December banning

The BBQ Pit
261

Yea, mainly because certain people seem to post only to attack december. I’ll use the Bali thread, and it’ll easily show exactly what I am talking about. Look at the OP of that thread:

"Protestors claim that they’re against war, but they’re also against terrorism. Too bad the terrorists don’t understand the subtlety of their position.

The terrorist who helped mix the deadly one-tonne Bali nightclub bomb that killed 202 people, Sawad, alias Sardjiyo, said

quote:

I want to thank the Australian people who supported our cause when they demonstrated against the policies of George Bush. Say thank you to all of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------"

So, we have a direct quote from a terrorist that he was encouraged by anti war protestors. December also brings up, and concedes, the point that most anti-war protestors are against terrorism, but that it is easy to overlook this subtlety in the over all scheme of things:

“So, anti-war protestors encouraged this carnage. I’m sure they had no such intention, but good intentions won’t bring the 202 victims back to life.”

To wit, while the protestors were protesting the response to terrorist attacks ( The War on terror, the war in Iraq, etc… ), it’s easy for a terrorist to construe that as support for his terrorism. All in all, an emminently reasonable OP. Now, lets look at the responses:

1st response: Neutral
2nd response: December with a link to the article he’s quoting from a mainstream news website.
Next 7 responses: Sarcasm and personal insults directed ar december.

A post by Ulterior actually responding to the OP, but again, mostly a neutral observation:

2 more insult posts

December’s first response, wher he answers Ulterior, saying he dosen’t know, but the questions are good ones, plus protesting wring saying that december said things which in fact he did not. ( hmm. Misatributing quotes that someone did not say. Talk about bannable offenses…)

6 more posts insulting december, with a few remarks defending people’s right to protest ( which december never questioned or suggested be curtailed at all)

John Mace talking about Collunsbury

6-7 more posts insulting december and railing against december saying that anti war protests should not be allowed * a claim december makes nowhere*.

And so on. That’s about the first 30 replies and nobody has really adressed what december said, instead they have insulted him and heaped all kinds of vitorol upon him for something he never said.
It’s not until Brutus posts that the thread starts to swing back on topic, although there are almost as many “december you’re a sack of shit” posts as there are posts talking about the topic of the OP. Finally, the december bashers sieze on one minor piece of information to “prove” that december was lying and trolling: There were no protests in Australia before the Bali bombing ( or were there? There might have been one or two small ones, nobody is really sure, and we have an expartete Aussie admitting that he can’t remember all of the specific dates surounding the bombing ). Since there is some confusion in the timeline, december is automatically lying. No chance that the terrorist quoted was juxtaposing events in his mind, hell, nobody even considered the posibility that the protests cheered him up in prison, or that perhaps he knew from association with others of his ilk that demonstrations were something they were hoping for. Nope, december’s lying, end of story. Frankly, it’s behavior that would be right at home in Salem, Mass. during the witch trials: Forget the facts, I don’t like her, burn her at the stake!

262

Frankly, Sam, I think it would be awfully scary if a single individual contributed as much to a single message board as you seem to think december has.

I mean, sure, I may not be jumping for joy that he’s gone, but I don’t think he leaves behind any great void either, or even “another step” towards this dystopia you describe.

After all, what’re you, chopped liver?

Seriously, though, while december may have made people think, and he may even have been a worthwhile poster, I’m really not sure how much he really contributed of worth towards the SDMB that is significantly more than the contribution of any one of many, many well-established, thoughtful, and “respected” posters here. A lot of the good he did was balanced out by bad that was, IMHO, almost entirely his own fault.

To sum: sure, it might be a shame, but I don’t think it’s THAT much of a shame.

YMMV, of course.

263

One point towards this semi-hijack…

I’ve tried to parse that quote of december’s (in the - duh - quotation marks) several times, and I can’t see how you’re construing that to NOT be a rather direct accusation that the anti-war protestors were a direct cause of the Bali bombing.

Maybe I’m not reading right, or squinting my eyes in the right fashion, but every time I read it, that’s exactly what it says to me.

264

Must be your liberal bias, Leaper. Clear-eyed moderates like Weirddave know better.

