Bush supporters feeling unduly defensive?

Journal TekPolitik's Journal: Bush supporters feeling unduly defensive? 1

Journal by TekPolitik on Wednesday November 17, 2004 @02:00AM

A strange thing seems to have been happening on /. lately. I have never made a secret of the fact that I think George W. Bush is a stupid and dangerous man. Nor have I hidden that I do not approve of John Howard. I have periodically made comments on /. that have said so, either directly or by clear implication.

In the past, these have never resulted in adverse reactions. But recently Bush and Howard supporters have gone feral on them.

Witness this post, which by rights should have gained a +5 Informative. Instead somebody who presumably supports either Howard or Bush moderated it "Flamebait", because I described Howard as a "Bush-sycophant" in the following passage:

The United States and Australia (led by the Bush-sycophant John Howard), are the only developed nations not to have ratified [Kyoto], but they have both signed.

Now in context, the fact that John Howard is a Bush-sycophant is extremely relevant. It sheds important light on why these are the only two developed countries not to have ratified Kyoto. Clearly this was a bad moderation by an oversensitive pro-Bush or pro-Howard zealot.

Then take this comment, reproduced here in its entirety:

Why sign something you know won't be ratified?... To publicly lend it your support. To persuade people and businesses to take steps on their own, even if it won't be legislated for. To show everyone that no matter what the rest of the government thinks, *you* consider it important.
I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the story where we were told Bush wasn't President any more.

Hellloooooo. The thread involved people suggesting the US administration should sign the Kyoto protocol (leave aside the fact that the Clinton administration signed it but did not get it ratified), on the basis that this would show the administration thinks Kyoto is important. Bush is against Kyoto, so there is no reason he would "sign" it to show his support for it. How the hell do you get "Troll" out of that?

Then another, in the same discussion:

Duhbya does not need any help destroying American jobs.
I'd settle for him destroying just one job. His own.

Also moderated as "Troll". How in the hell did this person think a naked expression of personal sentiment warranted "Troll"? Maybe in a totalitarian state, but in the free world we are perfectly entitled to have and express sentiment against a political leader, and it is entirely irrational to feel upset by that or to think it's a troll when somebody does express it.

On top of that, I got my first ever freak. It took very little checking of his comment history to find he was a Bush supporter.

Now all of this leads me to wonder why Bush and Howard supporters are suddenly so sensitive. The only possible reason I have been able to come up with is that they harbour a fear that they have done something horribly wrong - something that is going to cost us all dearly. They are afraid of anything that might push them to consider the possibility that they have made a mistake of gargantuan proportions. So rather than deal with that, they are starting to treat every dissenter as a threat to them. So on /., they mod dissenters down and list them as foes.

Quite sad, really.

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