Ranndom Ranntings

[aberrantangels]

The BBC would like to apologise for the following announcement.

The real reason no debate ever breaks out in rann's journal: she bans anyone who starts making points. Or just anyone who looks like they might make a point. Or even just anyone who doesn't share her belief that Rush Limbaugh is God's youngest son. Or particularly anyone who tries to get her to consider that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" might be real. Rush Limbaugh said it's a fake, after all, and he couldn't lie even if he wanted to.

Here's what I would have posted in one of the threads I got into on her journal, in response to her saying "It's pretty sad that you think you've got an actual functioning brain, y'know."

Can you prove that I don't? With evidence? Or can you just throw out snarky putdowns as a substitute for debate?

Because you're right about one thing, I'll admit; you've never asked anyone to start a debate, and one never has. You post something that boils down to "Boy, aren't liberals STOOPID?" and somebody says "Yeah, they sure are!" and somebody else says "Gee, Wilgus, they're stoopider than stoopid, actually!" and, every once in a while, an actual liberal says "Why do you think liberals are so stupid? Have you ever actually read anything they write?"

And you, as if this person had asked "Why do you think the sky is blue?", say something that boils down to "Prove to me they aren't stoopid and I might read what they have to say." And when somebody takes you up on that and posts the words of actual liberals, you do what you did to bellatrys in the other post and go

LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I'M GOING TO IGNORE YOU AND PRETEND YOU'RE THE ONE IGNORING REALITY! I WILL NOT BE INFECTED WITH YOUR COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA! I WILL PRESERVE THE PURITY OF ESSENCE OF MY NATURAL BODILY FLUIDS!

or words to the same defect. Lather, rinse, repeat. Anything bad conservatives say about liberals is to be taken as self-evident; anything even remotely non-positive that liberals say about conservatives requires a detailed proof that must be no longer than 19 pages and no shorter than 20 pages.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the next rightwingnut like her I meet who's willing to listen to other points of view will be the first, and the next one I meet who's able to defend eir point of view will be out walking eir pet flying pig. (Note: sticking your fingers in your ears and la-la-la-ing does not constitute defending your views from anything except the risk that your memetic bubble-boy-ism might fail.)

EDIT 3:48p — can somebody please inform restless1, re this comment, that I was attempting to point up cuthulu's immaturity?

Comments

[ezrael.livejournal.com]

Dude, stop reading it. There's no debate, she's got the mentality of a precocious five year old who never grew up and doesn't understand that her cute "I-talk-like-the-big-people" shtick isn't funny now that we expect adult mentality, a desire to grapple with uncomfortable truths on all sides of the spectrum, and an understanding that if you say "It's sad that you think you have an actual functioning brain" that you have just admitted that the person you said it to does.

[aberrantangels]

Dude, stop reading it.

In the immortal words of Jake Stonebender on network TV, "It's like China. If you don't pay any attention to it, it just gets worse."

There's no debate, she's got the mentality of a precocious five year old who never grew up and doesn't understand that her cute "I-talk-like-the-big-people" shtick isn't funny now that we expect adult mentality, a desire to grapple with uncomfortable truths on all sides of the spectrum, and an understanding that if you say "It's sad that you think you have an actual functioning brain" that you have just admitted that the person you said it to does.

Something like that. I think you ought to post that on her blog, but I've no idea if she'd read it, and if she did read it, she probably wouldn't acknowledge its meaning. As bellatrys pointed out, R'Ann is the kind of snarky twat (and I use the term advisedly) who got fandom_wank evicted from LiveJournal. I know a number of people on my flist (just off the top of my head, I can think of 50ftqueenie, shallow15, thessalian and whataradialacks) will know what I mean when I say that R'Ann thinks she's Daria, but she's actually Sandi.

[ezrael.livejournal.com]

You're talking to the wrong guy with Mr. Stonebender's quote (Is Spider still writing those books? Gotta catch up) because I gave up network and cable TV about a year ago and man, I have never looked back.

China we should probably keep paying attention to, however.

I don't see the point in engaging in a debate or dialogue with someone like her, though: she's made it clear that she doesn't give a fuck what anyone but her and her LJ lickspittles think, right or wrong, good or bad. I just had a very similar buttplug drop me from his friend's list and OH MY GOD was it a relief to be able to stop trying to have any kind of discussion with Mr. "Liberal = Terrorist". This is a guy whose best friend came out as gay last year, and he's voting for the dude who wants to put discrimination against gays into the constitution. Fucking A well told I'm glad to stop having that particular discussion. Same with Ms. "Gaah. Liberals suck, doy" and her mook squad.

