Hightower - The Blogs The Borg - Six Of One Half Dozen Of The Other

What comes of carefully scrutinizing internet blogs besides a flaming headache has become more apparent and predictable then I thought possible only a few short pre-blog years ago.

Specialized blogs from internet SEO sites to motorcycle enthusiast’s blogs are interesting only if you are interested in those particular topics, boring if you’re not.

Trying to keep my finger on the pulse of America’s social and political trends has forced me to stick close to blogs on news, politics, conservative and liberal rants and religion. Even in these limited categories there are upwards of a ka-zillion blogs and with newbies popping up daily there is no end in sight. No insult intended to the blind or to the decent blog sites but the blind need never fear that they have missed something important.

I have indeed come across a few remarkably well pointed sites that could actually add something to your knowledge that might be described as useful. These unusual species of blogs are all too often the exceptions that make the rule.

Star Trek creator the late Gene Roddenberry invented a menacing picture of a race of people bent on assimilating whole civilizations and subjecting them to something known as the collective. All the knowledge and culture of each race is assimilated and blended with the other civilizations from around Roddenberry’s imaginary inhabited universe. The Borg seem bent on making what looks all too much like a universal blog a pervasive and inescapable part of everyone’s future.

Sailing around endless internet blogs is to me all too much like being assimilated by the Borg. Holding and voicing an opinion may be one of the only American freedoms that are not now threatened, but perhaps they should be…in my opinion.

I’m sure it is safe to conclude that having a head full of everyone else’s thoughts with no way to shut them off would be some form of torture. Selecting leaders must be wisdoms way of keeping billions of people from trying to solve a problem from billions of directions. Sounds more like war than progress.

One trend is impossible to miss. A clear distinction can be seen between the liberal and conservative blogs that speaks to reaction rather than content. In the conservative blog references are made to other sources such as the constitution, the bill of rights, the Bible particular statesmen etc. Liberal sources of reference usually end with the blogger alone and that not to happily.

Another alarming trend impossible to miss is resorting to character assassination and denigration when all else fails. The recent and bewildering tragedy at Virginia Tech is one example.

When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that the tragedy was a direct byproduct of a liberal and permissive society he was quickly labeled a quack and cyber-tarred and feathered in the blogs.

Progressive (liberals) who generally ascribe to the idea that personal morality does not conflict with public service were quick to use Mr. Gingrich’s record of divorce against him. Words like “hypocrisy” and phrases like “double standard” may not be vitriolic expletives but they don’t need to be to bring even the weakest conscience under conviction. Consistency is not one of the paragons of the progressive movement.

No big argument needed here only the question of whether left bloggers ever took simple math 101. Let’s see. The end product of a situational ethics anything goes society is what? Oh that’s it…anything goes. No disrespect intended to the victims VA. Tech. but hasn’t “anything goes been making its debut from Columbine to VA. Tech and couldn’t one or more of the elements Gingrich says are the causes actually be responsible in whole or part?

Let’s do a little more math. Could Cho Seung-Hui the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre possibly chosen another course of action if he were guided by something other than the “anything goes” dictates of his own mind? Could faith in God, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, respect for life, ethics courses, common sense or just about anything other than his own mindset have changed the course of events? My simple math says yes to every question. Liberal bloggers come to an entirely different conclusion about both the alternate outcome and the people who suggest it.

Perhaps the most disconcerting but constantly produced side effect of liberal bloggers that I’ve seen in years worth of observation is the unfailing final resort to profanity and expletives when all else fails. When the best wisdom can no longer be refuted the character of the blogger is attacked. In an all out last ditch effort, leftists seem to fall back into profanity and name calling.

The right bloggers only recourse to this oft repeated sudden decent from intelligent discourse to childish name calling is perhaps equally childish but nevertheless effective I’m speaking namely of “sticks and stones will break my bones but…”

I needn’t cite specific examples because of the ka-zillion blogs that are using this tactic there are scarce few I would advise a peace loving and relatively normal person to visit. In my personal ethical economy that would be wholesale unkindness. It would be like inviting the American public to line up for voluntary assimilation into the Borg collective.

Years of checking the blogs has helped me to understand the meaning of words penned by Statesmen Cullen Hightower who said “Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.”