To Liberal: I'm not pitting you.. I'm just confused

The BBQ Pit
141

If the “some” in “some of them” does not apply to you, then you should take no offense.

I’ve tried to communicate to you repeatedly how I view your role in this, what I think of what you thought, and why I did what I did. It is like trying to talk to a wraith on a foggy night. What I tell you, you simply don’t believe.

For the — what, fourth time? — respect entails understanding. Not necessarily condoning, but certainly understanding. Until you have understood my point of view, even if you completely disagree with it, you have no standing to say that you ever respected me.

If only you could realize how ridiculous it looks from my point of view that you plead with me to explain myself while at the same time orchestrating opposition that includes taunting, laughing, hurling insults, making jokes and rhymes at my expense while I’m being assaulted in a pile on. Is that your idea of dispassionate inquiry? And out of all that cacophony, I alone am the one you have critcized.

You are the only one who knows why this means so much to you. I can understand why you don’t like it, but I cannot understand why you stirred up so much shit over it. If all you wanted to do was express your opinion, you could have done that in one post. If all you wanted to do was understand why I did what I did, you could have asked. But I won’t be dragged from the back of your wagon while you use me as “Exibit A” in your morality parade.

If at any point you wish to calm down and discuss this rationally one on one and by-god-listen, I’ll be happy to accomdate you. By e-mail or whatever you wish. But you cannot simultaneously interrogate me while refusing to beat down the taunters and expect anything like a reasonable exchange.

142

You discuss theology the same way you used to discuss philosophy: You have unsophisticated, flawed ideas that you insist are lofty and complex. Not unlike an 8th grader spouting philosophical after his 3rd toke on the bong. You arrogantly throw concepts down like a gauntlet and encourage criticism. When it is pointed out that you and your ideas really aren’t all that brilliant, you rail, pout, and finally melt down – in that exact order.

And after repeating this process a hundred times, you are still looking outside yourself for an explanation. It’s obsessed critics. It’s off-board politics. No, buddy, it’s you. You are the sum of your own posting history. It’s laughable (and characteristically solipsistic) that you think anyone gives you a moment’s thought beyond reading and responding to the occasional post.

143

Actually, I’ve insisted that they’re simple. Like Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 11:25) But of course, facts don’t matter in these pile-ons. Just sling whatever you grab.

ETA:

Also, thanks for helping make my point to What Exit.

144

olives, quiddity – I have been pitted exactly once in my career here at the Dope – it was by liberal. And it was out of left field, and it was all about him, not me. I just reread the thread for the first time since this happened, and, yeah, I’m reminded why I read every word the man puts out there with a fair amount of skepticism.

I give the link not because it’s particularly important – it obviously isn’t – but because I think it’s a classic example of lib in action.

145

Lib, I feel you are badly mis-characterizing my position and views and I am quite calm about you. We do seem to speak a different language. I will concede that. If you wish to discuss this off line, my Email is been public and I have PM turned on. Yours are not BTW.

I suspect, Email will not clear this up any more than posting here, but at least we will only be able to misunderstand each other.

Jim

146

Can you understand why?

147

Yes and that was really not meant to be snarky. Just that you offered an email solution and I could not Email you. :smiley:

Jim

148

I can assure anyone who cares to listen that Liberal does feel emotional hurt from the vituperation offered to him in these little get togethers. I have advised him that most of the participants feel nothing, and do this for sheer entertainment.

The accusation that he hijacks everyone’s thread, and stirs up trouble is almost humorous. It includes an assumption that every reply that belittles, and accuses him is his responsibility. The hijack happens, but it isn’t him doing it. Yes, he does respond when jabbed with a verbal stick. Does that mean it is intellectually reasonable to continue to jab him with your verbal sticks? Does it make you feel good? Does the fact that he says it makes him feel bad make you feel good?

Am I the only person on the board who has a computer equipped with a key marked “page down”?

Tris

149

Oh get over it Trisk, he is more prone to odd behaviors over the long term than almost any other poster. You do not think he stands out a bit from the average poster? You enabled his latest craziness with a lot of pushing from PRR. You both enabled **Liberal ** if you like psycho-babble. **Polycarp ** was probably a better friend and tried to save him both the new mar on his record and $500.

