10 Mar 09
Originally posted by FMFwhy are your posts, whether I'm abusive or not, pulling your chain, or not, simply a commentary on a personal level?
What a mealy mouthed post. Your personally abusive style obfuscates the points you try to make. Your demeanour in the last few pages of this thread has been nadiresque.
you criticize that I say something, quote something, or the way I say it -- but you do not refute, discuss or debate it on the merits.
c'mon, as a lawyer I know evasion when I encounter it.
why don't you engage in debate on the substance?
do you need some sort of assurance or agreement that I'll stop jerking your chain, that I'll eschew obfuscation by the use of an abusive style?
what will it take beside simply agreeing with you -- inquiring minds want to know
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by ScriabinMore personal abuse. What a surprise.
such a sensitive little boy we have here -- did Momsy fail to love him?
why not take your thumb out of your mouth and address the issues -- and if you can't take the abuse, go somewhere else. No one will miss you.
tell us again why the population of Indonesia has anything to do with the negative perceptions many non-muslims have about muslims.
can baby do even that without curling into the fetal posiiton and whining?
10 Mar 09
1 edit
Originally posted by FMFI made no such admission.
Scriabin admits that when I raise a topic he himself is not interested in, becoming personally abusive is "the only option" he feels he has. So the 'problem', whatever it may be, is clearly at his end and not mine.
Scriabin: you skew the debate towards a discussion of Indonesia -- and refuse to engage on anything, relentlessly, until you make merely toying with you the only option.
The question I addressed was "why does everyone hate Muslims so much" and FMF hijacked the thread into yet another "let us glorify and adore Indonesia" thread.
Great, Indonesia is just ..... great.
Now, can we pls get back to the thing about Muslims, as such?
FMF accuses me of using an obfuscatory style of abuse -- I offer the rejoinder that FMF obfuscates by changing the subject, then uses his own form of abuse, however polite, as a way to cover up the hijacking.
May it please the court, I move to exclude testimony on anything other than the captioned question on the grounds that it is irrelevant and immaterial.
10 Mar 09
1 edit
Originally posted by ScriabinI could ask you the same thing.
why are your posts, whether I'm abusive or not, pulling your chain, or not, simply a commentary on a personal level?
"My posts" are nothing of the sort.
Most of my posts on Islam are about Indonesia because, although it is the 4th biggest country in the world, and although what is going on here is entirely relevant to the discussion and to the debunking of the ignorance and forms of racism that underpin the vicious hatred so prevalent on RHP, I am simply the only one who does. There would be almost no perspectives whatsoever on what living in a moderate Muslim country is actually like (only horror stories cherry picked by RHP's Islamophobes) if it were not my occasional input.
This is all I am interested in doing, really, and what I choose to do, when faced with the question 'Why does everyone hate Muslims so much?'
Most of my other posts are about music, items in the news, social sciencey type stuff rather than business or finance, whimsical things, harmless baiting etc.
As for your posts directed at me, they are almost all simply personal abuse of a tedious, worthless kind. I've heard you say why you do it. But I don't truly understand. You think you're funny, I realise that. But all I can say is I have met funnier and cleverer people than you. There are plenty of them here at RHP.
10 Mar 09
1 edit
Originally posted by ScriabinWhy are you pretending not to understand? People's negative perceptions (er... to put it mildly - staggering hatred might be more apt) towards Muslims, here at RHP, are almost entirely based on what is going on in Iran and Saudi Arabia. These stories and perceptions have caused people to make sweeping and often hateful generalizations and assertions about what 'all Islam' is like. I frequently read these claims and think, well, this simply isn't the case here - and 'here' happens to be the largest Muslim country in the world. So what happens here is perhaps more relevant than, say, what is going on in Comoros or Mauritania. Maybe if the haters here were able to evaluate what is going on in a big Muslim country that just so happens to not be Iran, then perhaps their hatred could be tempered somewhat. Actually I do not really care if a I do not succeed. This place is crawling with the likes of you, dystoniac and rajik999, so I do not dwell too much on how well I fare, believe me.
tell us again why the population of Indonesia has anything to do with the negative perceptions many non-muslims have about muslims.
10 Mar 09
2 edits
Originally posted by ScriabinIf this is what you really think, then you are mistaken. Some people here at RHP say 'I hate Muslims because of X, Y and Z'. I chip in from time to time and say 'X, Y, Z isn't happening in the Muslim country where I live'... the implication being that maybe they wouldn't hate Muslims quite so much if they happened to live in the largest Muslim country in the world - while not discounting the fact that there are grotesque and backard things going on elsewhere (and, to a degree, here too of course).
The question I addressed was "why does everyone hate Muslims so much" and FMF hijacked the thread into yet another "let us glorify and adore Indonesia" thread.
This is the contribution I choose to make, Scriabin. You cannot force me to make some other contribution that's to your liking - or into believing exactly what you believe, or subscribe to your trademark jaded snide generalizations - through incessant personal abuse.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by FMFThe last one was not abusive at all. Is FMF going to answer the question?