265

DANIELWITHROW –

Either way, I think you take my point, and either way, you’re aces with me. I hope you and BURUNDI enjoyed the ice cream. :slight_smile:

WEIRDDAVE –

DAVE, I say this with all the respect I have for you – don’t go off the deep end on us, now. In light of DEX’s explanation, why on earth would you post some paranoiac hysteria like the above? Leave DECEMBER out of it for a minute and think about what you’ve said: Do you have some reason to totally reject DEX’s explanation so entirely that you’re basically calling him a liar?

I agree with the decision, as I’ve said. DECEMBER’s posts were intentionally inflammatory and often intellectually dishonest, and he’d been warned about them in the past. I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I do expect you to do me the courtesy of understanding that my opinion is legitimately held, and respecting my right to hold it. Or that’s what I expect from the non-paranoid DAVE. Of this DAVE I can only ask: Where are you going to put me, and others who legitimately, honestly, and honorably hold the same opinion – with the cabal of idiots, or with the liars like DEX?

266

DANIELWITHROW –

Either way, I think you take my point, and either way, you’re aces with me. I hope you and BURUNDI enjoyed the ice cream. :slight_smile:

WEIRDDAVE –

DAVE, I say this with all the respect I have for you – don’t go off the deep end on us, now. In light of DEX’s explanation, why on earth would you post some paranoiac hysteria like the above? Leave DECEMBER out of it for a minute and think about what you’ve said: Do you have some reason to totally reject DEX’s explanation so entirely that you’re basically calling him a liar?

I agree with the decision, as I’ve said. DECEMBER’s posts were intentionally inflammatory and often intellectually dishonest, and he’d been warned about them in the past. I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I do expect you to do me the courtesy of understanding that my opinion is legitimately held, and respecting my right to hold it. Or that’s what I expect from the non-paranoid DAVE. Of this DAVE I can only ask: Where are you going to put me, and others who legitimately, honestly, and honorably hold the same opinion – with the cabal of idiots, or with the liars like DEX?

267

If december could have provided reliable sources and cites or double-checked his facts or shown some possibility of an open mind, I don’t think he would have gotten into hot water.

It probably never entered his mind that the WTC is a non-partisan catastrophe or that family members of many of the victims were among the protestors. If he were a chess player, his strategy would not involve planning beyond the move at hand.

But I did find his OP questions stimulating – even if sometimes it was because his position was short-sighted.

With all due respect to the mods, I especially hate to see december banned on a post about freedom of speech.

268

Your favorite examples, please?

After being debunked, every blessed time - unless you can point to a good example otherwise. If the POV he parroted is indeed “popular in the right-wing press”, that says more about the right-wing press than about this board, doesn’t it?

An argument stands or falls on its own, regardless of the source. Referrals to authority don’t work here.

Then perhaps you should reread CKDH’s patient explanations. Here, for instance:

[/quote]
So, it would seem that he got more slack here for his views, not less.

Your favorite examples?

Bullshit is bullshit. The joy of GD is seeing it exposed, from whatever source.

No, it isn’t - but it isn’t descriptive of GD or its function, either.

If you see bullshit, you have an obligation to call it. If your call is shown to be itself bullshit, you have to accept it and learn from it. Try it sometime.
There was some discussion on the previous page about conservatives’ defending december’s dishonesty. I suggest that the request for an example has been filled.

269

Leaper said:

So the standard is that he doesn’t contribute as much as ‘the most respected posters’?

See, the thing that bugs me is that I can name half a dozen other posters, long term, ‘respected’ posters that contribute jack-shit to Great Debates. They rarely start threads, they don’t post arguments. All they do is wander the threads and take shots at people they don’t like, or join in on pile-ons. I’m not going to name them, because you probably wouldn’t agree with me anyway. That’s the nature of bias.

But those people fly under the radar because they say the things the majority here agree with. December was always tilting at windmills, so he became a target.

But for all December’s faults, he tried. He backed up his posts with cites - cites not everyone agreed with, but hey that’s what debate is for. Don’t like the cite? Refute it. Don’t attack December.

