For anyone with even a passing interest in politics, blogs are now inescapable. More than that, they're becoming the designated place to argue about politics, often belligerently.
 
"It's impossible to look at sites like DailyKos and MyDD and Jack and Jill Politics and conclude anything other than that blogs are a new way to argue about politics," says Baratunde Thurston, a local comedian and author.
 
For an increasing number of young people, becoming politically active involves some level of interaction with a blog. The politically active use blogs to express their political ideas in even-handed treatises and partisan screeds, to read debatably objective news and defiantly subjective opinion, and to organize around a candidate or issue. A quick search of the word "politics" on Technorati reveals 61,512 political blogs. Of those, there are 174 about Boston politics alone.
 
Conversation often quicky becomes argument on such blogs.
 
"Blogs remove the geographic, physical and interpersonal limitations associated with in-person conversation," said local comedian/author Baratunde Thurston. "...when people are truly being themselves -- that is, when they think no one is listening -- they are assholes. Guys will grope chicks if they think no one will notice. Drivers pick their noses when others cannot see. Governments restrict freedom under the cover of "national security." All of this is assholic behavior brought about by a disconnect from the larger society."
 
Rude behavior online has gotten so bad that there is talk of writing a code of conduct for the internet, and at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society David Weinberger hosted a small discussion about cyber-bullying. Thurston doesn't see it.
 
"I'm not very into codifying a code of conduct and applying social pressure for bloggers to use," he said. "If people truly volunteer to do that, it's on them."
 
These kind of problems have a way of working themselves out, Thurston said.  
 
"A few things will change that," he said. "One is time. As the medium matures, more normal behavior will spread. Another is consequences. People will be caught, ridiculed or shamed. It will come out who was really behind that anonymous post, and folks will just look bad. Families will be destroyed. Dogs will leave their owners. It will be a great day."
 
Drinking Liberally is a great example of the pervasiveness of blogs in the current political discourse. The political/social group uses a blog to keep its membership informed of its events, Thurston, one of the hosts, writes a blog, goodCRIMETHINK, and much of the discussion is generated by blogs the participants have read.

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