There are conservatives you can have conversations with, I've met them and had them. But this isn't one of them, and now that you've moved past the period of discovery I think you should save yourself the blood pressure and just laugh and point when you read her drivel.

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

Is Spider still writing those books? Gotta catch up

Yes he is, but your opinion of Spider Robinson will be better if you don't.

[aberrantangels]

Is Spider still writing those books? Gotta catch up

The latest, Callahan's Con, is just lately out in mass market paperback, but I keep getting other things in the bookstore. I've got to correct that soon. (Which was the last one you read?)

now that you've moved past the period of discovery I think you should save yourself the blood pressure and just laugh and point when you read her drivel.

I'd like to, but it's like peering into a parallel universe (probably Earth-3). I mean, how can she look at any of the same evidence I can do and still be able to say things like

Though the logical part of me says that no one person could "destroy the US" in the length of four or even eight years [...], I can't help but feel that Kerry would give it his best shot. His eyes are cold and empty to me, he has NO morals or ethics (hell, it wouldn't be so bad if they were just morals I disagreed with, but he hasn't even settled on what morals they are yet). Before he even gets a chance to go into office, he's been shown to be at LEAST as big a liar a Clinton was. He has no heart, he's hollow, and compared to him, voting for Bush doesn't seem like the lesser of two evils, it seems like voting for a mild skin irritation over leprousy.

As Winston Smith said about Orson Scott Card:

If you forget any of these, it’s easy to recall them. Just think about what is TRUE, and then it’ll be the opposite of that.

I said to bellatrys, and the P@L herself said, that the question is how you get through to people like that. Actually, the question is how you convince yourself that you can't get through to someone who appears to be rational. At least, that's what I'm trying to convince myself of.

But she still seems to believe that Iraq must have had WMDs, or at least that it doesn't matter because Saddam Was A Bad, Bad Man™. She actually said, a while back, that as far as she could tell, the only reason for Iraqis to be rioting was if they objected to the idea of having running water and electricity. When somebody like that calls anyone else insane...it's not even "Pot, meet Kettle." It's more like "Pot, meet Spoon."

In the end, maybe Gabriel Syme, the Man Who Was Thursday, said it best to Lucian Gregory, said what I would say to R'Ann if I thought she would hear, could hear: "Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and death."

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Actually, the line predates Callahan's, having been uttered by a character in a Ross Thomas novel back when the US was still keeping its fingers in its ears and humming loudly so as not to "recognize" the People's Republic of china.

"BOW BEFORE GIIIIBLETS"

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I say that Giblets is the unrepressed, manifest Id of the collective neoconservative consciousness. "You, there!!! You're not bowing - Out of my sight!!!"

They're like the Red Queen. Only worse, because the Red Queen was sort of impervious to criticism, whereas the Fandom Wank Female Winger reacts like a stuck pig when the slightest fraction of what she dishes out comes back to her, or like Giblets beholding a stray bug that his security squad hasn't managed to suppress.

They're terrified by the "disturbing non-Gibletsness" of others...

Re: "BOW BEFORE GIIIIBLETS"

[aberrantangels]

See, this is why I say that Giblets is the unrepressed, manifest Id of the collective neoconservative consciousness. "You, there!!! You're not bowing - Out of my sight!!!"

That's what I was trying to do, in my comments on R'Ann's journal and in this post — to articulate the unspoken thoughts that imprison these people, the way those thoughts look to me. I wasn't consciously thinking of Giblets, but you're right, that is his narrative function.

They're terrified by the "disturbing non-Gibletsness" of others...

R'Ann has already starting ejecting people for expressing the wrong point of view. She should take the logical next step and start requiring people to sign loyalty oaths before they're allowed to post in her journal.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Past a certain point, a political discussion ceases to serve any purpose beyond driving reasonable people into screaming insanity. Sounds like you've reached that point with rann, and I can't say I blame you. Don't follow her journal, but I read a couple of communities she posts to.

Better to just back away and quit stressing yourself out. Some people are immune to any form of logic. :)

[fourel.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm kind of an outsider looking in here, but I'm getting a distinct pot/kettle feeling. I've seen you talk about Rann before, u sually in similar posts to this one.

The way I see it is that the two of you are equally shrill and talking past each other. You're both super-convinced of your inherent Rightness that you have no intention of even entertaining an opposing viewpoint and even less intention of treating the person with that viewpoint with any degree of respect.

"I don't think GWB is too bad, really."
"Shut the hell up you ignorant bastard!"

"John Kerry seems like a cool guy, maybe I'll vote for him."
"You are a HUGE idiot."

You say that she's sticking her fingers in her ears and going la-la-la, but I'm seeing the both of you doing the hear-no-evil thing.

