I call it the Political Blogging gene. Consider yourself fortunate if you lack the trait.

Political blogs are basically the same online creatures I experienced in the 1980s, back in the cro-magnon days of the Internet.

No, make that the pre-Internet. The ARPAnet.

Back then, it was the USCD Msg (Message) System that propagated endless threads of political tripe. Sure, you could also find bitter, heated, polarizing arguments on the small-time BBS (bulletin board system) networks of the day. But the Msg System was too similar to the blog battles of today.

The Political Blogging gene is long-lived. That makes me wonder how people with the gene sated their wanton anger in the pre-digital days. But I digress.

The silly thing about political blogging is that it never fixes anything. Speaking out at a public meeting for five minutes will do more for your cause than writing a carefully crafted, convincing argument on a blog. That’s because the blogs are populated by trolls and idiots who seek to do nothing better than infuriate you and invalidate your cause.

Face reality: It’s impossible to deal with some anonymous bastard in any reasonable way. Being on the Internet doesn’t make the anonymous bastard any less anonymous or less a bastard.

The best way to avoid the situation is simply to ignore the political blogs, which is positive to anyone’s mental health and possibly good for the country as a whole. That advice doesn’t stop the anonymous bastards, though, and it doesn’t help if you’re a carrier of the Political Blogging gene.

The stupid thing about any Internet debate (and I’m not calling it a “dialog,” because it isn’t), is that people feel like the last person to post is the “winner.” After all, if you totally stomp your opponent and his silly political notions into the digital dirt, he doesn’t reply, right?

Still, the irony in that logic is that by the time you are the last person to post on a blog, no one is reading the thread any more anyway. So that begs the question, what did you win?