Ann Althouse: the benefits of being linked to Kos

In one of her pellucid responses to another sputtering-with-rage attack by ARMANDO at Kos, Ann deftly demonstrates why she is on so many thinking persons' blogrolls. Armando coins a neologism [since corrected], which Ann gently employs to fend off another African killer-bee attack from the perpetually angry airheads on the Kos page.

But wait, they don't even leave their hive, but commune among themselves in an ecstasy of adrenaline-rush buzzing and mock sting-fests!

Ann calls this:
The echo-y comfort zone of rage.

Here is some of her comments on the tres-enrages

Armando over at Daily Kos, links to me and awkwardly calls me one of the "theoretically not stupid folks [who are] wondering what hit them in the Left Blogosophere." That's his typo, "Blogosophere," but you know it made me stop and think about whether it was some kind of portmanteau word comprising "blogosphere" and "philosopher." Well, don't you know, I want to be a blogosopher when I grow up. I could ponder Armando's theory of not being stupid, but I'm just going to assume it means not agreeing with him yet and move on.

Armando's link is to my recent post about the revival of interest in a year-old post called "Right and left: my sad experience." The older of the two posts observes that "bloggers on the right link to [me] when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce [me] with short posts saying [I'm] evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times [I've] written posts that take their side."

Interest in that post was revived, as I explained in the post Armando linked to, when Crank at RedState wrote about how he thought a lot about what I'd said and wanted Republicans to remember that they need to engage and include the centrists and liberal hawks who are the source of their majority power.
[F]rom one issue controversy to the next, we may find ourselves on the opposite side from some of these folks. And therein lies the temptation to go the Kos path, and dissolve into spittle-spraying rage when people who are "supposed" to be on "our side" cross over and side against us. That's the situation where we need to think carefully about how harshly we go after people's motives, their intellectual integrity, etc. A ritual bridge-burning may be fun, but that's how you end up stranded on your own island.
Quoting that passage, I add: "Hardcore Democrats ought to do the same, and not just because I like people to be nice to me."

You'd think that if Armando was going to bother to link to this, he'd respond to the point that matters so much: it's dysfunctional to alienate the people you need to win over in order to gain majority power.[My emphasis] But, though he goes on for 725 words, it's all just about how angry he is at the Bush Administration and don't I ever think about why he's angry?[My emphasis again!]
Yeah, well, but you linked to me. Don't you ever think about why your side can't seem to win elections, despite all these deficiencies in the people you are so angry at? Can't you distinguish between them and people like me, who represent the votes you need to win? I agree with you on many issues. I've been a registered Democrat since I first started to vote, in 1972. I can count on one hand the Republicans I've voted for in my life, for any office. And that's giving a separate finger to Cheney. And go ahead and make a giving-the-finger-to-Cheney joke. I would laugh at it. I watch every episode "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." You think I'm not worth engaging, because you're angry at Bush? Are elections not worth winning because you're angry at Bush? Just exactly who is theoretically not stupid?

Oh, but, wow, a Kos link -- that must bring a lot of traffic, right? No, my friends. It does not. Less than 2% of my traffic is coming from that Kos link right now, and I've got no active -lanches at the moment. I'm getting more traffic from Google and from Glenn Reynolds' blogroll. Meanwhile, there are more than 300 comments on Armando's post. Wouldn't want to leave the echo-y comfort zone. The echo-y comfort zone of rage.

And then there's this guy, who seems to think that when I said "Hardcore Democrats ought to do the same, and not just because I like people to be nice to me" I was really only talking about how I wanted people to be nice to me. And so it goes.

Ann, it's all about them and how they are entitled to run the country, and why Krugman isn't shrill and stupid even though he screeches on a weekly basis that the sky is falling [he has predicted about 20 of the last 0 recessions].

Kos: Keep it up and keep John Forehead and Company blogging for you over there and the Republicans will win again in '08.