I emphatically disagree that he was a troll. He stayed in every thread he started and debated it. He posted not to get a rise out of people, but because he believed what he posted. YOU may have thought it was nutty, but that’s the whole purpose of a board like this - to let people of all extremes come together and debate, and let the truth come out. God knows, there are enough extreme nuts on the left around here that do all the things December is accused of, and they go unscathed. I’ll give you one example from current debates: 2thick. He’s far worse than December ever was for slanting his cites, refusing requests for cites, selecting quoting, and all the rest. I don’t see a lot of pile-ons over his posts.

I don’t think the mods are biased. I think Great Debates tilts heavily to the left, and the left viewpoint is top-heavy with a lot of hotheads who made a lot of noise whenever December posted anything. This probably gave the mods a distorted view of his behaviour compared to others.

270

No, I was saying that even if december contributed positively to the SDMB (a question that is obviously up for debate, considering this thread), that doesn’t mean he was the only thing standing between this board and its complete slide into a liberal morass from which there is no escape, which you seemed to imply you thought. He may or may not have been important, but if he was, I don’t think he was any more important than any other regular. S’all.

As for him “staying in the thread and debating,” I thought one of the common complaints about him was his tendency to stay silent on salient points and questions that he apparently couldn’t refute?

271

Frankly! I leave to go to work and come back and look what happens!

I agree with the management, posting misleading info to make OP’s was decembers’s downfall. I did, just like mhendo and others, get annoyed by the complete lack of supporting evidence behind the quotes, opinion pieces etc, that he put forward.

Many who came forward to defend him just conveniently forget that so many times his sources have been shot down that there was little fear in berating him before the predictable debunker came trough; incidentally, in one occasion I did a combo on him: I did heckle him, but my post had a BIG clue pointing to the silliness to his effort, he and the december alchemists still proceeded to attempt to convert his piece of crap into a diamond, in the end we got several pages of attempted transmutation until he himself proposed two points that backed his position, we then showed what an jerk and cite molester he was. Think about this: sometimes the heckling was paradoxically a polite way to not show in the open how deluded he was. Consider the heckling the “paper notes” we were passing to him saying, “your fly is open”.

To quote Butt Head, "You can’t polish a turd, Beavis”

Still, I do remember back in the day he apologized once to me! Sadly, that december left and was replaced by the one many are glad to see gone now. I do however hope that that former december could come back.

Sam, remember Don Quijote was wrong about the windmills.

272

Once more, for folks that haven’t scrolled, I was not in favor of banning whathisface.

But Sam he contributed next to nothing. Next. To. Fucking. Nothing. Not even a hair as much as you do and you know I disagree with you all the time. And he didn’t deserve 90% of stuff he got. He deserved 80%. I think you and Weirddave have grain of truth to your arguments, but not much more than that. Maybe not even a nugget. And if you held a gun to my head and threatened to murder every pet I’ve ever had that you’ve resurrected for the purpose, I would still unequivocally insist that whosis did indeed troll. Every time? No. Most of the time? Maybe not. Some of the time? Yep. Once in a great while? No, more frequently than that.

There, I HAVE SPOKEN. All bend before my will and cease this inane prattle.

  • Tamerlane
273

Beautifully said. And I had the same qeustions in my mind. I was at first amazed to find out he was in his fifties, because I first thought he was some young, ignorant kid. Basically I think he was eaten up by fear, and paranoia, and hatred. I remember so many threads where the people “on his side” distanced themselves from his views.

I think he had too much time on his hands. I think at his age, without a majorly life-changing experience such as being relocated to an Arab country in the Middle East for a good year or so, there is no hope to relieve his fears or open up his mind. He spewed ignorance and misinformation here every day, and he knew he was doing it, because he wasn’t stupid.

He never came to learn, or to ask, or to discover, he came to insinuate.

274

He contributed one very ijmportant thing. On almost every issue, he made everyone around here aware that there were opposing viewpoints. That’s important. It’s the reason I don’t hang around on places like FreeRepublic.com, even though many of my own opinions would get a hearty, “Right on!” if I posted them there. I have no desire to ‘debate’ with people who agree with me. That’s not how you learn.

