Corey called me “mean-spirited.” 
I decided that I should be more nice-spirited and so I went back through Corey’s comments to see if I could figure out how. Here are some excerpts:
- “It is more fun for me. . .to find creative ways to return some insults.”
- “That would be appropriate. . .if I had some respect for you…”
- “Now this blog is just annoying.”
- “[F]— off.”
- “I hope to defeat and embarass people like you in the future”
- “Neither of you have ever done or said anything nice to or about me (nor I you.)“
- “Insults are all we have for each other.”
You can see that for someone who is so terribly put-upon1 he is still the paragon of kindness and civility. I hope, one day, to be more like him.
Heh. (Yes, I know I shouldn’t be feeding the troll… but he’s kinda cute when he gets all preachy.)
We can tell because he spends so much of his time whining about how mean everyone is to him.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:37 am
Oh, wow. I rated a whole new thread, for the second time. Are you going to criticize me for not staying off your blog if I post comments to it?
I don’t think I have been whining about people being mean to me… in fact I’ve been very fortunate in law school, and most everyone has been nice. No one is mean to me for longer than I permit them. You didn’t disappoint me because of things you said about me (although I was somewhat suprised at first), but because of your mean treatment of Dizzy, some other people, and the various straw-men you conjure and dismiss on this blog.
And yes, you disappointed me, because we have similar (computer) backgrounds, you are clearly bright, and you will leave law school with considerable power to accomplish your various policy goals. And yet you seem to revel in the occasional character assassination, and often take cynical political positions that I never expect to find endorsed by the young. In fact, that was the most suprising thing about law school for me, young conservatives. But then over last summer I encountered this quote:
“It is generally supposed the Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favor of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.” — Leo Tolstoy, “The Devil”
And then I looked out the window of my 48th floor office down at the homeless lining up in front of the shelters just east of downtown, and I smiled ironically, because many looking only at the surface would think the “way of life” had ensnared me too… So then I was no longer suprised to see young law students adopting law and economics as a guiding principle, despite its obvious inhumanities, or taking government benefits and loans while telling the homeless on Kirkwood to get a job. I suddenly understood your reason, just not your excuse.
How is that… preachy enough to provide fodder for future discussions of how much of an ass I am? I understand that having lowered myself to the level of insults, I have little credibility here and am vulnerable to your insistence that you did not begin the exchange by insulting me months ago (re: comments about drinking that I had made).
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:58 am
Wow. Only ~400 words, but you covered a lot of ground to avoid the original topic. Nice work. (In case I wasn’t clear about what that topic is: It’s your hypocrisy)
A few brief points.
I criticize you for not staying off the blog because you’ve said a number of times that you would. I haven’t banished you. I guess I’m a bit naive and believe that people will live up to their own words.
You will not only be hard-pressed to find a “character assassination” here, but you’ll also find that when I do criticize someone (do we need to discuss the difference between a “character assassination” and a “criticism”?) it is generally provoked. I know, I know… I should abide by your moral compass (even when you don’t) and be nice to everyone — spare me the lecture.
Prejudice is the tool of the lazy of weak-minded. You couldn’t get within 500-feet of an accurate description of my political philosophy because you insist on lumping conservatives together. You pick a neat little label, assign it to someone, and then act as though they are a model of your the stereotypes you’ve conjured up. It’s a quick and easy way for you to judge and criticize someone without having to take the time to actually figure out what they think. Note that when I criticize you, I base it on things you’ve actually said. Not things that I think you would say based on my disagreement with your political leanings (which I can only guess about). But turning everything into politics seems to be a crutch of yours, so I should probably just let you have it.
Don’t worry, I’ve noticed that you couch your criticism of conservatives in terms giving you plausible deniability as to whom, exactly, you are talking about. I’ve seen this little trick enough times to see right through it, though. All it adds, for me, is that it makes you look like a coward.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:56 am
1) People should be nicer to each other.
2) You are often not nice.
If you can’t reconcile those sentiments without calling me a hypocrite, so be it.
It is laughable though to see you complain about getting labeled. I think we both need to admit that we both do that. Your method is pulling a phrase out of context that fits a label you want to assign. I can do that too…
“so I should probably just let you have it.”… well, how charitable, what a nice person you are.
Oh, and you didn’t just call me a coward, you said I “look like a coward.” Little weasel-boy, why don’t you just say it… would you say it to me in person? If politics is my crutch then the bully pulpit is yours. Take all the plausible deniability on your criticisms that you want, they still hurt people’s feelings.
