Racists get away with murder on RWB. Paraphrasing some comments-Obama is Osama, he is a Halfrican, Gays are marriage-ruining pillow-biters, Iran leaders are towel headed idol worshippers, Islam is the religion of murder, liberals are weak cowards. Lesson learned here, despite heir protestations to the contrary, when there is no outrage, there is no civility.

It’s everyone else’s fault. Or it’s everyone’s fault. The carnage is the result of dead-enders, terrorists, and the press. It’s the Liberals fault, it’s John Kerry’s fault. Also, whenever there is blame, it should also be pointed at everyone. "Everyone saw the same intelligence"...etc. You will rarely find a criticism of Bush on RWB and when you do it is filled with disclaimers.

Final Note.

I purposely pulled out the worse stuff and wrote about it.

But not all is terrible or the same on RWB.

It is impossible to summarize all of the stuff I read. Anytime I spent more than ten minutes on Michelle Malkin or LGF I had to take a shower. (Michelle, by the way, has an anger management problem.) But there were some high notes. RWB are places where libertarians often try to find solace or logic. Or true Conservatives. Also, not everyone on the RWB were vicious. Many were looking for a small government, more accountability, or even a good argument. I agreed with he analyses of a lot of RWB posters. So, no, it wasn’t all the same stuff. I just felt that real conservatives, not the neocon extremists or christianists, have a hard time finding a home on the blogosphere. Which why we should be more open to disagreement here.

The other day, someone had a Reccoed diary up about troll rating people for little more than disagreeing.

I think we have to be better than that.