It’s all about tolerance. If December’s viewpoint had been met with more tolerance and less partisan sniping, perhaps he would have responded with more thoughtful posts. Or, if he had been only attacked for the things that truly deserved criticism rather than being piled on every time he opened his mouth, it might have helped him figure out what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

275

I think you are letting your bias get the better of you then. December himself said:

This is a direct acknowledgement that one can be against the war and against terrorism, but that that position is too subtle for a hate blinded fanatic to make. He backs that up with:

He says “encouraged” not “at fault”. One can do something that is unintentionally encouraging to someone they oppose without realizing it, that’s a long way from saying they were to blame. Read what’s actually written, NOT what you ( general you ) assume to be the point made.

Actually, Jodi, if you read what I’ve posted with a critical eye, you’ll see that I am agreeing with what Dex said and calling it a poor moderating decision. Dex said:

Translation: december didn’t violate a rule so much as continually cause angry feelings among those that oppose him. This is backed up by:

This is a tacid admission that december did** not** violate a specific rule, the staff is just tired of dealing with the reactions of people to december. I stand by what I said earlier: December was banned not for what he said but for how people reacted to him. I am even willing to challenge Dex point blank: If, as you say, december was guilty ( since the Clinton quote thread, for which he was warned )of “misquoting, distorting, etc” then post the quote where he did this. I am willing to retract my statements if you can do this, however I suspect that you won’t, because all december is really guilty of is interpeting things differently than the vocal left wing contingent on these boards. If this is a fair and honest, equitable, based upon nothing but a specific, clearly against the rules post, prove it. Otherwise, admit you’ve allowed bias to overcome fair play, and we can all move on.

Jodi, I simply ask how you are able to get into december’s head and know that he is “intentionally” inflammatory and dishonest. From where I’m sitting he looks like someone who is simply a true believer in right wing politics. “Intentionally inflammatory”? Prove it.

Where you wind up depends on weather you are willing to look at the actual facts of the situation with an eye not biased by december’s idiocy. As I’ve shown, I’m not calling Dex a liar, just a poor administrator. You haven’t joined the cabal of idiots yet, although your responses in the Bali thread were not anywhere close to the level of intelegence I expect from you. ( Honestly, Jodi, you responded to my points by reducing things to absurd extremes. Aparently the only “proof” that you would accept is if I strapped Osama bin-Laden to a chair, showed him film of anti-war protestors, and then watched to see if he got a hard on. Al-quada wants the US out of the Middle East. Saying that it couldn’t be “proven” that them seeing protestors in the US demonstrate in favor of getting the US out of the Middle East as encouraging is on the lines of saying that if I was walking down the street, saw a black man and yelled “nigger”, it couldn’t be “proven” that he would be upset. I can’t “prove” that all of the atoms that make up my chair won’t suddenly jump 3 feet to the left, dumping me on the floor, but there is such a thing as common sense.)

276

All this talk of unwarranted pile-ons and bias is getting really old, especially in light of the fact that even some of the conservatives on this board can plainly see what the rest of us can, that december has become a troll. It’s a shame actually, as I didn’t find this to always be the case. While I’ve rarely, if ever, been on the same side of a debate with him, a few years ago he was much like a large number of the board conservatives, people I disagree with, but who back up what they claim, concede when they are wrong, and attempt to answer any points that are legitimately raised by their opposition.

As for liberals all piling on in lock-step, once the hamsters have gotten a break, I can show you any number of times that hardcore liberals have come to the defense of conservatives on this board when it was warranted. I’ve even come to december’s defense in the past, most notably when he was taken to task for his views on homosexuality.

Can someone cite posts where milum, read_neck, brutus, or milroyj (for example) have come to the defense of a liberal who was being wrongfully attacked by a fellow conservative?

On the other side, when Reeder was in his “posts with no debate” phase, I posted:

Are there similar cites in which the above four came down on a fellow conservative for similar reasons?

The point is there are many differing viewpoints on this board, and many posters on all sides who are willing to actually engage each other in debate, even if it means going against someone with whom they share many ideologies. While it hasn’t always been the case, december was no longer one of the latter in recent times.

tomndebb said it best back when the pre-war posturing was heating up:

For the record, I personally have never e-mailed a mod in reference to something december posted, and also wasn’t wanting him to be banned. Hell, I even tried to talk kputt into sticking around in his flame-out thread. If you wish to paint us liberals in the future, find smaller brushes. Lots of them.

277

Must be a great day for you then: two contradictory goals with one stone. Simulataneously both an embarrasment you are relieved to see go and a martyr whose passing you can bemoan at great length.

