Saturday, June 13, 2009

Tribalistic Self-Absorption

Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, posted an entry yesterday entitled "Tribalistic self-absorption". In it he mainly refers to right-wing commentators & bloggers in America, but the first paragraph caught my attention for another reason. Here it is:
The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: "I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X -- my group -- is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly." This claim persists -- indeed, is often intensified -- even when Group X is clearly the strongest, most privileged and most favored group. So intense is their need for self-victimization -- so inebriating is their self-absorption and so lacking are they in any capacity for empathy -- that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments they make virtually always have this tribalistic self-absorption at its core.
Does his description of tribalistic self-absorption remind you of the mentality of any Malaysian commentators or bloggers? I can think of a few who might qualify. If you would like to share why you feel a particular blogger/commentator fits the bill, please feel free to do so in the comments section below.

One proviso though. Let's have rational, evidence based arguments only, no unsupported assertions or dodgy logic please. Happy hunting!

Sincerely,
Malaysian Heart

3 comments:

  1. whoops! can of worms coming up!

    i suggest caution in this as any suggestion of blogs will be taken as an affront to certain parties in the larger context!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Malaysian Heart

    I refrain from naming them - though they are plenty and many - they are just like this buzzing noisy sounds. They make 'noises' yet you don't get what they are trying to say as you feel sorry that they couldn't fathom or grasp these words - conscience and compassion.

    Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Folks,

    We have got our first "nominee" for the tribalistic self-absorption "award". It is none other than...

    Awang Selamat of Utusan Malaysia

    Helen Ang of the Centre for Policy Initiatives makes her case here: More mischief from Utusan's Awang Selamat. Would you agree with Helen? Do pay her a visit to read more!

    ReplyDelete

How to Paste Text into Comment Boxes

Google seems to have disabled pasting text (including ctrl-v) into blogger comments boxes in Firefox. The good news is that:
1. You can still copy paste using Internet Explorer (I successfully tried it with IE7)
2. With Firefox, you can still "Drag and Drop" text into the comment form. I have successfully dragged and dropped text from MS Word, websites (HTML) and from ScribeFire (plain text and HTML). Just do the following:

a) reduce the size of the window you want to take the text from, and place it near the comment box
b) Highlight the required text with cursor
c) Click on the highlighted text and drag it over to the comment box and drop it there.

Happy commenting!