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My pal Robert points out to me (by way of Andrew Sullivan) that over at Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has - as I write this - literally filled the blog's front page almost entirely with story after story of himself being utterly dumbfounded at the skyrocketing levels of batshittery coming from the part of the American Right that's managed to get control of the mic, and is calling them out on their various bald-faced lies and deceptions.

If I were visiting the site for the first time right now, i'd have no reason to guess that this was anything other than a centrist-to-leftish blog of the stripe I normally haunt. I certainly would not suspect that it was one of the preƫminent online wingnut bastions through the breadth of the Bush administration.

The blogs I do normally read have been saying "OMG the right is off its nut" for a while now, and my first instinct is to roll my eyes at this, because even smart people have short memories. But this... is something else.

Date: 2009-09-17 03:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com
Charles Johnson started out as a center-left techblogger who mostly blogged about web design; I sometimes read his site then. 9/11 drove him mad and he let his site turn into a far-right xenophobic cesspit. Now he's having his come-to-Jesus moment.

This happened earlier to John Cole of Balloon Juice, who now sounds like a pugnacious antiwar liberal. Cole's transformation was what made me conclude that the later you turn against the Republicans and/or Bush, the madder you are. This seems to be a confirming data point.

Date: 2009-09-17 03:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com
...though, to be clear, I don't think John Cole was a post-9/11 convert to neoconservatism, I think he was a longtime Republican prior to his disenchantment.

Date: 2009-09-17 03:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prog.livejournal.com
I'm curious what CJ's breaking point was, if there was one. I've been reading Cole for a year or two now, and recall his singling out the Terri Shiavo case as the event that lifted the scales from his eyes years prior.

Date: 2009-09-17 06:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com
I think it was the post-inauguration rise in Birther activity, but I don't have enough stomach for reading LGF archives to know for sure.

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