Two new rules!

One of my more popular offerings is my "Rules for Right-wingers," a compilation of tricks, deceptions, evasions, and misdirections right-wingers use to avoid honest debates, answering questions, responsibility, and truth.

 

It made its first appearance in June 2009 with 13 rules, since expanded several times with additional rules, reaching a total of 22 rules in February 2024.

 

Well, guess what. It's time for two more.

 

Rule #23: Screw the forest, look at the trees!
Drown the argument in details to distract from the overall point. Gaza again is an example, where disputes were created and questions were raised over just how many Palestinians were starving or had been killed to avoid accepting the fact that Palestinians were starving and had been killed.

Rule #24: Use passive voice as a weapon.
To illustrate, look once more at Gaza. The October 7 attack must always be called “a terrorist attack by the terrorist organization Hamas.” When forced to admit to the destruction in Gaza, refer to it only in terms of “the humanitarian situation” as if it was the result of a hurricane or tidal wave with no human agency involved. The words “Israel,” “Netanyahu,” and “IDF” must never be employed in this context.

Okay, I need help

Or maybe advice is a better word.

Y’see, up until relatively recently I kept up a reasonably steady output of political commentary both through a website (okay, a blog, as old-fashioned as that sounds now) and a web channel which also served as a local-access cable TV show in about five states.

I was never a big dog; my audience was in the hundreds, but dammit I felt useful because I knew that audience consisted mostly of people whose news sources were largely limited to things like the nightly TV news - so I knew that I was giving them information and a perspective they might not see anywhere else.

But here nowadays I feel like I’m surrounded by posters who are heavily into news and politics and related commentary. I’m neither a known quantity nor one with any special expertise or background on any particular topic, with the result that I feel I have nothing to contribute here, nothing that is not being said equally well if not better by louder voices (i.e., bigger audience), nothing that adds to the conversation other than the occasional comment. Put simply, I feel useless.

So I guess I’m asking if anyone has any guidance.

If you want to see what I do/did, you can check out my stuff here or at my Substack (whoviating.substack.com). I haven’t been able to do the videos for the last two years, but the ones before then can be found at YouTube; just search on “whoviating.”

Let me be clear: I am not asking you to subscribe. This is not a pitch. You can subscribe if you want, of course, but the idea here is that if you’re moved to consider offering any ideas/suggestions/hope, you might want a sense of where I have been up to this point.

Thanks for reading.