What I especially do not get is why you would seek this kind of thing out. I got exceedingly fed up with shitty fanfiction and did the only sensible thing I could do: I stopped reading it. I dropped it cold turkey.

But... I wonder if you aren't searching for something to rail against. You post the equivalent of "Rann is a big fat idiot" and get a few people going "Yep, she's stupid and you are right." I'm pretty sure that Rann gets those kinds of posts as well. You (and she) are preaching to the choir, as it were.

I mean, honestly, if this were a message board, the two of you would be considered trolls.

And she is right about one thing: It is her journal. If she doesn't want debates there she does not have to have them.

I'm just saying, live and let live, don't go and seek out bullshit.

[restless1.livejournal.com]

Since I never got a response from you on this, I felt I should ask here. Reply from thread cut and brought over in it's entirety:

But cuthulu asserting that George Soros is evil, and acting as if his assertion were all the proof he needed, doesn't identify him as a moron to you? You need to work on your priorities.

Well, after rereading the set of posts in question, cuthulu was quite obviously making a sarcastic dig at belltrys' dropping of six names in short order and acting as if her assertation were all the proof she needed.

You, on the other hand, with a comment on the level of 'neener, neener, neener'.

Now, granted, in later posts, you've proven yourself to have the capacity to communicate in a polite manner, but you get only one chance at a first impression...and let's be honest, with that post, you blew it.

No, I don't agree with you. Yes, I'm willing to discuss it. Rationally. Politely. Patiently (because I can tell that you're far enough to the left of me that I probably seem reactionary to you, and that makes for a lot of back-and-forth on discussions).

Also, in closing, I would be greatly interested in you justify YOUR priorities about getting upset at being banned from a personal journal (however semi-public) after calling the owner a fucking Communist cunt.

Please, I await your explaination, as I'd greatly love to hear it.

[aberrantangels]

As it happens, I had a reply all ready to go to the only thing you said that was, in my opinion, actually worth replying to. I was trying to get it into a form that didn't spew flecks of foam out of your monitor. But lucky you; by your pushing, you convinced me that you deserved to hear it twice, here and on bellatrys' journal.

bellatrys laid out the evidence for her assertions. Or, having denied that you ever saw the evidence, are you now going to deny that you ever referred to it as "pretty string art"?

I don't know what to do — pretend to be insulted that you think I have no memory, or insult you by pretending to think that you have no memory. Given the circumstances outlined in the previous paragraph, however, those are the only two options I have.

So, to sum up what I must (for lack of a better term) call your logic:

bellatrys laying out evidence for the vast right-wing conspiracy, naming names and showing how those names are connected: stupid

cuthulu saying "George Soros", without showing how that name connects to anything other than the voices in his head: pure genius

aberranteyes making fun of the voices in cuthulu's head: stupid

Like black_dub, you are starting to look to me like what I call a "he-said she-said moderate". That is, you believe that the truth lies midway between the two "extremes" because of the media treating moderates on one side and loonies on the other as if they represented the endpoints of debate. This is nothing new — Molly Ivins wrote about it in 1987. (Judging by your performance to date, I expect you to dismiss this the moment you see the name, but I thought I'd make the effort nonetheless.)

The American press has always had a tendency to assume that the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view. Thus, if the press presents the man who says [a certain dictator] is an ogre and the man who says [the same dictator] is a prince, it believes it has done the full measure of its journalistic duty.

(She had already quoted Russell Baker on the false "objectivity" this breeds: "a refugee from [the dictatorship in question] who appears on television saying monstrous things are happening in his homeland must be followed by a [Party] spokesman saying [the dictator] is the greatest boon to humanity since pasteurized milk. Real objectivity would require not only hard work by news people to determine which report was accurate, but also a willingness to put up with the abuse certain to follow publication of an objectively formed judgment." So they escape the hard work and the abuse. "The public may not learn much about these fairly sensitive matters, but neither does it get another excuse to denounce the media for unfairness and lack of objectivity. In brief, society is teeming with people who become furious if told what the score is.")

[fourel.livejournal.com]

Like [info]black_dub, you are starting to look to me like what I call a "he-said she-said moderate". That is, you believe that the truth lies midway between the two "extremes" because of the media treating moderates on one side and loonies on the other as if they represented the endpoints of debate.

Um, no. I'd say that that's a wrong assumption. I made the post I made because you *both* sounded completely fucking bananas and it wasn't the first time I've seen you blow up about Rann. It was a pot and kettle situation and you seemed pretty blind to that fact.

Loomis, I know very little about you. I don't pretend to assume to know what you're thinking and you should give me the same common courtesy.

