To listen to the left side of the blogosphere, it is exclusively conservatives and Republicans that are the carriers of hatred and intolerance. Any and all dissent from the left-leaning consensus is attributed to racism, hatred, and intolerance.

In recent weeks, the cause for outrage on the left has been the alleged wishing on the part of a few Republican leaders that the elderly Democratic Senator Robert Byrd would be medically unable to vote for cloture on health care reform. This, we were told again and again and again, was proof positive of the irredeemable viciousness and evil of Republicans and conservatives. And those (very few) conservatives who did indulge in such hateful wishing deserved the condemnation they got, even if the generalizations made about it were clearly dishonest.

Completely and willfully blind to the hypocrisy of it, however, some of the oh-so-tolerant and superior avatars of political virtue on the left side of the blogosphere have reacted to Rush Limbaugh’s hospitalization by wishing him dead or, in the alternative, wishing him in permanent pain.

I recently read that only about 5% of those admitted to hospitals with chest pains die within a year, so one important and very needed change is probably not going to happen — all the more so since most billionaires can not only afford health insurance but can afford to do without it….

No, I’m not going to descend to his level and wish him an immediate death, in fact I hope he lives long enough to see that not one dire thing he has predicted has materialized and that he’s been pretty much wrong about every thing he’s said — and until that happens, I hope those pains continue to hurt like hell.

So, to summarize, the author wishes Limbaugh dead, but then says he doesn’t really wish him dead exactly, but just in very great pain. Another author from the same site (founded by a consistently over-the-top hater named Michael Stickings who mysteriously is also an editor at “The Moderate Voice” in spite of his literally NEVER moderate viewpoints) hilariously laments the hatred that allegedly controls the right wing while shamelessly displaying his own hatred for Limbaugh in the very same post which he titles as a “death watch”:

Damn it!

Early reports had him actually dead, which means he likely suffered a very serious attack before they were able to clamp him down with bungee cords to use the AED. I wonder what whaling vessel they called in?

But I digress.

Perhaps the time has come to pronounce Limbaugh ” all but dead” and to determine what he will leave in his wake, besides a steaming trail of slug slime?
…
Consider the birther movement. Consider the teabaggers. Consider the hatred spewing from the extreme right wing like an oil gusher that has not yet been capped.

Limbaugh’s crime worthy of such hateful sentiments? Disagreeing with them on politics. Indeed, no greater crime is even conceivable to the hate-mongers that lecture at us from their heights in the political blogosphere.

Happy New Year. They have more of the same on the plate for everyone that disagrees with them in 2010. But all the while, you can count on them to lecture you about their moral superiority and the perpetual evil of Republicans and conservatives. Do try not to laugh milk out of your nose when you see it next time. And do not expect any of the people who lecture Republicans and conservatives about the alleged “hate” in the ranks of the right to lift a single finger to type a single letter of condemnation or even mild criticism towards the likes of “Capt. Fogg” and the other haters on the left. They know better than the apply to their own side anything like the standards they demand from others. It is considered shocking and offensive to even suggest it.

And people wonder why fewer and fewer people even bother to write for the blogosphere any more. What’s the point? It’s all just scripts and sharp-elbowed attacks these days. Relatively few bloggers care about anything but somehow “winning” in their hate-war against those who disagree, and the very few who try to sustain some kind of real discourse get shouted down or, more commonly, just plain shunned by the systematic refusal of links.

At least in the age of newspapers, you could use their work-product as a fire-starter. But all the current crop of ideological extremists produce is apathy — who wants to get involved in a political world controlled by such people as those who would wish death on people who merely disagree with them? And this kind of vileness is unfortunately not rare, it’s pretty much become routine. Brief hopes that a change of partisan power in the White House might diminish the over-the-top hatred from the “Bush Derangement Syndrome” brigades that grew to dominate the blogosphere especially after 2004 were dashed. Not only did the BDS brigades continue apparently oblivious to the change in partisan power, but they quickly expanded to Palin-hatred and other vendettas. And they were matched on the far-right by the “Obama Derangement Syndrome” and “birther” wackos.

Yes, there are a some good blogs out there that try hard to actually be FOR something and to have serious discussions about issues. The Volokh Conspiracy comes to mind, as does Althouse and the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. And there are several authors at the aforementioned “The Moderate Voice” who persist in trying to sow reason and civility even in an environment where their efforts are often disrespected and tarnished by the vicious behavior of some of their own invited co-bloggers, like Michael Stickings and the even more hateful Kathy Kattenburg. But if you look at the blogs that tend to dominate the links on Memeorandum as well as those that tend to get cited as most prominent among “new media” outlets — blogs like FireDogLake (who recently suggested that Joe Lieberman’s wife should be prevented from advocated for breast cancer research as a punishment for his dissent on health care reform), Huffington Post (where a contributor once openly called for a military coup against Pres. George W. Bush), Andrew Sullivan (who’s hatred of Sarah Palin has abandoned all pretense of civility or even sanity), Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein (both of whom discovered that both dissent and the filibuster are intolerable and evil only months after championing both as primary virtues of American politics), it quickly becomes apparent that the dominant technique towards disagreement is not debate, but rather demonization, and that “dissent is patriotic” (or, for that matter, tolerable) only during Republican presidencies. As for any new issue that comes up, be assured, the partisan scripts are already written and no deviations will be allowed.

The hypocrisy and hate is shameful. It also appears to be a permanent feature of the blogosphere. The trolls have taken over, and they run the show now.

What a waste. It coulda been a show. Instead, it’s just a freak show.