We've all done it. No, I'm not talking about trying to use Jedi mind tricks to get a date ("You have a burning desire to give me your phone number...") - although I'm sure we've all done that too. I mean trolling Republican sites. We've all gone on safari in the wilds of Loonistan for big game hunting, entomological research, or just a nice sadomasochistic romp through the Inferno. Although I don't do that anymore, having matured immensely since then (as you can plainly tell), I was once quite the berserker, and feasted upon the psychological sinew of infernal bastardy on a regular basis. Here are some fond recollections, and some randomly-selected quotes I've been able to dredge up.
First, some background. And I apologize if I get any of this wrong - memory can be slippery. I was 17 years old during the 2000 election, and thus not eligible to vote, but I had followed it with such gusto that I still feel like I participated. Although my specific knowledge of politics was shallower than today (but still much deeper than an average teenager's), I nonetheless had developed a visceral loathing of Republicans and George W. Bush in particular. He and his people walked around with "I am evil" practically written on their foreheads, and it just astounded me that this wasn't obvious to everyone.
A lady in the audience of a Nader rally had asked dear Ralphie a question that summed it up perfectly (paraphrasing): "When George W. Bush is in power, and we are living in a dictatorship, what good will your slogans be then?" My father - a lifelong Democrat and liberal - had thought I was exaggerating for the sake of humor when I told him Bush was evil, when I had simply been expressing my impression, and his reaction was overwhelmingly typical among Democrats. I guess some people are in tune with reality, some have to deal with it as it comes, and others never see it at all.
After the coronation, I was seething. I got my news from three sources at the time: LA Times, CNN, and CSPAN. And all three of them were showing a level of bias that was utterly shocking and seemingly inexplicable. Front page LA Times articles - actual "news coverage," not editorials - were outright calling Al Gore and Democrats names, and this was supposed to be part of the "liberal media" that only seemed to exist in the inchoate ravings of the media itself. CNN wasn't yet the Fox News Lite it's since become, but its groveling to Republicans was gut-wrenching even then, and CSPAN coverage was littered with "think tanks" that all seemed to consist of libertarian businessmen who thought Bush's elevation would bring Paradise on Earth.
I had no one to share my outrage with - my dad was disappointed, but he assumed W's reign would just be the second term of Elder Bush's administration, and other people my age looked at me like I was from another planet when I tried to talk to them about politics. Since my personal life and academic career were in a rut, and entertainment options were nowhere near as broad as today, distractions were too few and I kept coming back to politics. That's when I decided to become an internet warrior, and show the bastards that there was one person who wouldn't shut up short of a bullet in my head (or a reasonably large bribe - I'm not made of stone).
My initial forays were tentative and, ultimately, abortive. There were many sites to choose from, but most had a confusing or visually unappealing layout. I explored both liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican sites, and found I had little to say to my brethren on the left, not yet having formulated many positive ideas and being mainly interested in hammering the fucksticks who had so rudely interrupted the progress of American civilization.
There was also an element of disgust toward fellow Democrats, since much of what was posted consisted of hand-wringing, defensive excuses, and reactionary contempt at the American electorate. I had recognized from the beginning that Bush's ascendancy had nothing to do with America - our country was asleep, not insane or evil. But Democrats were asleep too, and it seemed like a waste of time to argue with people who couldn't hear me yet. So, feeling a bit like Fingolfin (yes, I am that big a dork), or perhaps Col. Kurtz, I decided there was nothing left but to directly confront Republicans on their own turf and make their lives miserable.
Redstate and Freep either didn't yet exist or were still obscure, so my ultimate choice of hunting grounds was not something many around here probably have experience with: I settled on the Compuserve Republican forum - which by then was available generally on the Web without the need to subscribe to Compuserve - mainly because its layout was well-organized, the interface intuitive, and the design both appealing and simple. It apparently still exists, but with a radically different (and, IMHO, far inferior) interface. At first I tried to impersonate a Republican, calling myself "Reagan Patriot" (apologies if anyone here has that name, though I doubt the likelihood) and mocking Republicans with subtlety, but my anger soon got the better of me and the subterfuge collapsed. As this is undoubtedly a very common name among real Republican posters, I doubt anything of mine under that name could be found from a search.
