Captain Amazing got most of it. After a certain amount of time, responding to the same errors from the same posters, sometimes in the same threads that they’d first made the same errors, gets frustrating. And it is the same general small group of people who predictably post anti-Israel positions just as I post factual refutations.
Now, as I’ve said many times, if threads didn’t require such ruthless fact-checking, I’d love to talk about Where We Go From Here. But that’s tremendously difficult as well. Getting people to look at this situation on its own merits rather than with facile comparisons like “It’s just like South Africa!” (naturally, not Zimbabwe) are frustrating as well.
You touch on something else without realizing it:
Threads where I try to focus on the facts often end up with people accusing me of traitorous Dual Loyalty, or always supporting everything Israel does ever, or what have you. Why that shit is legal in GD is beyond me, but evidently personal insults are legal in the right circumstances. Nor do I have any desire to empower people who want to hijack a factual discussion and make it all about me. I am not obligated to lay out the whole of my ideas on how to solve the entire situation through initial to Final Status negotiations and lead to an equitable, viable two state solution if the issue is, say, the impact of a housing development in East Jerusalem on the current round of negotiations.
Just like someone who argues that a specific study on global warming is accurate is not obliged to outline a 50 year plan on how all the nations of the world are obligated to deal with global warming depending on per capita energy expenditure and economic indexes or to list all the errors that any scientist has ever conducted, anywhere. That people try to make a thread about a topic about me, as a poster, is something I will not aid.
Now, it’s also true that I very often have little patience for people who can’t be bothered to find out the facts before they post or, once they post, can’t be bothered to retract their errors. But I confine myself to attacking their arguments.
Now if that makes people angry, then so be it.
You’re actually serving as an object lesson right now. Captain Amazing pointed out to you how frustrating it can be to try to argue facts with people who have no concern for accuracy, and you responded with snide snark. Try to look at this from my perspective. The facts matter, context matters, fighting ignorance is not just a slogan. Should I, then, assume that pissing people off by snarking in response to honest complaints is what ‘turns your crank’? Ivan thought it was funny to make a racist joke in the thread, Sevastopol argued for the murder of tens of thousands of men, women and children (without comment or condemnation from the anti-Israel crowd)… and I’m supposed to care that they find the tone of my factual refutations to be grating?
I’ll go one further. I simply do not care if someone is offended by my factual or logical arguments. If they are unable or unwilling to rebut them (and as so many people claim I’m so very wrong, it should be child’s play to do so), then ah well.
