<http://citypages.com/databank/25/1206/article11813.asp>
from which -
By far my favorite outburst appeared this past November 21. That day Lileks decided to explain reality to a Baghdad-based Iraqi blogger named Salam Pax, whose opposition to Saddam and Paul Bremer has angered and confused many a warblogger, Lileks included. After Salam expressed some dissatisfaction with the U.S. occupation, Lileks gave him a thorough Bleating...
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I'm very glad you wrote this Dennis.
Of course, it will be parsed endlessly by Mr. Lileks and associates in the blogsphere. But that's an occupational hazard I'm sure you're familiar with.
The quote I posted above is particularly important I think because it captures the essential character of most *warblogging.*
Regardless of obvious contradictions, uncomfortable facts or even a total lack of information nothing will detain many bloggers from expressing an opinion in support of the Bush program.
The spectacle (and that's what it truly was) of Mr. Lileks presuming to lecture an Iraqi on the situation in his own country beggars description but is typical fare.
There is a word for this phenomena, when facts are less significant than intuition or templated opinions: religion.
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In the run-up to and first week or so of the official war I spent a lot of time visiting some of the popular warblogs. From time to time, feeling masochistic it seems (for abuse was the certain reward for disagreeing) I would post an opinion. At one such blog, our host wrote that only softheaded or America-hating liberals opposed military action. I stated that there were in fact several conservatives and not a few combat veterans who also disagreed.
I was told - in the keyboard equivalent of a shout - that I didn't *understand history* (a popular phrase) and those folks who failed to see the need obviously were unaware of the *price of freedom* (combat vets included).
There is a deep resistance to new information amongst many of these folks. I think what we're seeing is not so much the rise of conservative bloggers, but the web-enabled visiblity of a personality type - the crisis and authoriarian geek.
It's not exciting to think of yourself as merely a put-upon member of the dwindling middle class, beset by unhelpful government and rapacious business, despised as an American by groups across the globe for reasons fair and foul. It makes much more sense and is much more uplifitng (in a perverse way) to think of yourself as a Westerner, a member of a beseiged tribe of free-living techno-adepts who must employ hard lessons via steel to a hostile world lest darkness fall. This idea is as old as Western expansion and probably older.
What is the qualitative difference between these fantasies and the flights of fancy of someone who tries to experience Trenton N.J. as if it were Middle Earth?
DRM