The other day, a diarist was gratuitously accused of being a purity troll. I found this strange locution puzzling and baffling, though I almost certainly have seen it here before. Trolls, traditionally, are anathema to Christianity and other organized religions. As a result, they would normally be deemed to be impure.
This Locution's resolution is found below the fold:
Internet trolls, of course, are a different animal entirely, but there was nothing in the message indicating trollery and, nothing I could find of a history of trollish behavior on the part of the diarist. In fact, it was the accusers who were behaving in a trollish fashion according to standard internet usage. After all, accusations of trollery are automatically trollish unless there is a substantial basis for the accusation. Ignoring the substance of a diary or comment and simply screaming "troll!" is about as trollish a thing as one can do. (Especially such a wigged out epithet as purity troll; by its very nature an off topic, disruptive, threadjacking, ad hominem attack that is also virtually certain to be false and baseless.) Insofar as this trollish locution was used by at least two disparate posters, and supported by yet another, I felt that it required study and analysis.
There was no attempt at discussion or substantive speech, but the epithet was simply hurled forth much as some superstitious medieval lout might have hurled curses, imprecations and crucifixes at some poor elderly female who had the misfortune to be bent, aged, disfigured and clothed in rags. This latter behavior enhanced the strangeness of the accusation and I hoped that its very strangeness might lead to understanding it. The superstitious, the religious, and, in general, nearly everybody, has always assaulted those perceived as impure, not those seen as pure. What manner of being attacks the good for being good or trying to be good? Who believes that Ivory Soap should include more contaminants? Who would berate Sir Galahad for being good and pure instead of wicked, petty, greedy and malicious? Who would decry those deemed to be insufficiently impure, inadequately malevolent and rotten? Who, in short, hates, reviles and slanders the saintly?
From the coments, I gathered that the myth of the purity troll is but an extreme variant of another common myth. I refer, of course, to the maleficent slander to the effect "that the perfect is the enemy of the good." It is well and widely known, as Orange County Liberal has told us, that "The real enemy of the good is not the perfect, but the mediocre." Even though it is egregiously false and even though there is certainly nobody here, if anywhere at all, who would reject something good and beneficial simply because it bears those imperfections that are the hallmark of all things real and corporeal, this outrageous myth is nonetheless repeated endlessly like some trollish drumbeat from a hobbit movie.
Like the epithet, purity troll, it is simply tossed out as if it were the Holy Hand Grenade with no attempt at any substantive discussion. So, let's assume that purity is hyperbole; and the attack is not on the somewhat mythical pure but merely on the principled, those who strive for a better world and a brighter future.
Well, what sort of person would attack Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King? Who would deride LBJ for trying to extend a modicum of basic rights to all citizens, or President Obama for trying to close gitmo? Heck, even the GOP and teh freepers don't attack people simply for being principled, but actually quote and paraphrase some, such as Patrick Henry, Stephen DeCatur, and Charleton Heston.
A review of some of the discussions among persons not hurling these accusations led me to see an obvious clue; this is an outgrowth of the modern lust for instant gratification. The accusers merely lust for immediate closure and resolution on all issues, as is to be expected in this day and age. What is puzzling is only that they call for compromise without conscience, for any solution or resolution, regardless of good or bad, so long as it is immediate. Nobody normally ignores questions of good or bad, so therein lies the real root puzzle, and that too is explained by our day and age.
I have come to conclude that these accusers simply don't differentiate between good and bad. We live in the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the bumper sticker and advertising jingle. The point and purpose of these forms of miscommunication is to cause a confusion whereby the slogan is substituted for reality and the sound bite becomes ontology. Into this realm of conceptual chaos strode the great master Sergio Leone. In a few, the Slogan Derangment Syndrome that is the hallmark and curse of our age misfired. They somehow got the title of one of his works inextricably confused with ontology and have come to view The Good, The Bad and The Ugly not as disparate Platonic concepts, but as one and the same thing, a sort of unholy Trinity (even though Trinity was by Barboni, not Leone). Observe the result of all this, see if it ain't so -
If in response to some forward looking bill to solve some of the country's problems, the GOP should counter with a proposal involving killing widows and orphans, a 100% tax on all earnings between $10,000 and $200,000 with no tax on incomes in excess of $500,000, they see this as a good and workable "compromise" because it is certainly both bad and ugly. Should any person object, the critic is castigated for the sin of purity and accused of trolling because said critic is seen as placing at risk this glorious opportunity to immediately leap into bed with a hung-over yet still somewhat drunken Eli Wallach and quickly get it over with. In the end, it is all about instant gratification of a confused lust for instant resolution, that cannot differentiate good, bad, and ugly.
Unfortunately, knowing the cause of this bizarre purity troll trollery does not help us find a cure. Lacking Thor's mighty hammer Mjolnir, our only defense is a powerful spell enabling the caster to blithely ignore the trolls at issue and continue rational discourse with others as if the purity troll trolls were absent. According to the second unnumbered volume of the unpublished and unattributed works of Macalypse the Younger, the proper full spell is:
"Impure! Impure! Purity troll troll begone. Tuco is not here!", though sometimes a simple "Tuco is not here!" will do the trick.