This cartoon resonates.
This is the reason I became a blogger. I spent too much energy on forums and message boards beating my head against brick walls. Physics may one day find a solution for straightening out the fuzzy logic that clouds so many heads, but I had finally proven (to myself at least) that you can't do it on a message board.
I saw this cartoon on Terrierman's Daily Dose today.
One thing I like about blogs is the flow of ideas and the great quantity of topics we're exposed to and can subsequently do research on.
Take Cass Sunstein. His name hadn't registered with me before Terrierman wrote a post about him, and challenged his readers to Google Cass and learn about him on their own.
I did just that.
And I reached some startlingly different conclusions, which I submitted to the comments of that blog.
As punishment, I was called a puppymiller.
Don't ask me why.
The exposure to contrarian ideas (mine) was evidently so devastating that Terrierman devoted a whole blog post to decrying it.
And exposed me to the cartoon that reminded me why I began blogging.
What I want, more than anything else, is for humanity to embrace liberty. I'm not above taking a page from Cass's book and nudging people there, a little bit at a time.
I try to explain liberty while I share important dog-related topics, and if people can ask a few more questions about the traditional dogmas as a result, that will be priceless.
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Not as if I didn't think your posts were awesome before, but now you've reached a whole new level or respect. Terrierman did the same thing with me! Even down to the whole anonymous coward bit, despite the fact that I'm not now, nor have I ever been anonymous.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't see how confronting people is cowardly.
I like his blog because he's confrontational, but it seems he can't really take it in return. He essentially fits his own definition of troll, except he's trolling the nebulous uppity-ups.
This surprised me because he supposedly wants to illuminate the stupidity of the show people. A common cause. But there are flaws and biases, and he does really stupid things like trying to whitewash Rev. Wright. Apparently this man is very smart, smarter than me, in fact, says the Terrierman, despite the fact that Wright doesn't even know that December 7th is the day we mourn those dead at Pearl Harbor. Where we were bombed by the Japanese.
Wright seems to think we're celebrating the Days we dropped the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is either stupidity, or intentionally "volatile, controversial, incendiary, inflammatory, anti-American and radical" to use Wright's own words.
Any man who served in the military and was alive during both of those events should know the difference. And to trump up false indignation over Japanese deaths on the day we recognize their attack on us, drawing us into a World War, is an asshole move.
But such things don't bother Terrierman, because Obama is too precious to criticize and we can't speak against the god king (to borrow your phraseology)! The god king's mentors are off limits, holy!
IMO, the inability to debate and accept criticism is a failing. It shows weakness, cowardice in fact. And it's the same arrogant "this is my soapbox, you can't even criticize" mentality that makes the AKC the monolithic beast that Terrierman rails against.
Liberal and open minded all too often means "listen to me, I'm not going to listen to you." And "respect" means "agree or your wrong" instead of "active debate is a form of respect because I take what you say seriously enough to evaluate it and challenge the parts I disagree with."
The "move along" rhetoric is as dismissive and juvenile as the AKC is and is the adult equivalent of "nah nah nah nah nahhhh nahhh, I can't hear you."
Keep up the good fight. Who cares if the big baby gets his feelings hurt.
"nah nah nah nah nahhhh nahhh, I can't hear you" That's good, I was actually getting a "I know you are but what am I" vibe off of it.
ReplyDeleteIt was all really to bizarre to even get offended at. Even though I know how the liberal mindset is, I still find Terrierman a conundrum. He sees the AKC problem so clearly, but can't see that that attitude also exists independently of the showring.
But to tell your readers to use "the google", then get offended when they do? It just leaves you shaking your head.
Oh well. It is what it is. I make no apologies for being anonymous. We can't all have the luxury of purposely attracting public dissent to our private lives.
I like the internet as a forum for the exchange of ideas, and the precedent for anonymity is as old as our country.
He doesn't see the AKC clearly. He sees it as some Bourgeoisie love fest. He says "working dog" like Karl Marx said Proletariat. While it's true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and, say, a Libertarian can look at both a Communist and a Socialist and a Fascist and say "f-off" .... Burns' passion is in the classism of it all.
ReplyDeleteHe uses plenty of good arguments against the AKC, but he is not so interested in seeing those arguments played out fairly. He's more interested in using them specifically against the AKC. Myopic focus, if you will.
He cares a lot about "inbred thinking" when it applies to show dogs, but he doesn't spend any time on the same thinking that happens in working circles. This is basic hypocrisy and the application of a double standard.
The selective use of arguments and the fear of debate is also very trollish behavior. He trolls the AKC but doesn't like it when people debate him?
The fear of debate is a very evident left liberal trait. One of the funniest (though not intentionally I'm sure) takes on this fear was posted by Christie Keith (another liberal dog breeder, hmmm) here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thebark.com/content/picking-bones-raw-diet-debate?page=2
(first paragraph)
Your Bourgeoisie love fest take is spot on, I think. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but it makes perfect sense. The disgust at AKC is not rooted so much in decline of purebred dogs, but the perception that a wealthy elitist organization has fostered the decline of purebred dogs. Thanks for prodding me to see that.
Speaking of selective arguments, I looked up the posting on Jeremiah Wright. Sometimes I think terrierman must be trying to make a subtle point through his chosen arguments, though I fear he is all to serious. But take this post on David Attenborough, it's an anti-Christian (dogmatic ideology) post stating that "evolution is not a theory, it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066".
Is he for real?