Of Internet Bile and Silly Anonymous Nutcases

[queerbychoice]

So much bile in the world, and anonymous nutcases can't find any better place to dump it than over the issue of my delightful new bumper stickers?

This could be a completely random anonymous nutcase, but the particular nihilistic meaningless of the bile dumped bears many trademarks of a specific nutcase known as my little brother. How sad to think that any relative of mine could truly have nothing better to do with his time than that. I shall invent a religion and pray to Abbie Hoffman that this nutcase is not my relative after all.

Comments

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

Wow. He's crazy.

[elfbabe.livejournal.com]

your -brother-? yeesh.

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

ha! i hadn't thought of that but it DOES sound a little like your brother. i'm sure there are lots of nice things about him, but his writing style tends to masquerade meaninglessness with aphoristic phrasing.

sweet if it's him, actually..... at least he's reading :-)

[booklectica]

Someone's turned up on lizw's journal as well, generally attacking her views in a kind of 'if you don't agree with me you're stupid' way. I think it might be the same person, since s/he also appeared on the post where you quoted her post.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, according to your bumper sticker, you measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

If a dissident raises his/her head here, the dissident is, seemingly, not given very much freedom at all. He/she is labelled a "nutcase", but the argument s/he has made (that the information on the particular bumper sticker to be paraded before all is not in fact worthy of display as it is invalid and incorrect etc) is not given any examination at all. The assimilated conformists gather round and rip the dissident to shreds - not by the use of logic but by the use of condemnation, labelling and ridicule: usual group devices.

The thesis in your bumper sticker seems to be in danger of crumbling. A democracy can be very good even if some dissidents are given very little freedom.

Drive round with what seems to me to be annoying nonsense on the back of your car if you wish, and annoy thousands over the next few years. But you ought to be able to make a better stand to defend the information you are proposing to inflict on others than you have done so far.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't "generally attack her views". I only attacked her on two points, I think:

(1) She portrayed her law firm to the world as being ridiculous because, apparently, some person there put a filter on the word "sex" and she thought she would make a little story out of it (never mind duty of confidentiality or telling the whole story). The owner of this site then chose to use it to show what fools the europeans are, or something like that. On closer cross-examination by me, she admitted the filter had been removed in fact.

(2) She wrote to the UK Home Office complaining that the UK government was apparently intending to imprison people who have not committed criminal offences. The UK Home Office said it was not proposing to do so. I pointed out to her that it is not necessarily incorrect to imprison people who have the propensity for particular conduct whether or not they have actually got to the point of killing people, if that is their nature, in any case. She failed to argue her way out of that, and didn't even try.

I didn't attack her views in a "you don't agree with me you're stupid" way, as you put it. I met them with logic and some of them were found to be, not properly thought out.

[djm4]

Pompous fucker, aren't you?

[(Anonymous)]

"pompous fucker"?

This is more of the "group behaviour" stuff.
Attack the person, not the argument.

[djm4]

Oh, you're no fun at all.

Thhhhpppttt!!!!!

[(Anonymous)]

To throw one's self among the pack animals and see how one gets mauled is no fun?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

My bumper sticker speaks of our responsibility to give FREEDOM to dissidents - not of our responsibility to waste all our time answering all their questions 24 hours a day and pretend they aren't nutcases when they clearly are. The FREEDOM to call you a nutcase is freedom of speech, and I support freedom of speech. For the record, LiveJournal also gives me the FREEDOM to take away your FREEDOM to speak in this particular journal - and since it's my journal, and there's no reason anyone should be given the automatic right to write in other people's journals, I don't think such a course of action would be unjustifiable at all, yet I still haven't done it. I do, in fact, regularly defend the rights of people who disagree with me to speak their disagreements. Only last week I defended Jayelle's right to speak against abortion on my mailing list. I do not agree with this opinion of hers, but I made sure she was free to speak it.

You are free to speak yours as well, but I do not feel there's any point in wasting my time responding to you when you're not making any sense. You keep saying things about how I'll "never have to read the bumper sticker myself," when it's perfectly clear I certainly read it in order to purchase it and quote it here, and every time I go out to my car I'll see it again, far more often than anyone else ever will. I will also see thousands of other people's bumper stickers, many of them conservative Republican and Christian bumper stickers which disgust me, along with numerous billboards, T-shirts with text printed on them, and a million other kinds of words shoved in my face all day long that I frequently disagree with. Not once have any of these offensive pieces of text ever prompted me to ram into someone's car, sneak out in the middle of the night to spray-paint over their bumper sticker, or perpetrate any other insane act of censorship like you yourself have said you'd want to perpetrate against me. That's because I believe in freedom of speech, and I believe in it strongly enough to accept having other people's opinions which I strongly disagree with printed on their bumper stickers in fron of my face all day, in exchange for my right to print my own opinions on my bumper stickers in response.

You, on the other hand, seem to have confused freedom of speech with freedom of silence. How ironic, then, that the only thing even allowing you to post this opinion - in my journal too, a far more intrusive act than my posting my opinions on my own car - is freedom of speech, and specifically my own decision to protect your write to post comments here.

I have no plans to take away your freedom of speech. But I do equally defend my own right to ignore your insane comments and spend my time conversing with the many sane, sensible and likeable people here instead. This is the course of action I am proceeding with.