Michael Voris twirls his pencil at the beginning of each of his vortex videos as a visual aid to his tagline: “where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed.”  One might argue that he should point the pencil downward instead of upward as a visualization of perhaps a more accurate tagline:  “where I stir the pot everyday in the Cathlolic blogosphere.”  But actually, I am okay with the vortex metaphor.  Vortices tend to suck all that surrounds them into themselves and create a great deal of destruction.

We all know that the blogosphere can be a pretty toxic environment.  It is easy to depersonalize others or even to depersonalize oneself in the isolation of the virtual world. Professional communicators as a species are particularly susceptible to the love of hearing their own voices, of being clever and eloquent and of getting one up on an adversary.  I have done it many times.  The internet provides endless opportunities to indulge oneself.

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