[aberrantangels]

[continued from part one due to comment length limitations

Back to Ivins (the piece originally ran in the March 1987 issue of The Progressive; it was collected in her 1991 book Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?):

This tendency has been aggravated in recent years by a noticeable trend to substitute people who speak from a right-wing ideological perspective for those who know something about a given subject. Thus we see, night after night, on MacNeil/Lehrer or Nightline, people who don't know jack-shit about Iran or Nicaragua or arms control, but who are ready to tear up the peapatch in the defense of the proposition that Ronald Reagan is a Great Leader beset by comsymps. They have nothing to offer in the way of facts or insight; they are presented as a way of keeping the networks from being charged with bias by people who are themselves replete with bias and resistant to fact. The justification for putting them on the air is that "they represent a point of view."

The odd thing about these television discussions designed to "get all sides of the issue" is that they do not feature a spectrum of people with different views on reality: Rather, they frequently give us a face-off between those who see reality and those who have missed it entirely.

A wise man once told me there's no point in saying less than your predecessors have said. And I certainly don't see how I could say more than she said, given that she said it all.

[restless1.livejournal.com]

Uhm...at no point did I ever deny that I saw bellatrys 'evidence'. I did, however, state that I did not feel it to be good evidence. I was also not the one who referred to it as 'pretty string art'. If you'll go back and look at the post in question, I was quoting a passerby who was in the room when I looked at the page.

There's no need to pretend to be insulted. That comment right there *proved* that you have no memory. Which is pretty silly considering that at any time you could have gone back and read the post in question.

As far as my logic...well, let me go back AGAIN and spell it out for you, since I apparently wasn't explicit enough the last time I did it for you.

bellatrys' first post was the now-infamous bit of 'string art', a jumble of traces that MAY contain the information it's said to...but since there are fifteen contributors, some represented with colors that are not terribly different and each of them seems to have donations indicated between most if not all of the recipients (it's hard to tell) and about half of the recipients are in the middle of the chart (and thus making it nigh-impossible to determine how many donations are allegated to them, much less from whom), it's next to impossible to tell. Thus, the implication in the post that this confusing chart should explain everything all by itself is a rather incomprehensible one.

Her second post was of a rather snide tone (though granted, this was after having been ridiculed publicly for the post referred to above, so her attitude is understandible if not entirely defensible), and the second paragraph was this one:

Do you have a *clue* who Paul Weyrich is, or Bay Buchanan, or Alan Keyes, or Ralph McInerny, or Michael Novak or William F. Buckley? Because if you don't, then you don't even *begin* to have a clue as to breadth of the Conservative movement in the US. I've met one of those people I just mentioned, and the rest I know at one remove - some of whom even worked on their campaigns or in DC for their initiatives.

When someone references six names in ONE SENTENCE, then claims to have met one of said people, that is what is referred to as 'name dropping'.

Now on to cuthulu's post. He used this grammatical tool that anyone who passed the fifth grade will immediately recognize as 'sarcasm'. He was making fun of bellatrys' name dropping (AND EVEN SAID SO). So while his comment may have lacked depth, it was not inherently stupid. Oh, and by the way, while cuthulu's use of the name 'George Soros' indeed did not 'show how that name connects to anything other than the voices in his head', the EXACT SAME can be said about bellatrys' reference of Paul Weyrich,Bay Buchanan, Alan Keyes, Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak and William F. Buckley. She presented exactly ZERO evidence that they connect to anything in that or any other paragraph. Bear in mind that I'm not defending OR damning cuthulu as a user. I'm saying his post was a correct and successful use of the grammatical vehicle of 'sarcasm'.

Which finally leads us to *your* posts.

The first was this:http://www.livejournal.com/users/rann/313497.html?replyto=477081

The second was this:http://www.livejournal.com/users/rann/315802.html?thread=477338#t477338

Let me break it down for you for, let's see...the fifth time. I'll break it out as a list, so maybe you'll understand.

1) You typed in all caps. This is commonly seen as shouting in an all-text forum, and is considered highly rude.

2) You used a font four times the normal size. Once again, this is considered shouting, and is highly rude.

3) You used all bold font, which is often considered shouting and is highly rude. (See a pattern forming?)

4) The 'content' of your message had all the maturity of a four year old shouting nonsense syllables in order to get attention in a resturaunt.

And as I mentioned to bellatrys elsewhere, I am a moderate because sometimes my opinions fall to the right, and sometimes they fall to the left. The media has very little bearing on my decison making process. I prefer to think for myself, thank you very much.

A process that I am increasingly becoming less and less certain that you use.