Opinion: Online commenters: Santa Anna’s law
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
For a while in 2009 and 2010, it was hard to blog about the federal government without having one or more readers accuse Democrats in general or President Obama in particular of being a socialist (or a Marxist, for those who wanted to push the needle further). So I suggested a new version of Godwin’s law, a 2-decade-old theory by Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Godwin’s law holds that the longer a debate continued online, the more likely someone was to compare a debater on the other side to Hitler. I called my version Trosky’s law, and it held that the more comments a blog post attracts, the more likely someone is to accuse the other side of favoring collectivism and five-year plans.
The big Republican victories in November have quieted that talk, and Trotsky’s law doesn’t seem as true today. Oh sure, there are exceptions. Commenting on a piece about the battles in three states between governors and public employee unions, ‘ReidCampbell’ wrote, ‘The governments in the US, both state and federal are way to big and growing. Time to start cutting the fat, so to speak. I can tell by all the thumbs down on the comments supporting the cutting off of that fat that a lot of socialist social working union supporters read this news page.’ And then there’s the ever-reliable Red hunter ‘Pasquino Marforio,’ who responded to a piece about a recent Obama news conference by writing, ‘Obama, and his Democrat Socialist Administration has got to go, now.’
On the other hand, the election doesn’t seem to have dimmed the fervor of those who think illegal immigrants are the source of everything that ails us. Regardless of the topic, many posts will eventually draw a comment blasting illegal immigrants, often followed by another reader accusing the commenter of racism. I’m guessing exchanges of this sort will continue until after unemployment is closer to where it was before the subprime meltdown.
Take, just for example, this comment from ‘AdoptiveFather’ in response to Paul Whitefield’s post suggesting that LiLo and Jennifer Aniston might be to blame for rising gas prices:
Every illegal alien increases need for oil by 3 gallons per day.
Deport the 20 million illegals here and US oil demand would drop by 1.5 million barrels per day.
All that money saved would come right off the top of the trade deficit and would strengthen the US dollar.
Just as predictably, this comment drew a response from a reader (‘Jim’) accusing AdoptiveFather of being a racist and ‘mindlessly parrotting [‘tea party’] propaganda.’
Yes indeed, there’s nothing like a novel take on the subject of $4-a-gallon gas to inspire our readers to respond with their own creative theories.
Anyway, I think it’s time we retire Trotsky’s law and replace it with one with a south-of-the-border flavor. Santa Anna’s law, anybody?
-- Jon Healey