As for your posts directed at me, they are almost all simply personal abuse of a tedious, worthless kind. I've heard you say why you do it. But I don't truly understand. You think you're funny, I realise that. But all I can say is I have met funnier and cleverer people than you.
I'm sure FMF does not understand why I do enjoy jerking his chain. I am sure he has met people much funnier and more clever than I. I am not bothered by that -- this town, heck, my street, is chock full of them. One does the best one can, and it is wiser, I think, to simply avoid feeling all insecure about not being the very top of the heap. The view is really not bad from where I'm sitting.
But, good for FMF. Glad he has some funny and clever people to spend time with instead of appearing here at simply all hours of the day and night. Not that I don't do exactly the same thing. Stuff is going on and one needs an outlet and the people one associates with would not be pleased to hear about it.
Here it is in simpler terms: it amuses me to be abusive toward FMF. I enjoy his outrage, his stuffy attempt at a stiff upper lip, his primness, in short, his style is very funny to me. I amuse myself with FMF and I cannot say it feels wrong that I do so. Maybe that is what has happened to me over so many years as an attorney. I've become quite desensitized in many ways. And that's just the way it is. I don't care if anyone approves or not. I only care if I succeed on my own terms.
But I've offered to refrain, on conditions FMF won't meet -- and I consider him insincere and intellectually dishonest therefore. So I feel ok with going on amusing myself with FMF.
In a way, that's what I do for a living. I work for a very small US Federal Agency, at least in relation to the target of my office's enforcement efforts: the US Dept of Defense.
You cannot go up against the Building for 15 or more years and not be changed by it. Sometimes I have felt the only distinction between the Pentagon lawyers with whom I must contend and the New Jersey Mafia is the fact the Pentagon guys wear uniforms and don't shoot you dead at lunch. I don't know any law enforcement folks who are either thin-skinned or who do not enjoy sticking pins in certain kinds of dolls hoping to cause something a lot worse than a toothache in that five-sided looney bin.
And I guess I've built up a lot of anger over the years. I've been angry for far too long -- it comes out. The Bush years and the Clinton years before them were not good years.
I don't get to have the same kind of "fun" with my Pentagon playmates -- we have to maintain our professional demeanor and our manners are nice and we have to be ethical. For example, we cannot lie to the Pentagon lawyers to score points; we cannot lie to our Dept of Justice to win a point. They do lie, to us, to DOJ, to the White House, to the Congress -- almost daily we spend time sweeping up after them.
So I've got some steam to let off and I've chosen FMF as one way to let it out. And he makes it so easy by trying to avoid questions. And I aid and abet this so I can keep amusing myself. Sounds almost sinful when I describe it this way -- too bad I don't have to go to confess to some jacka$$ wearing a dress whose "absolution" isn't even worth the price of a candle.
You want tedious? Try nailing the Army for poisoning and killing chlidren with their filth and their chemicals and their carelessness.
Now I have met smarter and better debaters than FMF, but I have met few relatively intelligent educated people easier to provoke -- and that's a technique I've learned to help stop my opponents from getting what they want. Push the right buttons and you can get even a Goliath like DoD to trip over its own big feet and fall on its face. In fact, we can't really win any other way against them.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by ScriabinNo outrage here, Scriabin. No tears. You've got it all wrong. I find your self-amusement worthless and boring. If it still gives you amusement to unleash post after post of personal abuse when it is not having the 'emotional' impact at this end that you assume it is having, then I suppose all I can say is you are who you are and you will do what you do.
I'm sure FMF does not understand why I do enjoy jerking his chain. [...] Here it is in simpler terms: it amuses me to be abusive toward FMF. I enjoy his outrage, his stuffy attempt at a stiff upper lip, his primness, in short, his style is very funny to me. I amuse myself with FMF and I cannot say it feels wrong that I do so.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by Scriabin
I'm sure FMF does not understand why I do enjoy jerking his chain. […] it amuses me to be abusive toward FMF […] I amuse myself with FMF and I cannot say it feels wrong that I do so. […] I don't care if anyone approves or not. I only care if I succeed on my own terms […] I feel ok with going on amusing myself with FMF. […] I guess I've built up a lot of anger over the years. I've been angry for far too long -- it comes out. The Bush years and the Clinton years before them were not good years. […] I don't get to have the same kind of "fun" with my Pentagon playmates […] So I've got some steam to let off and I've chosen FMF as one way to let it out. […] Sounds almost sinful when I describe it this way […] Now I have met smarter and better debaters than FMF, but I have met few relatively intelligent educated people easier to provoke -- and that's a technique I've learned to help stop my opponents from getting what they want.
Who is this post addressed to?
This has to be one of the strangest posts I have ever seen here at RHP.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by FMFwell I suppose I should feel chastened - and at some level perhaps I do, but my capacity for feelings doesn't run that deep anymore. And I distrust feelings entirely.
Why are you pretending not to understand? People's negative perceptions (er... to put it mildly - staggering hatred might be more apt) towards Muslims, here at RHP, are almost entirely based on what is going on in Iran and Saudi Arabia. These stories and perceptions have caused people to make sweeping and often hateful generalizations and assertions about what ' ...[text shortened]... of you, dystoniac and rajik999, so I do not dwell too much on how well I fare, believe me.