Then, because I was going through a Fight Club phase (psychologically) I posted under "Napalm-and-Coffee," which for some obscure reason I thought to be the height of wry humor. Although I was more open under that name, it didn't last long either, as my thoughts were still too unfocused, and for a while I drifted away from my career as a virtuous troll. Both names turn up nothing on search, so I assume my initial contributions are lost to posterity (thank God).
After a long absence, events intervened to catapult me back into politics - namely, the 9/11 attacks. If the Bush coup had pissed me off, the murder of thousands of innocent people - not to mention destruction of two glorious architectural works of art - by a bunch of religious fundamentalists made my blood boil. If I had been in better health and the leadership in Washington short of demonic, it's entirely possible I would have enlisted on impulse (though still likely I would have thought better of it), but I had to be content with watching events unfold.
I decided to be magnanimous and give Bush a chance, although I had little faith that his intentions were decent. For a period of roughly two weeks, the Bush "administration" (as I referred to them at the time in irony quotes, not yet rising to the level of a regime) appeared to behave more or less straightforwardly, and I forgave their rhetorical excesses as a matter of style. Then they began invoking the attacks on behalf of tax cut legislation, questioning the patriotism of its opponents, justifying Republican power in religious terms, and the truce was ended. I jumped back into the fray with a newfound clarity, seeing that the people who attacked us on 9/11 and Republicans were fundamentally the same, and feeling defiance surging through my veins.
So began the era of Wake4Democracy, the first in a glorious, five-year string of three troll accounts. Although the contributions of that account appear to be lost, a Google search turns up this poignantly off-hand mention by a Republican blogger in 2004:
Is Nick Coleman "Wake4Democracy," or do all bitter libs sound alike?
FYI, I am not Nick Coleman. Anyway, "Wake," as I was known, really focused my writing ability and critical thinking skills, and I often wrote posts that I was immensely proud of. Of course, I'm sure I also wrote things I would be embarrassed to see today, but that is only to be expected. Part of what gave me this focus was the challenge of confronting the Republican gentry of the forum forcefully and wittily enough to enjoy myself while remaining sufficiently civil to avoid a ban.
To those who have never tried it, this is not as easy as it sounds - one develops a deep appreciation for the double or even triple entendre; for statements that are insulting in context, but in themselves cannot be called out as such; and for multi-layered ironies that you know your Republican adversary is not comprehending. I also discovered that, once they became accustomed to me, I could push them further and further without having posts removed or temp bans.
During this period, I actually developed a kind of perverse collegial relationship with the regular denizens, getting to know their personal quirks and styles and adjusting my attack patterns accordingly. Our mutual hate actually, at times, felt like a kind of friendship. Don't get me wrong, these people were not just regular Americans with a conservative political bent - the key players were batshit wingnut psychos on the order of Ann Coulter. They wrote about war and killing in the way a teenage boy would write about sex, and were truly demonic characters restrained in their evil intent only by utter stupidity and ignorance. One in particular, who at the time was one of the top SysOps and far more prolific than most, struck me as possibly schizophrenic: One moment lustily yearning for the murder of political opponents and the next crawling up on a cross as the victim of liberal conspiracies against "freedom." But he was relatively eloquent and literate, so I particularly enjoyed making sport of him. He was Big Game, and dangerous given that he was a SysOp.
I won't give their names (though I doubt many of them were real), but I found that they fell into certain character archetypes: The guy mentioned above was a Satanic, Dick Cheney type, of which there were several, but he was the purest incarnation. There was also a resident Libertarian who cut-and-pasted Ayn Rand monographs by the bushel, and believed government to be the definition of evil - good for a change of pace on occasion, but untangling his webs of anal retentive fallacy were exhausting, and he rarely if ever learned anything from the exercise.
