RE: Tolerance for Dissent on Extropians

From: Joe Dees (joedees@addall.com)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2001 - 18:10:58 MDT

('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is) > "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com> <extropians@extropy.org> RE: Tolerance for Dissent on ExtropiansDate: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 15:02:23 -0700
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>
>Joe Dees scorches
>
>> There is, on this list, a roaming pack of socioculturally ludditic
>> conservatives poorly disguised as libertarians, who routinely practice
>> collective rugby scrum pile-on attacks on anyone they suspect might have
>> possibly put forward something possessing the slightest whiff of the items
>> Michael Wiik enumerates. These are the people who tend to impart a rather
>> self-contradictory flavor to what is advertized as a forward-looking list, and
>> are responsible for some progressives feeling that they have to keep their
>> membership and participation here a 'dirty little secret', and for some others
>> not tarrying long. Their jihadically intolerant take-no-prisoners blatantly
>> memebotic scorched-earth warfare pogram has the unfortunate result of skewing
>> the median, or at least the most vociferously and frequently enunciated,
>> opinion of this list to a point somewhere between John Birch and William Pierce.
>
>Oh for heaven's sake, Joe. In most cases that I've seen, those
>pile-on "attacks" have merely been *many* people expressing their
>take.
>
And you don't think these people talk to each other, and each cheer what the others write, and egg each other on? It's like Rush and the Dittoheads here sometimes.
>
>AND TALK ABOUT TAKING NO PRISONERS. Look at what you wrote, Joe.
>Now honestly, do you not perceive that---even in the slightest
>way---your criticism could just as easily be directed at your
>own post? May we not lower the level of denunciation just a
>little *here*---just for a while (I'm not calling for complete
>elimination of denunciation, by any means).
>
Of course the level of denunciation was high; I was giving a doppelganger object lesson in what I have been repeatedly dealt; phrases like 'pinko social collectivist hand-wringing bleeding heart commie LIBERAL".
>
>>>And Joe Dees believes that soon Eric will be accused of being
>>>a troll. This is completely incorrect, if not paranoid. Very
>>>few people are accused of being trolls, and none are who provide
>>>reasoned discourse (such as Eric is doing).
>>>
>> I did not make the statement in question to Eric. However, I have been
>> accused, by those trolling for progressives to slander, of trolling for retros
>> to hand a reaming. Such self-righteous-wing people seem to have a highly
>> developed sense of psychological projection which proves to be rootless with
>> respect to logical coherency or factual reality.
>
>Let's count the emotionally loaded words in this. (First, you *were*
>warning Eric about the libertarians on this list, I was not in error.)
>
Please cite the post in the archives; I honestly don't remember doing so.
>
>Okay. 1 - by those trolling 2 - slander 3 - "self-righteous-wing"
>(I think that Joe means right-wing).
>
I mean self-righteously right-wing - the secular equivalent of the religious right, and just as absolutist, messianic and condemnatory.
>
>And then there is the statement
>about his adversaries being (or projecting) logical incoherence and
>not being rooted in factual reality. Your typos would diminish if
>you became less emotional in all of this; you are among friends, I
>assure you.
>
It was no typo; it is a statement that such psychological projections genuinely do not apply to those for whom they're intended, either in a logicval or factual sense, but are better suited to characterize their authors' dogmatic and hegemonistic tendencies.
>
>(I will omit the part of Joe's post alluding in a sense
>that I did not entirely follow---and didn't attend to
>very much, I confess---to people mailbombing him off
>some list or other.)
>
It was a failed attempt to do so on THIS list; check it out in the archives.
>
>>>And what the devil is this "accuse" you of being a "socialist"?
>>>That's making it sound as though being a socialist or having
>>>some socialist beliefs is a necessarily reprehensible view, or
>>>as though criticisms of those with socialist beliefs were
>>>devoid of real substance (but consisted only name-calling).
>
>> I understand what the person was saying even though I did not type the comment;
>> this particular extremist clique uses words like 'liberal', 'socialist',
>> 'collectivist', etc., or the more vague yet ominous "I know what you are", as
>> if once they invoke these supposed curses, the person to whom they apply or
>> misapply them is magically discovered, discredited and defeated.
>
>Yes! Good, right! I have seen libertarians do exactly what you
>say. They'll effectively dismiss arguments and posters by sentences
>containing such terms *without* supplementing those phrases by
>rational explanation. But then, on the other hand, some people
>write things like "socioculturally ludditic conservatives", etc.
>So, you see, it happens from all quarters.
>
I'd have to drop a Spruce Goose load of such denunciations to go to even begin to tilt the balance towards something remotely resembling parity around here.
>
>>> No one should expect to voice any view that is not subject to
>>> criticism, and to sometimes powerful, convincing, and yes,
>>> embarrassingly accurate criticism. It's the price that should
>>> be gladly paid in the free exchange of ideas.
>>
>> At least I am often granted the amusement of receiving
>> misapplied and ineffectual ad hominem epithets as if they
>> actually said something about me rather than about their posters.
>
>Um, sorry. What is your meaning here? Did you think that that
>statement was directed at you alone? (JUST ASKING! No implication!)
>Or were you referring to the general situation where you are
>amused by the name-calling people do to you?
>
#2.
>
>Thanks,
>Lee

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