If I laugh involuntarily, that's about the best emotion I still seem able to experience.
I don't see how presenting a good example turneth away stupid prejudice.
It is as though you assume some reasonableness was there to impress with good facts.
I don't think the hate has anything to do with Indonesia. Americans don't even receive news about that part of the world unless something as large as the tsunami of a few years ago requires more than one news cycle.
But we are bombarded every day with stories about the threats from Iran, the horrors from Arab countries, etc. And it gets generalized into this idiotic prejudice.
I'm facing a week of helping my wife write testimony for the director of the regulator allegedly in charge of thrift institutions, like the two huge ones that failed: Countrywide and Washington Mutual. She has two hearings and two speeches due a week from tonight - and some of it concerns areas quite technical that neither of us know anything about.
And tomorrow she goes in for a blood test, Thursday she is out all day with me while she goes under anesthesia for an intrusive test to see if her cancer has returned or turned up in a new place. So there is enough stress to keep me doing this instead of finishing my taxes.
the key word you said is "perhaps" in regard to whether Indonesia was relevant.
Perhaps cuts both ways. The issue really arises from what most people on this side of the globe hear about Islamist regimes applying sharia law -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
I was once in the Saudi embassy with a group of senior gov't officials. I shall never forget how unutterably creeped out I felt suddenly feeling eyes on the back of my neck in a large chamber just outside the conference room we entered. I turned and saw a vast portrait of Abdullah, then a regent reigning in place of the sick king. His face was more than 8 feet high -- his nose, alone, was really quite the largest such thing with which I'd ever come face to face.
George Orwell came into my dreams that night to remind me why I was so creeped out.
And it sickens me that we suck up to them and have done so all these decades.
I wouldn't really mind some enormous tectonic disaster sinking the entire peninsular under the sea if only to serve as an object lesson -- the Ark thing is just too old now and folks need a new lesson.
Well, and this is why Indonesia is quite beside the point: we have Iran allegedly on the way to a nuke and a missile that can deliver it; we have Pakistan slowly but surely descending into extremist hands -- and they have nukes.
And whether it is India, Israel, the USA or someone else, the whole of south asia and all of Iran's traditional enemies lie under the spector of the threat of thermonuclear destruction.
The toll in deaths, the destruction of our ecosystem, the mass extinctions, are all too centered in that region and the fear of this causes the hatred.
Nothing you can say about the acknowledged moderateness of Indonesia can relieve that fear.
This isn't to excuse the prejudice -- but every act of lunatic violence, every failure of an Arab to sit down and cut a deal rather than spout stupid slogans while cringing in a coffeehouse at the idea of an IDF agent coming for him, just makes it worse.
Maybe the answer is that a lot of people, wrongly, hate Muslims, or think they do, because they fear what they see coming and they do not see Muslim Gandhis out there preaching caution, peace, non-violence, etc.
If we had the image of Muslims as I know them where I live, what would be the fear? Perhaps only that they would know when the specials at the best local Iranian restaurant were and fail to tell me?
My sister in law is Iranian by birth, French by citizenship - and thinks always of the flowers she can no longer see where she grew up. Does she hate Muslims? Not at all. She is afraid of and may even hate the fascists who took over her homeland using Islam as cover.
She and I both know how to define what fascism is and what it is not. The problem isn't even fundamentally about Arabs -- it is a problem about extremists using Islam to cover their miserable hunger for power and their scapegoating all sorts of others, not just Jews.
No good can come of this.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by FMFBut it has noting to do with you, FMF, or whatever your name may be. I do not know you nor you me. These are just words on a screen and we imagine the rest.
No outrage here, Scriabin. No tears. You've got it all wrong. I find your self-amusement worthless and boring. If it still gives you amusement to unleash post after post of personal abuse when it is not having the 'emotional' impact at this end that you assume it is having, then I suppose all I can say is you are who you are and you will do what you do.
So whether you have tears is of no concern or use to me.
It isn't the emotional impact on you that amuses me -- it is your evasiveness, your style of not arguing that seems so odd, so funny to me. I don't assume what I write has any effect on you -- you are, however, very oddly in a rut with your responses, which eggs me on to try almost anything to get a different reaction.
I suppose that will get old and boring and I'll just stop.
10 Mar 09
Originally posted by FMFGlad to be original -- no cut and paste criticism here -- just some free association. Maybe its the meds before bed --
Originally posted by Scriabin
[b]I'm sure FMF does not understand why I do enjoy jerking his chain. […] it amuses me to be abusive toward FMF […] I amuse myself with FMF and I cannot say it feels wrong that I do so. […] I don't care if anyone approves or not. I only care if I succeed on my own terms […] I feel ok with going on amusing myself with FMF ...[text shortened]... ressed to?
This has to be one of the strangest posts I have ever seen here at RHP.
I don't care who or what it is addressed to. I don't care how strange you find it.
I find you pretty strange, too.