The Flame Warriors website is an awesome tool. It's not just funny and amusing. It's really quite on the spot. Lots of people try to say that we're all different. But are we really? In reality, we all tend to conform to a very finite number of basic personality traits. And to that end, The Flame Warriors page provides a service.

I've been in on-line communities now for 17 years. I was the Sysop (admin) on a whole set of BBSes back when I was a teenager. And from then on up, I've come to realize that the same people keep showing up over and over. The handles change but it's basically the same type of stuff over and over again.

Of course, even I have a stereo-type.  I am the Tireless Rebutter. I'm not so much that here on JoeUser because, well, here I'm all powerful so I take on more of the role of The Admin. But you strip away my petty self-delusions of grandier and more importantly my admin power and I'm just another user who has one main weapon: I type 120 words per minute and so I can crank out the content very very fast.

But here on JoeUser, because it has more political discussions than most of the sites I hang out on...well let me clarify, it has more political discussions from people whose...um... how do you put this nicely, experience in reading up on history, politics, and knowledge acquisition in general is...more...limited...I've run into types I haven't seen as much.

But have no fear, the Flame Warrior author has put together this one: Pinko. And holy cow does it represent quite a few people on JoeUser.  I'll be honest, I don't like most pinkos. I think most of them are ignorant. The reason I conclude that they're ignorant is because their writings almost universally lack any basic level of...well perspective. I'm not thinking of any one person btw. There's a whole range of people that fall into that. 

For instance, anyone that considers actions in World War II as "ancient history" would fall into that. It's like they're throwing up their hands and saying "Hey, I realize you've spent years reading history and I haven't even the foggiest idea what you're talking about so I'm going to try to take historical knowledge on human beings off the table by declaring anything that happened before 2001 as irrelevant."

Pinkos are really just one type of kook. There are right-wing kooks too. They both have the same thing in common in my experience: They are people who..um...who believe that they can read some websites on the net and "Catch up" on 20 years of having not learned about geo-politics, world history, anthropology, etc. 

I usually don't have much patience for those people and my comments tend to be pretty acid-like.  I'm not the sharpest stick in the pile by any means. What I do have going for me is that I've spent the past decade on an almost daily basis reading up on many of the things I discuss here. That puts me at a real disadvantage to someone who's spent many decades doing that kind of thing.  But compared to say the 40 year old man or woman who's just "gotten into" "this stuff" in the past year or so and gets their (ahem) "knowledge" on these things from propaganda websites and email lists, I would say I have a real advantage over them.

But the Internet is the great equalizer. I can walk over to my home library and pick up one of any number of books that go into many of the topics that I write about (hey, I'm just a bloody engineer, writing's just a hobby so I stick to writing about things that interest me after all). Meanwhile, Sally Jane can turn on the computer in her trailer that she's had for about a year, read through the email telling her how the whole attack on Afghanistan was just a ploy to build a big oil pipeline and tear me a new one on my article.  After all, we're equals. That's the nature of the beast.

I could clarify that I don't think all or even most left-wingers fall into the "Pinko" flame warrior. There's so many others to choose from!   

But look for the warning signs. 

Do religious people give you the creeps?

Do you find George W. Bush to be a crazy person yet are unable to come to a rational reason that most people would agree    with as to why?

Do you tend to play equate minor US trespasses as being the moral equivalence of real atrocities? ("Well sure Hitler murdered 12 million people in death camps but look what the US did to the Indians?", "Well sure, they cut his head off and threw his body in a road after putting the video out on TV but some American soldiers may have permanently damaged the self-esteem of dozens of Iraqi prisoners!").

Do you tend to consider your viewpoint more "enlightened" and that the only reason your views aren't carried out is because the average person is a "sheep" being "manipulated"? 

Do you believe that you know the real reason why the US did action X (war on terror, invaded Iraq, hosted the 1994 Olympic games) but those who disagree with you with their stated reasons that don't go with yours do so because they're "gullible".  After all, people like me supported the US invasion of Iraq and it had nothing to do with oil. It can't possibly be that my reasons are valid, it's that I'm just another right wing sheep that's been manipulated. For only you and your friends that know the real reason we went in there -- OIL of course. Your opponents are just too dumb -- which is amazing because these dumb people tend to be a lot more successful financially somehow...

These are, of course, just some of the warning signs. And Right-wingers have to be careful too. There is the Capitalista. Usually the guy who thinks that Europeans are a bunch of pathetic losers and thinks that "market forces" will take care of everything. If only we let the market take care of everything we could live in a perfect world....Yea. Right. A perfect world in which MEGA CORP. owns us as slavelings to work for "credits" to buy food and medicine from the company store so that we can live in company apartments. Well, I admit some people might like working at Microsoft but I'd rather there be other choices too which we wouldn't have if market forces had their way indefinitely.

So which one are you? Look for yourself.