Please just tell me, do you really think he does nothing to cause the chaos that surrounds him? He is very passionate. That is not a bad thing. He is prone to nasty attacks on posters, quite often appearing out of the blue, still not abnormal. He has been suspended and went on his own hiatus as the board was getting to be too much for him. Again, so have others. He has publicly posted he would stay out of the pit and then wandered back in. I think others have done this. He has paid a poster to go away. No one else has done this that we know of. He has definitely threadshit but so have many others including myself.

Has anyone else combined all these behaviors? Does he at least get some of the blame for people’s reactions to him?

Please let’s be fair and honest about this.

Jim

150

What? Come on, Liberal! You know that you can’t possibly be the final arbiter of what goes on in your own brain! Geeze. Klaatu has decreed that you ‘love’ all this and surely he lives inside your heart and brain and so has a far more realistic idea of what you feel than do you! What temerity, you, you, person, you, to think that you might actually be the person entitled to decide how you feel.

151

With all due respect, twickster, I thought his pitting was hilarious and you will note that others joined in - he wasn’t the only one who thought you were being selfish in that post of yours. Honestly, had I just landed on a post about a person worried about a stupid TV show (The Apprentice of all things) when there’s a friend in trouble, I would’ve reacted the same way as Liberal. What surprises me is that you still don’t get how horrible your original post sounded. And it was another great example to me of how people will cut others slack because they’re ‘nice people’ but not Liberal because they’ve decided he’s demon spawn.

152

No. People are responsible for their own reactions. Nobody ‘makes’ you feel or react any way. It is your choice to react or not, and if you react, how you do it.
I think it’s pitiful that the same people who’ll get all up on their hind legs about ‘personal responsibility’ refuse to take responsibility for their actions and reactions.

Here’s a clue: if someone bugs you, ignore him. Nothing is gained by acting incivilly to people just because you don’t like them. And do NOT bring in some ludicrous example like ‘what about if someone is abusing a child?’. We are talking about a board here. You can add Liberal to your ‘ignore’ list or you can skip over his posts and live your life merrily. Instead, you choose to read his posts and then to respond in an unpleasant manner.

And, frankly, I think you are way, way, way over the top with this whole PRR deal.

153

Can you help me understand when others joining in is evidence of the righeousness of the pitting (as you suggest it was in that case) and when it is actually evidence of the righteousness of the pittee (as you suggest it is in the case of Liberal)?

154

Are you going to hold Lib to the same standard and jump his shit when he does this? Because Lib threadshits like nobody’s business–witness his coming into threads just to jump on ETF because she’s on his shit list.

You are rapidly losing the respect I had for you as a poster.* I enjoy your posts, but feel that you are being a hypocrite in this thread. Jodi was spot on, and your unwillingness to see the mote in your own eye before bitching about the plank in mine** is wearing.

*not that I think you care

**recognize that one, QG? You used it recently.

155

My point was that Liberal gets the blame even though others agreed with him, not that it’s ‘righteous’ due to numbers. Why didn’t the pittee strike out at all the other posters, too?

156

So **liberal ** has no responsibility for the reaction he generates. Following your advise why would anyone interact with anyone they do not like or agree with on this board? Why did **Liberal ** not ignore PRR. Why did he not ignore twickster? What the heck are you talking about anyway?

Why do we need to follow your holier-than-now devise but you and **Liberal ** get a slide on it?

I can be reassured that to some degree, that in my pitting of Lib, while some disagreed with my reason that many also agreed.

BTW: I was really address specifically Trisk, I hope he answers. I am interested in what he has to say on it.

For the record, I ignore no one. Just because I am annoyed by Liberal does not mean I do not want to interact with him and their is still a chance he will post something I can learn from or find interesting. I think ignoring posters is rather silly. It is after all just a message board.

Jim

157

I haven’t witnessed that at all. And I’ve read all the links provided as ‘evidence’.

Oh well. If you’re going to dislike me because I won’t join in what looks to me to be unfair behaviour, then I don’t lack for loss of your respect.

Um. Are we both communicating in English? I’m not ‘bitching about the plank in yours’; I have not named any particular poster, which neither you nor Jodi seem to have realized. So that you feel personally under attack by anything I’ve written can only lead me to believe that the shoe fits, and that it’s squeezing you uncomfortably tightly. If that’s the case, you might wish to examine your own motivations rather than flail at me.

158

Do you always equate ‘interact’ with ‘attack a person viciously’? Because I don’t.

See above.

Do you mean ‘advice’? Do you see me insulting people personally? You’ll see me rip a bad argument to shreds, but not a poster personally. And you never will.