There were two women regulars who come to mind: One seemed like a middle-aged, matronly Midwestern or Southern conservative - the type who, I would guess out of my ass, wears jeans pulled up to just beneath her tits, with a wide belt that she probably used on her children. She was considerably more rational than the others (which isn't saying much), which made it often fun to prey on her hyper-judgmental social conservative views and mindless jingoism. The other woman was basically like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin rolled into one - head-explodingly ignorant, idiotic, fascistic, religious fundamentalist bigot, and exuberantly proud of being a Texan. She was usually like a robot, and I could predict her responses pretty closely, but it was still fun every once in a while to play with her. I had her mind mapped like a sewer, and making her shut up was as easy as denying her the cues she used to know how to respond - just respond intelligently, with words carefully devoid of emotional leverage, and she would disappear from the conversation like a dissipated fog.
There were others, of course: The neocon whose solution to every foreign policy question was literally a discussion of how best to invade the countries involved and kill their leaders; the business owner irate about taxes, no matter how low; the Korean Catholic whose conservatism seemed to be based in a deep psychological need to be told how to live; the militia guy; the resident "academic" supply-sider, who felt that the entire field of economics consisted of white papers from Cato and AEI; and many others too dim in memory to specifically recall. There were also a few fellow liberals, although only one really made an impression - one whose eloquence, wit, and taste for the keen observation exceeded my own. We didn't have much to say to each other - a troll is a solitary predator - but we appreciated each other's work.
After a couple of years as Wake4Democracy, and seeing little progress toward a Democratic resurgence, I perhaps began to lose some of my original passion and my hunting became a perfunctory exercise. But though my passion waned, my hatred did not, and I started losing patience more and more often. Out of ennui, I mentioned in a thread by the Satanic Cheneyite SysOp that I had Asperger's just to see how he would respond. I'd been hoping for some diabolical pretense at sympathy concealing sadistic barbs, but there was no pretense whatsoever - he acted as if I had "slipped up" by revealing it, like it was some dark secret he had divined through his piercing powers of deduction, and triumphantly declared everything I'd ever posted the mere product of mental illness. It was a pathetic display, and I was deeply disappointed. Until that point, I hadn't realized how truly and deeply my writings had tortured the bastard, and how desperately he lunged at the first sign of weakness on my part. It was flattering, but it deprived me of a cherished antagonist - nothing he said after that seemed the least bit formidable or challenging. His shallowness was revealed, and I couldn't un-see it.
After that, my contempt spun out of control, and I finally just told him what I thought of him in blunt, completely unemotional terms. Roughly, "One moment you're calling for the blood of your enemies, and the next you're portraying yourself as Christ on the cross. You are, quite simply, insane." This doesn't sound particularly ferocious by the standards of Daily Kos, but to me it was quite liberating - I no longer felt like remaining civil was serving a purpose, as I had learned all that I likely would from these people. I got banned. Still being a teenager, and having unresolved anger issues from high school, I responded by creating an account of the same name as his, but with a lower-case L replaced by an upper-case I (which looked the same in the text of the forum). Unrestrained character assassination ensued - which really shouldn't have worked since SysOps have "SysOp" next to their names and my impersonator account didn't, but Republicans are apparently not ones for detail.
Using that name, I called for the invasion of Canada and Mexico, the enslavement of their populations to procure a more docile labor pool, execution of dissenters by crucifixion, and threatened the most insanely far-right posters with banning if they didn't immediately post a heartfelt loyalty oath to George W. Bush, the Republican Party, capitalism, and Christianity, in descending order of importance. It was stupid and unethical - no one should ever have to answer for the statements of another person without having given that person prior permission to speak for them - and I would apologize today for it, but I won't pretend I didn't enjoy the hell out of it. Thus ended Wake4Democracy, in a blaze of glory.
I did various other things for a while, focused on my community college classes, caught up on my reading, etc., and tried to stay away from politics because of its power to distract me. But as the Bush regime (as I was now calling them) accelerated its Iraq propaganda, I decided to re-enter the fray under a new name. As "Wake4Democracy" has a three-part structure, I considered various possible names and ultimately settled on Enery The Aethe, as I wanted to approach it with a more light-hearted and mischievous attitude than the raging inferno that led to W4D. This might seem ironic given the events then unfolding, but I felt much calmer and more Henry V gung-ho about my opposition the closer events spiraled toward cataclysm. There was still plenty of anger, but it was somewhat more mature: My attitude was one of "Fall laughing into the abyss" - the lingering influence of Fight Club.
This account, awesomely, turns up a treasure trove of material on Google (although, oddly, not in the forum archives), so I can base my characterizations on actual reading of my own writings rather than corruptible memory. I definitely recognize myself in these posts. Some samples:
Posted on 11/14/04, after a despondent liberal had committed suicide at Ground Zero following the election (note: Words in double-arrows are back-quotes of another poster's statements):
>>This person was on the edge anyway, deluded by his utopian, idealistic notions that Democrats would solve the world's problems.<<</p>
More likely he was looking for some kind of evidence that people are not as stupid and insane as they seem, but instead found confirmation to the contrary in the election results. Since he killed himself at Ground Zero, I figure the Ashcroft-Gonzales transition Justice Department is already working on detaining his corpse at Guantanamo for questioning.
From a thread about charter schools:
>>My only question to them is what so different between this and the charter schools the left tried so hard to keep out of Cleveland. (Of course, everyone knows it's the teachers unions)<<</p>
Right, it's the evil school teachers at it again. You Republicans have a funny taste in villains.
On immigration:
>>but no one has come up with any actual evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of anyone but the invaders coming over the border and being ignored by our Law Enforcement estabilshment...<<</p>
"Invaders," huh? Somehow I missed the columns of Mexican panzers coming across the border.
I was more on my game here:
>>They've offered the papers to any and sundry who wish to verify their existance...<<</p>
Which papers, and where is this offer documented? I seriously hope you're not pulling another storytelling session on me, because that would just break my heart.
>>I waited a year to see if anyone would post anything in the way of a response before posting about it...<<</p>
Such assumes that any established news organization takes "CNS" seriously enough to verify their claims. The Republican Party is infamous for creating actual publications, not to mention an entire cable news network, for the sole purpose of spreading fabricated stories, so a website with a gruesomely derivative byline (compare "CNSNews.com" with "CNNNews.com") isn't going to cut it.
>>It does match the information in the 9/11 report about the involvement of Iraq's various government agencies in all sorts of dealings with terrorisim... including Al Qaeda...<<</p>
Then cite the 9/11 report with specific quotes, links, and page numbers, not this Arkansas Project leftover. I've dealt with too many bald-faced lies from Republicans claiming Hussein supported Al Qaeda to think this is any different until I have compelling reasons to think otherwise, which the record of its claimants and history of the claims' evolution makes highly unlikely. All, and I do mean all, so-called "evidence" so far presented for such claims ranks up there with "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
Anyway, that's enough samples. I realize you're probably bored by now with my little tribute to myself, but I'm enjoying this too much to stop quite yet. My mission as Enery wasn't so much to be a berserker as with W4D, but to hone my own understanding through dialectic, teach anyone who could be taught, and of course, practice my wit at Republican expense. I still lost my temper from time to time, and probably said idiotic or ridiculous things, but I took great pleasure in remaining cool in the face of attempts to provoke or distract from the issues. The cast of characters in the forum had changed: The main psychos had departed (perhaps they discovered Redstate), leaving behind far less interesting creatures, and I spent a lot of time fighting zombie lies and hacking apart fallacies.
At that point in my life I was a pretty rigid atheist, so there is also plenty of (totally futile and self-involved) commentary attacking the logic of belief in God. I still don't believe in God, but mainly because my understanding is deeper than such a concept - I am no longer contemptuous of spirituality as long as it doesn't encroach on reason. Still, many of my writings picking apart the logic of other people's beliefs were worthy of pride, even if they seem, from my current perspective, shallow.
