Lib's 'Innocent Comments'

The BBQ Pit
1

Rather than interfere with a current GD thread where this popped up, it seemed more appropriate to bring this up in this forum.

Lib, you have a tendency to inject ideological asides into your posts in almost every thread we’ve both been in. They’re not humorous, and they don’t seem intended to be so; they all seem aimed at scoring debating points for your libertarian ideology.

I think you’re an intelligent poster who can defend his beliefs fairly well. But due to this perennial tactic of yours, it surprised the hell out of me when your fiancee mentioned a grandchild; I’d figured you were maybe 24, since most people get over the use of irritating strategies like that by the time they get much older.

I don’t like being put in the position of choosing between letting your ideological dig stand unchallenged, or disrupting a thread that has nothing to do with your remark in order to contest it.

Examples:

  1. Today, on the “J.C.: a Collaborative Biography?” thread:
  1. January 14, on the ‘Up the Butt’ thread:

In the first example, we’d been talking about Jesus beating up on the moneychangers in the Temple, and how that might have been construed as looting. How your remark connected, I have no idea. It’s also wrong: if someone breaks into your home, you’re legally entitled to shoot them if they’re any threat whatsoever.

In the second, the issue was whether a particular rumored episode of the Newlywed Game was real or not. Your aside was connected in a distantly tangential way. It was also wrong, as I incicated on that thread: relaxation of standards of decency, if you will, in broadcasting had everything to do with Reagan’s FCC chairman, and nothing to do with the Congress of the late 1980s/early 1990s.

To the third, I can only put on my Church Lady voice, and say ‘how convenient.’ The bit about libertarianism had nothing to do with the thread, and little to do with the rest of your post. And it sure sounded smug as hell. All I could think of was, “Must be nice when one’s religious beliefs and political beliefs dovetail so nicely,” especially since I personally find it very rare that I can say, “my political belief follows directly from this tenet of Christianity,” despite the fact that I wish it were so.

When I tried to convey my problem with this (on that thread) in a fairly gentle way, your very hostile response pretty much blew me away.

Anyhow, I’m tired of this immature shit. Cut it out, already, and grow up. Even if you are only 24, it isn’t too early.

2

Oh, be nice.

3

Be nice? Dammit, man, this is the Pit! If he was gonna be nice, he wouldn’t have started a thread here!

4

Mmm…I am not overly fond of pit threads, and I do like you, Lib. But RT is right that this is a trait of your that can be intensely irritating. Previously, I have either rolled my eyes or made minor comments when you would pop into an unrelated thread and make some libertarian-ralated comment, but perhaps I am doing you no favor to let it slide. You have a tendency to make casual, off-the-cuff insults about atheists, liberals, etc… It is almost more insulting to be insulted in this manner, for it suggests that the recipient of your insult is not even important enough to warrant a direct insult.

None of us are saints, here, and I am sure I have my annoying habits (I suspect a tendency towards self-righteousness), but I think that this habit of yours tends to actually harm your arguments. I don’t think you mean to be irritating, which is the only reason I bring it up; if I thought you intended that effect I let you be. I would advise you to go ahead and insult away, but when appropriate and not as a casual afterthought, for best effect.

Perhaps I am seeing the mote in your eye and missing the beam in mine; but truthfully, I think your debate skills might benefit from more awareness and concern about how you come across to others.

Oh, and on behalf of all my fellow 24-year-old, RT: :stuck_out_tongue: Ageist.

5

What can I say, Gaudere? I’m just an old curmudgeon. :slight_smile:
When I first used ‘curmudgeon’ in a conversation with my wife, years ago, she didn’t know what it meant. I defined it for her. She said, “Oh. You..”

Really happened. God’s truth.

Lib, OK, I apologize for pulling out the heavy artillery here, but I wasn’t sure how best to handle it. I just knew I had to handle it somehow, and preferably somewhere besides the thread where it came up. My apologies if I was heavy-handed about it. You really are a worthwhile participant in these discussions, and I don’t want to give the impression that I want to chase you off. I just would prefer fewer barbed asides, is all.

6

Erratum: that “Oh. You.” my wife said should have been with a single period, not an ellipsis.

7

Wow, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, here. As I recall, it immediately followed a post in which I questioned Libertarian on some of his posted statements. IIRC (how convenient that we have the thread to refer back to), he never answered those questions.

RTE, maybe we should start a club?

