Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the grand left-wing conspiracy.
Presumably you've landed here thanks to the recent media boomlet (thank you, Washington Post) on your hero's efforts to spread the Mavericky Gospel far and wide by posting to prominent blogs.
And lucky us, Daily Kos is the leading liberal blog suggested by Walnuts. So here you are.
I suspect most of the community will give you the same reception one would give a cockroach infestation, but I enthusiastically welcome you.
See, you're pissing in the wind here. We are the true believers. The Arizona Cardinals (Walnuts' favorite football team) have a better chance of winning the next 10 Super Bowls than you have of convincing a single Kossack to vote for Walnuts. The way I figure it, every minute you fritter away here is a minute you're not out spreading your crap on sites where you might actually reach undecided voters.
So by all means, welcome! I hope you stay here until Election Day!
But if you're going to play with us, I'd ask that you keep a few things in mind:
Wear asbestos underwear.
You will be flamed. Mercilessly. Relentlessly. Brutally. You will be told to do physically impossible things to yourself and/or Karl Rove. Your weak, McCain-supplied message points will be torn apart with the delicacy of a school of piranhas going after a water buffalo.
It will not be pretty.
So if you decide to play, don't say I didn't warn you. I sure hope Walnuts gives you extra points for enduring the beatdown you're about to receive.
Post a tip jar.
Tip jar defined:
Because diaries can't be rated, many diary authors post a comment with the Subject of 'Tip Jar' or similar. This is intended as a place to give mojo for the diary; if you feel that the diary was worthwhile, it's a nice gesture to leave a recommend in the tip jar.
We, of course, will not be leaving you any mojo. Your tip jar will be flamed into oblivion within 10 minutes of its appearance.
But a tip jar shows that you at least have the guts to stand behind your work and submit it to a public verdict.
Nothing says "troll" more than a pro-McCain diary with no tip jar.
No, let me rephrase that. It makes you a thin-skinned, chickenshit troll.
Don't be a chickenshit. Take the flames like a man (or a woman, as the case may be). We'll at least respect your audacity, even if you are a troll.
Be creative.
I see that Walnuts has helpfully supplied you with daily message points to post across the Internets. I really like this one...
"John McCain wil [sic] put the national interest ahead of partisanship."
Two things:
- You guys really need to proofread your shit better.
- This coming from the people who said our candidate would rather win an election than lose a war? Do you even take a second to consider the logic of some of the shit that spills from your lips?
But I digress.
If you're going to troll, at least be original about it. Come up with a unique argument for why a progressive should even give your man Walnuts the time of day, for example.
Cutting and pasting Walnuts' message points here not only makes you a troll, but an incredibly unoriginal one. It says you have absolutely no capacity to think for yourself and must regurgitate right-wing pablum in order to have a conversation. (In other words, you're a typical Republican.)
We've heard it all before, and that shit gets boring after awhile. So please, try telling us something new. You still won't convince anyone, but at least you'll be original.
Our Kool-Aid is really powerful stuff.
You're no doubt a true believer in the great Republican Crusade, feeding on a steady diet of "news" from Fox News, the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh and the Washington Times.
But now you're stepping out of that bubble, my friend.
You are about to have every one of your right-wing assumptions challenged. You are going to read news stories that the right-wing noise machine buries or distorts with regularity. You are about to encounter the truth, and you will find it to be a painful thing.
You are, as ex-Republican John Cole likes to say, "leaving the hive mind."
And if you think you're immune to our liberal Jedi mind tricks... oh, my friend, you are sadly mistaken.
See, I'll let you in on a dirty little secret:
There's a lot of ex-Republicans around here. And you, too, shall be assimilated.
We were once like you, true believers in the right-wing gospel. We once thought it incomprehensible that any clear-thinking person could possibly embrace anything but conservatism.
Then we saw what happened when we put "conservatives" in charge and let them put their theories to action.
Here's what we got:
-- An unnecessary war, begun through duplicity and still years from completion.
-- A surplus turned into a $500 billion deficit.
-- The suspension of habeas corpus and the embrace of torture.
-- The subprime mortgage meltdown.
-- An oligarchy of the affluent gorging on most of the nation's wealth, while more Americans than ever struggle just to make ends meet.
-- A decade of economic malaise that has morphed into severe recession.
Needless to say, this shook our faith in the creed of conservatism. We re-examined our assumptions about the world and found them wanting.
We once despised liberalism, but we gave it a second look, this time with an open mind. And having escaped the hive mind, we found that progressivism not only makes a lot of sense... it actually works. (Remember the economic boom of the '90s? That happened after we raised taxes. Isn't that weird?)
See, it's not the flamers you need to be wary of. It's former Republicans like me. We know exactly how you think. We know why you're a conservative. We know precisely what buttons to push to get you to second-guess every assumption you have about the world.
In other words, we're like the progressive version of the Borg. And we're going to assimilate your Limbaugh-lovin' ass if it's the last thing we do.
So welcome, my McCain-trolling friend!
Resistance is futile.