Trolls and Hugo Chavez

On one of my favorite websites, The Oil Drum, I often see the commentary, "Don't feed the trolls." I had no prior idea what this meant, but learned from context (and Wikipedia) that a troll is a person who goes out seeking unprovoked trouble, in this case inserting unpleasant lines onto a discussion group designed to send blood pressure into the stratosphere.

We have trolls large and small in our midst, and they have one thing in common: a desire to make themselves larger by attacking established beings with huge credibility. One who comes to mind is the Rolling Stone's tiresome Matt Taibbi, whose trolldom against three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman has even earned him a Wikipedia listing. Everyone knows a troll.

But there are also trolls in politics, which is what triggers this post, and a question: Why do ordinarily smart people fritter away their time dissecting and vilifying buffoons with no impact on their lives?

I speak in this case of Roger Cohen at the International Herald Tribune, who has now wasted two consecutive columns trashing Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. In his article today, Cohen leads off by saying, "An oil-rich country bent on humbling the United States is an instructive place from which to view the world, so here are eight rules of modern political life as seen from President Hugo Chávez's Venezuela."

Who cares what Chavez is bent on? Can he do it? No.

We definitely have a world changing because of oil nationalism. But do the other oil nationalists -- Putin and Nazarbayev, for instance -- themselves take Chavez seriously? No sign of it.

When I returned to the U.S. from the Caspian and covered oil for The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, the Chavez phenomenon was one of the first things that struck me, that is: Why were my friends vexed over a fellow in a tiny country whose main crime, as far as I could tell, was running his economy into the ground in the name of patriotism?

Why indeed. The reason is his big mouth. Americans get really irritated by foreigners with that indiscretion, against which we've been known to order assassinations and even go to war.

Why, Chavez may even be as dangerous to the United States as, as ... Fidel Castro!

To which I can only say, Don't feed the trolls.

Photo: snarkhunt
Rights: Creative Commons