A Smug Outlook in the Blogosphere

I advocate maintaining a smorgasbord of politically-ranging blogs in the ole Google reader to get a wide spectrum of idears. I'm actually quite liberal on some issues, and it's good to at least know what the other side of the fence is thinking. While many of my comments out in liberal land could be chastised as troll-like, there's a certain sense that many of these prominent lefty blogs come off as a bit...smug. Not so much that they want to prosecute people like me of thought crimes, but there's a certain self-assured tone to it all that sort of creeps me out. A recent Dissent article on the left-wing blogosphere is a total stroke fest that confirms some of my suspicions (h/t to a liberal blog that isn't snooty Obsidian Wings):

I realized how deeply the intellectual landscape on the left has changed over the last few years, and how deeply it has changed for the better. I'm talking about a new breed of liberal writers who have emerged on the web—a network of writers who are bringing together reformism and idealism in a way we haven't seen in many years. These writers are exciting because they're unapologetically, un-defensively liberal, and because their liberalism isn't the cautious, hesitant, scared-of-its-own-shadow, skim-milk liberalism that we've all gotten used to. It's a militant liberalism, of a kind we haven't seen in decades.

How bout getting off your knees there for a minute, buddy! All this is going to do is create a more snooty atmosphere on teh internet, where pundits talk about how they rode their bike to work for Earth Day, how many phone numbers they got at a club in DC, and other snooze-inducing drivel that clogs up the net. Society is a sewer, and the best way to highlight that in a logical manner on the internet is to be a self-deprecating wreck who has a lifestyle equivalent of the homeless squeege guy who smokes cigarette butts found on the sidewalk.

An analogy in the Navy would be similar to when a new junior officer shows up on board. To prevent him from later becoming a pompous douchebag, he is usually subjugated to repeated humiliation with ass-grabbing shenanigans and verbal tongue-lashings for fucking up from both other officers and enlisted sailors (note: it was way more harsh in the "Old Navy"). This will ensure his proud membership in an alliance of bitterness and cynicism later on in his career. Due to the self-correcting nature of blogs, I say the same type of sardonic humor is true to the world of blogging, lest every post become some boring ass Facebook session about the party last night at Scooter's.

But, hey...that's just my asshole opinion, whadya all think? I just don't want people I know ending up like this self-righteous clown.

Dude, I am so like the Jesus of the Blogosphere