After the 2004 election, I had posted a declaration in the Democratic mirror site - one of my few forays into civilization at the time - stating the following (paraphrased from memory):
Bush is not my president, I do not recognize him as an official of the United States or a fellow American, and all official actions he has taken or will take that do not conform to policies existing before his ascendancy are illegitimate. I will take no oath to obey him; contribute no money to support him in any way that can be legally avoided; and will never refer to him by any title of respect, nor show him respect in any other way, be it clapping, rising at his entrance, or accepting a handshake from him.
The outcome of the election had so weighed on my mind that this declaration felt intensely liberating, and its impact stays with me. I meant every word, and that is why, to this day, I am sensitive to statements that ascribe Bush's actions to "the US" or "Americans."
Although it's a minor point in the grand scheme of things, I had lied about myself under the Enery The Aethe pseudonym, claiming to be an astrophysics professor when I was just an undergrad with a (then-vague) intention of pursuing a degree in that field. It wasn't relevant to my trolling, but it speaks to how invested I had become posting there that I cared enough to bother creating a persona instead of remaining a faceless bringer of rhetorical doom to the lowlifes. It's unlikely they knew I was bullshitting, given what I already knew about physics, but I still wish I hadn't made that claim - it reminds me of deep insecurities that have since been addressed or, at least, become less significant.
I don't quite recall why, or even whether, Enery got banned. It's entirely possible I just stopped posting, and by the time I decided to return, my thinking may have advanced enough that I wanted to start fresh. Then again, it's also possible I lost my temper at some point and went off on another SysOp. Either way, Enery The Aethe ran its course, and I drifted outside politics again for a time.
My last, and most advanced, account came about under unremarkable circumstances (which I can say because I don't honestly remember them). The name I chose was inspired by a line from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, as quoted at the beginning (and referenced in the title) of Iain M. Banks' insidiously flippant science fiction novel, "Look to Windward." The quote, which I still find strangely powerful:
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Rather than make the reference explicit, I called myself "Eyes to Windward." The ranks of the Republican forum herd were thinning considerably by this point, so I increasingly divided my time between it, a "Political Debate" forum that was mostly Libertarians, and a Democratic forum that was itself thinning out as more energetic sites took the reins. For some reason, this more recent account turns up nothing on either Google or the forum archives. But I recall that some of my most detailed, treatise-like work occurred there, and it was under that name that I feel I "graduated" from trollery to something more positive and substantial. On some occasions it soared into outright empathy for even the most disgusting Republicans, but I realized that I couldn't help them and my posts became more and more infrequent. Ultimately they stopped entirely, and I haven't posted around there in years. It was a true life experience, pathetic as it was.
That was not, however, the complete end of my trolling. As a space nut, I developed a strong interest in space blogs, and in a bizarre corner of wingnuttopia called Transterrestrial Musings, I stumbled upon the dangerous combination of space issues and psychotic right-wing commentary: Love and hate all mashed together in a great big Shiva-like paradox. At first I told myself I would stick to the space issues and ignore the proprietor's loony, spittle-laced screeds on political issues, and for a while I was able to restrain myself. But like all addictions, terrorizing wingnuts is a hard habit to kick - I relapsed. For several months I posted long-winded diatribes joyously tearing apart every last sinew of madness posted there, and brawled unrestrainedly with the wingnut denizens. Our very own Ferris Valyn was there to witness some of this, as a non-troll liberal contributor, although I don't think he approved. But he was apparently impressed by my writing ability, and convinced me to come over to Daily Kos, where I could write positively instead of wallowing in people I hate.
And now that I'm home among my kindred spirits, I'm as docile as a lamb.
Seriously, I've made a lot of progress. I now try to focus on positive ideas rather than just attacking stupidity and madness, and it's done wonders for my outlook on life. That and Prozac.