If I’ve got your politics wrong why don’t you tell us what you actually believe. You’ve defended “personal responsibility” as a guiding principle for others’ lives, I guess I also assumed you would believe the things you say.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
And actually Pete, I did address my alleged hypocrisy, at least in its most commonly challenged form. Reread the 400 word comment, especially the part about the 48th floor office.
If I didn’t believe that you were capable of altruism and empathy for others, I wouldn’t want to talk to you at all. Maybe someday when you get all that you hope for, competing for intellectual superiority won’t seem quite so necessary. I predict you will end up preachy too.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 pm
“If you can’t reconcile those sentiments without calling me a hypocrite, so be it.”
I can reconcile the statements just fine. It’s pretty simple, really:
1) Corey thinks that people should be nicer to each other.
2) Corey thinks that I am often not nice.
3) Corey’s opinion of my character and personality means little, if anything.
Of course, calling you a hypocrite is a function of your own words and actions, not my supposed inability to “reconcile” your opinions with my own, which is not necessary.
“I think we both need to admit that we both [label people].”
Well, no, not really. I take your words and evaluate them. It’s deductive. You take a few small grains of opinion and extrapolate to a larger political philosophy. That’s inductive. (What’s the difference?)
“Oh, and you didn’t just call me a coward, you said I ‘look like a coward.’”
I see that reading comprehension thing is really paying off. Nice work! I didn’t call you a coward because I don’t know that you are one. At times you behave like one, but that’s a far cry from it being a part of your character, which (unlike you) I do not pretend to know about. Would I say it to your face? Yes, if the opportunity to arose to do so. Would I seek you out, based on these comments, just to tell you that they are cowardly? No. I don’t see what that would accomplish that cannot be accomplished at least as effectively here.
That said, I’m not some Internet Superhero who gains special powers when masked by the obfuscating power of the web. I’m not aware of anything I’ve written on this blog (or any other) that I would not say in person if the situation was similar. Websites do not embolden me by any appreciable amount, it’s simply an outlet.
“Take all the plausible deniability on your criticisms that you want, they still hurt people’s feelings.”
They probably do, on occasion. Then again, people get their feelings hurt by all manners of things, many of which are utterly silly to be upset by. If you (or anyone else) finds my blog and/or opinions so thoroughly hurtful and objectionable, there is a simple solution. Quit reading.
“If I’ve got your politics wrong why don’t you tell us what you actually believe.”
Because injecting politics into things that have little (if anything at all) to do with politics is not my preferred method of operation. You are more than welcome to enter a discussion on my occasional political post if you’d like to know more about my politics. They’re not at issue here and I won’t allow you to trollishly derail this post into a political debate. That’s not what it’s for.
“I wouldn’t want to talk to you at all.”
You don’t. You post comments on my blog. Let’s not pretend like those are the same thing.
“Maybe someday when you get all that you hope for, competing for intellectual superiority won’t seem quite so necessary.”
Were I competing for intellectual superiority, I wouldn’t have come to law school. Spending every day with hundreds of people who are my intellectual superiors is not exactly a good way of accomplishing that goal.
What I do on this blog is pretty simple. I write my opinions. I react to the world around me. It’s not some big game or competition. If it were that, I would get on a message board, or troll on someone else’s blog (hmm…). I write here because I feel like it. I do it even if I only had a few occasional readers.
When people come and comment here, regardless of their opinion, I call them on hypocrisy. I call them on facts. I call them on errors in reasoning. Not because I’m “smarter” but because we all make mistakes, and the only way to correct them is by realizing that they were made. Not to “bully” them into agreement, but because I debate and discussion is much more effective when it’s not fundamentally flawed. I expect others to do the same for me.
In a perfect world, when someone is called out for some flaw in their argument, they will fix it somehow. That doesn’t always (or even usually) require them to change their stance because it’s quite possible to get to the same result in multiple ways… some of which are valid, some of which are not. Pointing out a flaw in reasoning is not an insinuation that the result is wrong (although that will sometimes accompany it), only that the path doesn’t lead to the result indicated. It’s time to pick a new path or pick a new destination.
It’s like trying to reach San Antonio on I-65… it just won’t work. You either have to decide you want to go to Mobile, or you have to get off of I-65.
Finally, as a matter of personal philosophy, I hope never to have all that I hope for. Life would be awfully boring, although I hope, in the future, to need to hope for more than I hope for now to make that a reality.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
“Websites do not embolden me by any appreciable amount, it’s simply an outlet.”
I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that. Partly because you also go and say about talking and posting: “Let’s not pretend like those are the same thing.”
