Time for an Unscheduled Break

Regular readers will remember well that this site used to go dark in between election cycles. Under the best of circumstances, it's... challenging to go through all the news each day and to try and make sense of it. And even once that's done, then you actually have to write it up, all the while knowing that any paragraph, any sentence, any word could set off a dozen readers. As you might imagine, it is that much harder when the news is as dark as it is these days, and when people are about as touchy as they have ever been.

The last 4 days' posts, as a group, were particularly tough to put together. And, as is usually the case, the majority of the readers who wrote in were appreciative and/or had thoughtful things to add (even if they disagreed with something we wrote).

However, there is always a (vocal) minority who... struggles to remain civil, let's say. And recently, those folks have been unbelievably mean-spirited. In the past 4 days, we have been accused of being both antisemites AND Islamophobes. (Truth be told, that always happens whenever we write about Israel-Iran or Israel-Palestine, no matter how lightly we try to tread.) We have been accused of "intense reactionary centrism" because we explained why Michael Bloomberg would choose to support Andrew Cuomo, even though Bloomberg hates Andrew Cuomo. We've been accused of "normalizing violence," because in our Sunday post, we put the Minnesota assassinations third in order (after the Trump parade and the "No Kings" protests), rather than first. We've been accused of being propagandists because we said that Voice of America tries to provide unbiased information. We've been accused of lying about the situation involving Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), because we noted that the Padilla opponents (e.g., Kristi Noem) claim he did not clearly identify himself as a United States Senator. We continue to get e-mails accusing us of being transphobic because we used Harry Potter character names for the headline theme TWO WEEKS AGO.

This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

And then there was the e-mail that really broke the camel's back. Here it is, in its entirety:

You wrote: "The Donald was dismissive of the protests, declaring: "No, no, we're not a king, we're not a king at all." You forgot to add "We are not amused," Mr. President. In any event, the argument might be a bit more persuasive if Donald I didn't refer to himself in the third person."

It is disheartening, to say the least, when a university professor who regularly engages in public speaking and academic writing can not distinguish between basic grammatical standards. The form referred to in this instance is a first person plural nominative used by a singular individual, aka "The Royal We" , a much sounder basis for ridicule in the circumstance.

As a reminder, nominative third person pronouns are such as "he," "she," and "it" in the singular, "we" and "us" in the plural.

We have no doubt that the 25,000 words that this person wrote for THEIR blog this week were immaculate in every way, spelling- and grammar-wise. Although, given that they made half a dozen grammar errors in 139 words, about 20% of which they did not even write, maybe not (for the record: The four double quotes within the large quote should be turned into single quotes, the comma after "The Royal We" should be within the quotations and certainly should not have a space, and "such as" should not appear in the final sentence).

In any event, it is remarkable that with all the unhappy things happening in the world, THIS was the thing worth getting into a tizzy about. And it's even more remarkable, and very depressing, that the correction was clearly meant to be demeaning. And while one might be tempted to dismiss this as trolling, or a joke, or something, we got this correction from maybe a dozen people. And the majority of those were at least somewhat insulting or patronizing (not all of them, and this one was the worst of the lot, but most). We have been doing this blog for a long time, and we still don't understand the people who regard grammar errors as deeply personal insults, along the same lines as insulting one's parentage.

(Oh, and in case anyone is interested, we knew "third person" wasn't correct. Anyone who has done any serious amount of writing knows that when your thoughts are flowing, you need to get them onto the page before they disappear into the ether. Then you fix the problem parts. That was actually a very difficult sentence to get to the point that it read in a clear fashion, because it was necessary to refer to Trump several times in close order, and the second reference couldn't be "Trump" or "him" or "the President." So, we took several minutes to tinker with that part of it, and then forgot to go back and swap in the correct grammar terminology.)

We understand well what the basic dynamic is here. Tensions are high in America, people are on edge, and we are reachable in a way that, say, Donald Trump is not. However, we must once again make clear something that we first wrote a couple of years ago: We are not here to be your punching bag, your outlet, or your emotional wastebasket. If you would not say something to a colleague's face at work, then don't put it in an e-mail to us.

The bottom line is this: At the moment, while there are many people who help make this site viable, there are two people without whom it cannot continue. And one of those two is currently not up to the task. There was a lot of news yesterday—developments in Minnesota, more fighting between Iran and Israel, new Trump grifts, the upcoming elections in Virginia, the New York Times not endorsing in the mayoral election. (Z) was ready to write them up, but then... sat at the computer for an hour, and just could not answer the bell. There has to be some enthusiasm for the work, and this was one of those weekends where there were so many mean-spirited messages, enthusiasm is at zero. Actually, it's more like it's in the negatives. We need to feel like we're doing some good with this site, and with so many nasty e-mails, one starts to think... maybe we're just a part of the problem, and not a part of the solution.

We have a lot of stuff to get to, including the No Kings protest reports, more "Never Forget" remembrances, a piece about constructive vs. non-constructive comments on protests, the Jake Tapper book, etc. But we are not going to get to any of it this week, because we will be taking the rest of the week off. This goes against our general instincts, but on careful reflection, it is the best way—indeed, the only way—for the site to have a chance to survive beyond this week.

Best regards, and see you on the other side (hopefully).

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---The Votemaster and Zenger