Bryan Joiner

I learn so much from far lefties on the Internet that I feel bad criticizing them. Remainder rage fuels the Internet, pays the bills for someone like myself, and is entirely avoidable. I mean, what about the last line of John Cook’s otherwise well-reasoned “Barack Obama’s Bullshit Gay Marriage Announcement” isn’t high-class trolling: “Obama is moving backward, not forward.”

There is enough nonsense in that to make your stomach churn. There’s also enough nonsense in there to discard it entirely. The Internet Thunderdome of Ideas is a good thing, on the whole. The universe only exists because matter outgrew anti-matter by a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent after the Big Bang, and so is the progress of ideas, just in general. Their fundamental rightness leads them to slowly build up over time. The Internet accelerates this trend. Charles Pierce wrote yesterday about the inevitable acceptance of homosexuals in sports, correctly, that, “In 50 years, our grandchildren are going to wonder what all the fuss was about.” While that’s hardly anything to be proud of, it’s a fact. Progress happens.

But man, is it brutal in the short term.