The reason Stone’s complaints wring hollow is that, as Dexter pointed out, december made history. He didn’t just pull the same trick once. He pulled it again and again and again, sometimes even at the rate of a few OPs a day at his peak. He did it, he got called on it, and he did it again, exactly the same. He had such a predictable pattern for constructing his OPs that I remember outlining it in one of his threads, element by element, laying out exactly how he had twisted and inflamed some very obvious misquote, and the very very predictable leaps of logic he always took to reach the same inflamatory conclusions. Is it any wonder that people moved from rational refutations to groans and sarcasm? I guess if you’re willing to utterly ignore the past, it is a wonder.

And did some valid points get lost? Definately. There isn’t an excuse for that. But those habits came out of the reputation december built for himself, and he worked long and hard at making that reputation for himself. He started OPs. People didn’t seek him out: he drew them in. Whatever else you want to say, he started those fights. He started them with overly and almost always inaccurately inflamatory titles. That pissed people off, and after long enough, it became a routine.

As I noted before, december was not a conservative in the sense that he spent much time defending conservatism. He was a partisan warrior, plain and simple. He liked to debate whether or not this or that attack on some person was valid. Positions on issues were rarely relevant: only who said what bad thing, or what some act tells us about someone’s character. It was politics without the issues. And that’s pretty much ALL he ever wanted to do.

That said, I do NOT feel that december crossed the line into pure troll, even his history aside. He did do something wrong with his “President” thread, but it was something that was fairly unique: a mistake with no prior warning. He could have simply said “ok, I understand board policy, and I won’t do it again” and I think he should have been fine. Maybe it wasn’t considered good enough, and if so, I don’t think that’s entirely fair. His Bali thread was definately a stupid, stupid move coming right after that episode. But inflamatory as it was, it was characteristically just on the line, not quite over it. I guess the mods decided that too long on the line is no better than being over it.

278

WEIRDDAVE –

I’m not sure what I’m more impressed by – your Magic “Translator” Ring or your selective quoting. What DEX said, and said before the quotes you’ve chosen to excerpt, is this:

There’s no need for me to “translate” this for you: He was banned for being a troll. Not because “the staff was tired of dealing” with him, and not without them concluding he violated a very specific and well known rule: No Trolling. But in the face of this reasoned explanation by DEX, you shoot back:

This TOTALLY rejects or disregards, or both, what DEX clearly said, and is a conclusion you can only reach by “translating” what DEX said into something he didn’t and by reading “tacit admissions” where there aren’t any. And my reaction to that remains “What the hell??”

So again I ask you: DEX was lying then when he said he was banned for trolling. I am challenging you point blank: What basis do you have for rejecting his explanation out of hand? Surely you have more basis than the fact that you just don’t like it. Right? And I say this with all due respect: If you think of the two of you that it is DEX who is currently sounding biased, you are dreaming. Don’t take my word for it; ask around.

He repeatedly posted quotes that were misattributed, taken out of context, or plain old faked. He was warned not to do so and continued to do so. You know, as was explained in DEX’s post – the one you’re ignoring.

Um, no, you haven’t shown that. Sorry. He says “he was banned for being a troll.” You say “He was banned not for what he said but for how people reacted to him.” You say he was banned because of the “screaming” of a “cabal of idiots.” DEX explained this isn’t true, yet you insist it is. Why?

Well, I’ll try to bear up, though if you want to discuss the subject of that thread you’ll have to go post in that thread as I hardly see the point of moving the discussion over here. But if you think I’m edging towards the cabal of idiots, I regretfully advise you that you appear to be not only edging but stampeding towards the wing-nut lunatic fringe for whom everything you disagree with is a product of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. There is such a thing as common sense; it’s the sense that encourages you to take people you respect at their word when they explain the reasons for their actions to you, rather than theorizing some hysterical witch-hunt instead.

279

APOS –

This, I agree with.

280

In the recent “President” thread, december even used the metaphor that he was “fishing.” That’s the actual definition of trolling. Another way of saying it is “to bait someone.”

He is the one who chose the metaphor.

The argument stands or falls on its own – yes. But if you can’t back up factual claims with reliable sources, you will lose ground quickly.

Good post, BTW.