“3) Corey’s opinion of my character and personality means little, if anything.”
And yet my opinion provokes you. Or perhaps all of this is just an intellectual exercise for you, and I might have been anyone. You are more concerned with exposing my… “flaws in reasoning” in the name of more perfect debate than in rationalizing your own self-image in defense. OK.
Before you decontextualized this discussion, it was running under the title “Politics & Morality.” Now you accuse me of disingenously importing politics. If you can’t keep track of what you are talking about then don’t ask others to.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that.”
You’re welcome to believe anything you’d like. I know that doesn’t jibe with your preconceived notions of who I am (despite having never met me), but it’s the truth. I’ve had conversations like this comment thread, and I call people out the same way I do here. There are differences in processing (I might not catch something that’s said as easily) and I am more quick to give the benefit of the doubt to something that’s said impulsively (there’s no such thing in a blog comment) but over-all, you will not find anything that I’ve said on this blog that I cannot rustle up a half-dozen friends to vouch for the fact that I would (or have), in fact, said exactly that, in person, in a similar situation. You’re welcome to try, although I’m not sure how you’d handle having an objective measure of failure like that.
There are differences between talking to someone and posting a comment on their blog. Just because there are differences, though, does not mean that the words said would necessarily be different. It’s either sloppy or disingenuous to imply otherwise.
“And yet my opinion provokes you.”
It does. In the same way that waving to someone “provokes” them to wave back. In the same way that calling someone “provokes” them to answer the phone. If you mean that it illicits some sort of emotional response, though, you are mistaken. Do I want people to think I’m mean-spirited? No. Do I care if people do think so? Only if I think they have enough experience with me to make that judgment. You do not. That doesn’t make you wrong, you just not a trustworthy source for the information.
“Before you decontextualized this discussion, it was running under the title ‘Politics & Morality.’ Now you accuse me of disingenously importing politics.”
Speaking of “sloppy”…
So, in summary, this post has nothing to do with politics. Nice try.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
“There is a difference between policy and politics.”
Haha, ok, if you say so. I won’t ask what because I can read the dictionary myself.
Why don’t you pull out 7 sentences from the above discussion and start yet another new thread. People not knowing the context in which I made these comments will assist you in recharacterizing them.
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I wanna selectively quote too.
Corey said: “I looked out the window of my 48th floor office down at the homeless lining up in front of the shelters just east of downtown, and I smiled.”
Pete said: “Hope for more than I hope for now.”
DISCUSS.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
If policy and politics were the same, as you insinuate but dare not actually assert, this criticism of the Bush Administration’s handling of the War in Iraq would (literally) not make sense. If policy and politics were the same, it would be impossible for our elected officials to be “too political” because it would be their job.
“Why don’t you pull out 7 sentences from the above discussion”
You were doing so well with that reading thing… and now we’re back to this. Let me pull a select quote from comment #7: “Some of the quotes came from weeks or months ago in other discussions that have nothing to do with politics.”
I’m not sure how, exactly, those quotes are being recharacterized. Except that you just hate to see such plain evidence that you’re not as nice a guy as your advice to others would suggest that you are.
The end result of those quotes, taken in context, is that you enjoy insulting, embarrassing, and defeating people. There are people you continue to interact with that you have never said a single nice thing about (and yet pretend that you know anything about them), and that, when you’ve run out of arguments, you tell people to fuck off. I’d be happy for you to set the record straight. Were those jokes? Did I somehow misinterpret “Fuck off” or “I want to embarrass you”? Or is your definition of “nice” one with which I am not familiar?
Yep. I can see how you are the one we should all look to for advice on how to be nicer.
Maybe we should just call it like it is. We’re both nice to people that we like and respect. We’re both civil to everyone else in most situations. Occasionally we’re not nice to people.
To me, the big difference is that I don’t get all preachy about everyone just being nice to each other and then turn around and tell people to fuck off.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Yes, I did tell you to f— off, and I also told you to be nicer. Of course I know that I have no credibility on the latter if I give in to anger. But then, it felt good to tell you to f— off. Of course you haven’t, so the net effect was rather like exposing one’s neck to a sarcastic bulldog and then kicking it.
Lets imagine that I have built a little utopian community where people actually ARE nice to each other… but then a lawyer comes in and starts telling people about the selfish advantages they can take. What am I to do about him? Here is a relevant quote from W.E.B. Du Bois:
“How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force?”
Its a case of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” vs. “turn the other cheek.” I understand my personal failure to live up to my own code at all times. But that doesn’t excuse your being mean. I forgive you though.