On any day, you’ll find people who will agree that non-whites should be shipped back to their own countries and that homosexuals should die. That people agree with one does not mean one is correct or right or even moral. Millions of people agreed with Bush.

Far preferable, IMHO, to launching vicious attacks on the people. Again, I take no issue with shredding bad logic, but when you get personal, that’s where I think it’s uncalled-for.

159

I think it’s important to recognize that Lib, frustrating as it (not he) can be at times, posts with complete integrity based on his own personal philosophy. And because that philosophy is at odds with the Doper standard in many ways, this can become very confusing.

As an example, he believes (IIRC) that the levying of taxes to help the poor is nothing short of theft – it’s a corporate taking of the property of one individual to give to another, Robin Hood turned into the King’s functionary. That we have an individual moral obligation to help those in need is part and parcel of his Christianity. But in his system of ethics, this does not translate into the forced exaction by law to accomplish that end.

The state should effectively own nothing: not roads, not water and sewer systems – nothing. Its sole obligation should be to enable the individual to protect himself against force or fraud instituted by a third party. (Again I generalize what doubtless has nuance in his own system.)

Your body, your rights, your privileges, are among your possessions – and government has no right, and should have no power, to invade and take them.

It’s in that light that one needs to understand his controversial deal with PRR. The right to post on the SDMB is in fact a commodity. Setting to one side the month’s free trial available to guests, the Chicago Reader, Inc., has discovered that enough people are willing to pay $14.95 a year (discount for charter members) to participate in this message board. That puts a price on the right to post. Granted that in practice there are rules by which one must abide as well, at rock bottom the right/privilege to post is a commodity with a market value: $14.95. Well, that being the case, may not one individual purchase from another his right/privilege to post, offering to pay a sum to him to cease posting, if mutually acceptable terms can be arranged? Apparently so. For reasons I choose not to speculate on, Lib determined that it would be worth $500 to him to have PRR stop posting. And after a bunch of mutual recriminations, PRR chose to agree with this offer, and accepted the deal. Lib is now the owner of PRR’s right to post here, with Triskadecamus as an unbiased third party ensuring that the deal is in fact abided by by both parties. Not that Lib has the privilege of using PRR’s account; he’s bought the right to assure PRR does not post. It’s a commodity, valued by the two of them at a mutually acceptable price, that sum now held by Tris in trust for them.

This goes right along with Lib’s proposition that our “rights” are our possessions, with such value as we individually place on them. For Luke the Lurker, $14.95 is too high a price to pay for the right to place his pearls of wisdom before us. For Pete the Poster, it is not. And, I think, this ties right into what’s been going on in Washington and Gitmo – what value do each of us put on the freedoms we have taken for granted which are being slowly eroded by Big Government?

Remember too that Lib is, in his own definition, a libertarian Objectivist Christian. And that his Cherokee ancestry is an important part of what makes up his worldview. In a deeply ironic but very true sense, he owes much of his personal philosophy to those honored in the infamous apocryphal book dedication: “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” :wink: [And yes, the joke is in the ambiguity produced by omitting the serial comma, but read as three objects of a preposition without the joke ambiguity, I believe it speaks volumes about his worldview.]

I personally owe a great deal to the friendship of Liberal and Edlyn. I do not always agree with what he has to say, but I have deep respect for the integrity with which he speaks his mind, founded in his own principles, which he lives out in his own life.

160

Thanks much, Polycarp. I can see where some people might not love a libertarian philosophy; I don’t think much of Ayn Rand myself.

I could almost see that argument, were it based on the idea that anything but a person’s willingness to help expressed by that person’s own actions might be deemed inauthentic. However, as life insists on teaching me lessons, what it seems to be intent on teaching me is that there are not as many kind and unselfish people on the planet as I would hope there would be. And that leads me to believe that, in the absence of any external force to create the mechanism for change, more poor people would be harmed by neglect than already are and that they do not deserve to suffer because I or someone else might wish to pursue some sort of moral standpoint about integrity.

There will always be disagreement between the ‘end is more important’ people and the ‘means is more important’ people. In a strictly logical and intellectual sense, I’d prefer it if people didn’t need Robin Hood to save them. But I won’t watch more people die because somebody thinks there ought not be a Robin Hood because, to me, that makes me personally responsible. If it takes Robin to feed a hungry child, I’m all for a million Robins.

I am friends with people who insist on certain logical consistencies above all other things because they sincerely believe that integrity is founded on this, and I sort of get where they’re coming from. I’m just glad none of them are running the show :wink: