Strange Juxtapositions

(Is the Dread Dormammu running HYDRA?  It would explain so much.)

• Vagabond Scholar on the ongoing adversarial relationship of civility and bullshit.

  For example, maybe you sincerely believes that someone calling Dick Cheney a "war criminal" is distasteful, because, uh… he hasn't been formally convicted as such. Or it sounds harsh. Okay, but you should be more outraged by what Cheney actually did, his role in constructing a a torture program and his dishonesty in selling a war of choice. Don't agree with all of that? Fine. But the defining feature of civility trolls, the smarm patrol, the bullshitters, is that they're trying to shut honest discussion down. They don't want to investigate. They don't want accountability (not for their team, anyway). For example, there's a reason torture apologists steadfastly ignore all the accounts and mountains of data proving their claims false. Pick another issue if you like; the same dynamics often play out.

• Paul Krugman discusses why conservatives are upset about California.  (AlterNet's Janet Allon, on Mr. Krugman's column.)
• Remember the psychological profiles of conservatives ten years ago that caused some hoo-hah?  More evidence.

  The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed.

  (From Mother Jones, via AlterNet.)