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

8

I think I am getting curmudgeonly before my time, RT. Remember, I actually hunted down the old smilie and put it on my server because I didn’t like the new one. <img src=“http://www.elnet.com/~sburch/sjbgrin.gif” width=15 height=15> Animated smilies, stupid green grinny smilies… These young whippersnappers, never leaving well enough alone. Why, I remember when we didn’t even have smilies! That’s right, just semi-colons and parentheses…you actually had to use your imagination! Now people just want everything handed to them and don’t want to think at all… ::grumble, grumble::

9

Okay, okay, I’m hearing you. I guess I just don’t see it in myself so easily as you do. But that’s to be expected because you can be objective. There’s no point in saying you might be biased because I have my own biases.

And the part about not razzing liberals and atheists a la David B. razzing Christians, okay, that part I can understand, and I can work on that by just trying to keep it in mind.

But the part I don’t understand is why I, and I alone, may not express my views using metaphors derived from the noncoercion principle. Take Firefly’s first listing, for example. Yes, out of context, it might look like I made a flippant political comment, but what you didn’t show is what it was a response to. It was a response to a flippant comment that implied that Jesus trespassed in the temple, which itself seemed to me like a violation of the razzing rule.

Even if you’re asking me to take a razzing but never razz, I can live with that, I guess. It would be worth it to me to refrain altogether from what in any other context might reasonably be interpreted as commaraderie. Some snippy and witty give and take. I can give that up if you think somehow my doing it is a distraction among all the others who are doing it. No problem.

But if my very ethic is derived from the noncoercion principle, then why must never express it except in the context of a thread that is expressly political in nature. Politics is not just government, you know. It means “people” in Latin. I’m probably very unique (as if you didn’t know) in most all my philosophical and metaphysical interpretations. The noncoercion principle for me is not just a political principle, but is also an essential part of Jesus own ethical code, the Be Perfect. God does not coerce, and so noncoercion is an attribute of Godliness.

I don’t hardly know how I could remove that altogether and still have much of anything to say.

If I’ve misinterpreted your complaints, can you help me understand them better?

10

Yeah, Gaudere, I remember those gas-powered computers we used in the old days. Man, I sure hated it when the pilot light went out.

>< DARWIN >
__L___L

11

I think the grumpiness comes not from “razzing” but from what is being perceived as a condescending form of proselytizing.

Seems to me like the following hypothetical might be useful:

Poster 1: “What do you think of the Elian Gonzales case?”

Poster 2: “Well, the whole system of morals in this country has gone to hell since women got the vote. But I think the whole deal stinks of politics.”

Poster 3: “So you think it’s just a political issue between the US and Cuba?”

Poster 2: “Of course. It’s just like the ‘missile crisis,’ which of course was started by JFK’s bleeding-heart agenda.”
I know it’s an exaggeration, no offense meant to you, Lib. I just have a feeling that’s similar to how you come across some times.

-andros-

12

Thanks, andros, I’ll study that. I assume that I am Poster 2 in the example.

13

Jab, you had gas-powered computers? Why, when I was a boy, ours ran on coal!! I tell you, it was a thing to see someone frantically program a couple of lines, run around to the back and shovel in some anthracite, run back to type…

14

You had anthracite??!!?? Lucky dog!!

Why, back in my day . . . .

15

You had days?

Lucky duck!

We had to work in the dark.

16

Why, you softie! You had dark? Back in my day, we had to work in the existential void of nothingness! Uphill! Both ways!

Kids today…

JMCJ

This could be YOUR sig line! For just five cents a post, JMCJ Enterprises will place YOUR sig line at the bottom of each message!

17

Consider this thread hijacked!!! :stuck_out_tongue:

Not that I meant to… :o

>< DARWIN >
__L___L

18

A frickin’ void? I would have killed for a void.

19

I have the envelope here…the winner of the Curmudgeon of the Day Contest is…John Corrado! He wins a replay of this priceless joke:

An engineer, an architect, and a lawyer are in a bar. The engineer says, “you know, engineering was the first profession.”

“How do you get that?” ask the others. “Easy,” says the engineer. “In the beginning, God created the universe from the primordial chaos. That was engineering.”

“Ah, but before God created the universe, He had to design it. That, my friend, is architecture. So my profession is the first.”

Then they look over, and see a big grin on the lawyer’s face. “What?” they demand.

“Where do you think the primordial chaos came from?” said the lawyer.

20

Sorry, Yue Han, but your entry wasn’t received before the deadline. Feel free to join the many contests we will have in the future, such as Rowdiest Spectator at Athena and Byzantine’s Naked Pillow Fight. :stuck_out_tongue: