A few years back, while I was teaching a psychiatry short course in Iraq to about 80 mental health professionals from around the country, an Iraqi physician took me aside one day to caution me: “Don’t be fooled by those of us who have gathered here, we are not the real Iraq. This country is like Russia under Peter the Great. Our educated middle class is a thin veneer of civilization spread over a teeming mass of people who are misinformed, angry and radicalized. You can’t build a nation here: We have nothing to build on.”
The relational structure of many political websites recalls this comment about Iraq to my mind. One of the website’s authors will write an intelligent, thoughtful and nuanced post on some controversial topic and beneath the post in the comments section will issue forth a sea of bile, misunderstanding and misinformation.
Other websites are worse, being less like Iraq than Saudi Arabia, where even the veneer of modern civilization is lacking. The owners of such sites not only provide inept governance, but actively gin up rage and stupidity among the masses who follow the postings.
Websites like the impressive Belgravia Dispatch surmount the challenges of Internet nation-building by staying small. On these Liechtensteins of the web, the owner’s posts are rare enough that most people don’t even know the site exists except (judging by the comment sections) for a small number of people who are unusually informed and willing to seek out infrequent, intellectually challenging postings.
In the Reality-Based Community, Mark Kleiman, his fellow authors and the readership of this site have created a civilized country that is more than a boutique destination for elites. The posts come frequently enough to give immediacy to the dialogue, the readership is large enough to offer a cross-section of views, and the comments reflect an engaged citizenry that knows what it is talking about. I am patriotic enough to say that RBC thereby reminds me of the best aspects of the United States. That’s why I am delighted to accept Mark’s offer to become an occasional poster to RBC and thereby indulge my taste for civilized democracies. Thanks to everyone for letting me enter the country.
Welcome. You add a definite touch of class to this merry group.
Another intelligent, thoughtful opinion is always welcome in my world!
You caught some well-deserved flack for this piece from commenters there, and from Pete and others at DrugWar Rant. Neither of these sites can be characterized as you described in your second paragraph above (aside from a little frustration bile here and there, I suppose).
Why did you conflate marijuana and child pornography and human trafficking? Did you have similar reservations about gambling as it progressed from numbers runners to state lotteries and Indian casinos? Why wouldn’t you want to live next door to someone legally cultivating marijuana is a 25 square foot plot?
You worry that legalizing marijuana will drop the price from something only rich people can afford to enjoy whenever they please, to something poor people can afford to enjoy whenever they please.
You didn’t say anything about the harms of enforcement like the sheer cost, erosion of liberty, encouragement of corruption, cultivation of failed states to the south of us and on and on and on.
Our national drugs policy does not serve the public interest. It serves special interests, it is all about the money. Our national drugs policy reflects a deep corruption.
I look forward to your posts here, but even more to your responses to critiques by commenters at the Health News Digest piece or at the DrugWar Rant piece. Convince me that you’re not on the wrong side of history here.
Interesting. Many years back, before the revolution, I was consulting on a curriculum development project for a new university in Tehran, that would be to Tehran University something like the Cal State system to Stanford. A prof at TU tried to explain their situation for us: “You have to understand: this new university is a crazy PR idea of the Shah. The students are ignorant peasants; it doesn’t matter what the curriculum is, they’re incapable of learning anything.”
Steve, Drug War Rant is precisely the sort of “Saudi” site Keith describes. Its purpose is to stir up hatred and to spread disinformation; after all, ranting is not the usual mode of civil and rational discourse. The intolerance for any deviation from the anti-prohibition party line is absolute.
I don’t think Keith’s likening of pot-smoking to kiddie-porn is logically sound; kiddie-porn (if a live model is used) has an actual victim. But arguing with the Ranters is like trying to teach a pig to whistle: it wastes your time, and annoys the pig.
As to Mike’s story, it’s a good reminder of why things like the Islamic Revolution happen; those “ignorant peasants” weren’t going to tolerate being ruled forever by people who had contempt for them, and who wanted to keep them ignorant.
I share your appreciation of the civilized tone of RBC. I rarely open the comment threads on some of my favorite blogs because the worthwhile needles are too hard to find in the odiferous haystack. But I fear the slope is slippery; https://thesamefacts.com/2010/08/journalism-online-and-otherwise/adventures-in-misquotation-by-the-conservative-blogosphere/. Fight the good fight.
Dear RBCers,
My statement in another forum that if the sole measure of public policy options is how much money we make on the deal, we should be contemplating legalization of far worse things than marijuana (for example kiddie porn or human trafficking) expressed my opinion and I think everyone else’s than the latter two are worse than the former. I am not sure how that came across as saying they were the same, but since I see that some smart people came to that conclusion, let me state for the record that legalizing kiddie porn or human trafficking to generate tax dollars would be clearly worse than legalizing marijuana to generate tax dollars. Indeed I chose those examples because they are so obviously worse. Peace, Keith
Welcome aboard, Keith.
Welcome aboard, Keith. I’m sure we will have interesting discussions on the topic of marijuana at some time — since I view its legalization as not a ‘tolerance for a vice’ but a positive benefit to society. Bu that will be for another time. Right now I can only tip my hat to your introduction. The RBC is precisely like you describe, and I can think of few others that are. (Maybe Ed Brayton’s DISPATCHES FROM THE CULTURE WARS qualifies, and COGITAMUS, and OBSIDIAN WINGS, though COG suffers from a lack of variety, and ObWi lost a lot of its appeal when Hilzoy and Publius stopped posting.)
Too many of the best sites to read have unreadable comment sections — the best example being Steve Benen. His site is the single most important daily read — im(ns)ho — on the Net, but the comments sections are pretty awful, and I no longer even glance at the comments at C&L, and carefully did NOT register to avoid the temptation of diving into the maelstrom.
The RBC is different, and this gives me a chance to doff my (non-existent) hat in the direction of someone who I still disagree with on 95% of things, but who has demonstrated the possibility of a conservative being a valuable addition to a group of liberals. Yes, Brett Bellmore, I’m talking about you. When I first saw you popping up on various sites, you were merely a ‘drive-by troll’ whose comments were easily ignored or disposed of, but seeing your name was occasion for a loud groan.
Here, you have proven to be a valuable conributor. You actually find it is possible to discuss things with us ‘awful liberals’ and, in response, we have been willing to treat you as a welcomed — if usually wrong — contributor. (In fact, if you ever passed through Brooklyn — and for all I know you live here, two blocks from me — I’d invite you in for a Bushmill’s or a few pipes and be sure that we’d still wind up yelling at each other, but, looking back, we’d have enjoyed the evening and each other’s company.
Since the one danger that the ‘liberal Blogosphere’ faces is its tendency to become too complacent behind its bubble, since we always have to remember that the people we are trying to reach are not those who already agree with us — and thus applaud our brilliant sallies and put-downs of easy right-wing idiot targets — but those who haven’t made up their minds, or don’t know enough, or who have been almost convinced by the FOX foolishness, but who are still open to the facts we can present, the reality behind our ‘reality-based community.’
(And, to answer one comment certan to be made, certainly we liberals have our disagreements — say ‘marijuana’ to Mark and I and you can get a three-page comment from me and a three line, but brilliant, response from Mark — and there is always the battle between the Romantic Idealists and the Relentless Pragmatists to keep us from breaking our arms patting each other on the back. But we still tend to talk to — and be heard by — those people who already accept our premises.)
Anyway, keith, again, welcome aboard, and I look forward to some very interesting discussions on various topics. Just remember, when you see my name, that when my high school math teacher quoted his favorite rule ‘be precise, concise, and accurate’ I always responded ‘two outta three ain’t bad.’
Mark, do you actually think that Drug WarRant’s purpose is to stir up hatred, or that
applies to DrugWar Rant? Something tells me that a substantial portion of your membership here would disagree if exposed to a decent sample of the posts there.
You wrote, “after all, ranting is not the usual mode of civil and rational discourse,” but as I’m sure you know, the “Rant” part of the site name is simply a play on “warrant”. It does not characterize, as your statement would imply, the style of posts one typically finds on Drug WarRant. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an instance of stirring up hate or ginning up rage and stupidity among the many posts there. What I see there is a decent fellow, far from a hate-monger, who does an effective job of stating his case. While doing so, he’s tamer than the Ed Brayton fellow a previous commenter considers to be in the same league as your RBC by Keith’s criteria.
Keith, peace to you, too, but nobody accused you of saying that marijuana and kiddie porn or human trafficking were the same. What they said was that you conflated them. There’s a difference.
Peace to you both. I value my time here. You all broaden my horizons and I’m happy for that. It’s just that you’re wrong on marijuana prohibition goddamit! ;>)