The folly of Blog wars..

Much like any other war, these blog wars that have been starting of late are not only divisive, but unlike many real wars are fought without cause or reason. What drives these participants to such viciousness? Is it simply an attempt to slow their own decline into irrelevance? Or is it more?

One thing is certain; we can hardly expect our politicians to get along(or our children for that matter), so long as we cannot have even a modicum of civilized discussion. Can we not disagree without resorting to ad-hominem attacks, or worse yet, comparisons to tyrants? Perhaps Godwin's law holds some water; the eventual decline of discussion will reach a point where someone will be compared to Hitler. It seems all too often that this particular attack is leveled on those on the right(despite rather obvious political and economic differences), but we are far from innocent in all of this I am afraid.

It is almost a mob mentality of sorts, a sinking to the lowest common denominator. And we, as bloggers owe it to not only each other, but also to our readers to rise above such petty and childish behaviour. It stands only to reason that engaging in such discussion(if it can be called so), does little to further our credibility, and even less to earn respect.

From our side, all we can do is ignore the trolls. Leave their pettiness and childishness on their little piece of the world, and let them sink into the bowels of irrelevance. We should not encourage these people by acknowledging them, we should ignore them simply because they have shown themselves to be petty and ignorant.

I would call upon all bloggers to take a break from the attacks, if even for only today. Today should not be a day of partisan attacks, or of personal feuds. Today we celebrate the lives of our fallen veterans, we give thanks and remembrance to those who fought(and continue to fight) to protect our rights and freedoms. The same rights and freedoms we are enjoying through our blogs. If there is a sense of decency in you, you will put aside your differences for even one day to come together in appreciation and respect of our veterans and current serving members. We owe them much more, but that would be a good start.

And who's to say... you may find that civility really isn't that bad after all.