| |
|
I'm not about to say his posting ettiquette is flawless, but contrary to popular opinion he is neither right-wing nor a nutjob. Just rude and occasionally condescending.
And often factually inaccurate or bewildered, TG, which may be more of an issue. His not being able to substantiate his one-line assertions is the main issue with Slim's contribution to the Switchboard - his argumentation is lazy and, for Barbelith's leading expert on terrorism, his knowledge oddly circumscribed.
Smoothly - I'm afraid I don't entirely understand your question. It is a matter of pretty public record that people on Barbelith who self-identify as Christians or members of the "anti-PC movement" or as Republicans may be greeted with greater suspicion or hositility by certain other members of Barbelith because either of received wisdom or previous bad experiencces. Seth and Petey Shaftoe have complained about knee-jerk representations of, or more correctly against, particular forms of charismatic Christianity, because they felt that those criticisms were lazy and/or ill-informed. Conversely, robertosen (when not bonkers), Seth, Petey and Jack Fear, to name but a few, have spoken about the positives of various forms of Christian faith and have done so in a way that has generally added to the discussion at hand and Barbelith in general.
So -- some people on the Internet are going to have less than productive relationships with some other people on the Internet as a result of their beliefs, and those beliefs may or may not be subject to examination. Ender, in amongst a lot of nob jokes, found Barbelith one of the mechanisms which helped him to critique his own beliefs. At the moment in the Head Shop an ongoing dialogue is going on between mental healthcare professional(s) and people in various places wrt gender realignment/reinscription/recontextualisation. Between very adversarial poles, there is a lot of space for exchanges of information and perspective, and Barbelith provides an environment, apart from anything else, where this exchange can take place outside a clinical context.
In all this, I think that boycotting Barbelith because one member is making statements about the US (which I still find incomprehensible) seems to be a bit victimtastic. As said above, if you want to see more posts in support of US policy, it is incumbent upon you to make them. Slim does this, and nobody has kicked him off Barbelith. You may need to keep your game at a highish level, because you may get knee-jerk reactions and may need to have the information and the ability to respond to those reactions, but that applies to any number of potential statements on a variety of political spectra.
So, I think the issue here is whether we need to be enforcing polite dissent on a number of levels. To return to Smoothly's point - yes, there are plenty of places on the Internet where the right and the left can be confident essentially of interacting only with their own chums, and where dissenting voices will be banned. That doesn't happen on Barbelith, so it becomes a question of how dissent is framed. If you say something and somebody responds in the aforementioned rude and hostile fashion, then that rude and hostile response will have its own implications for how people treat the respondent in future. I can think of examples on the left, the right and various points in between where either tone or ability to support tone have led others to form their own conclusions on the validity of the party's position. Right now, the opportunity exists to take Nina to task in a relevant thread on her position on the US demos and its complicity in the actions of its executive.
Speaking of which, I'm sensitive to the fact that the only two examples given of disses delivered to Americans (one to Americans as a whole, the other to those who voted for Bush) are both referencing statements of opinion made by one member of Barbelith. The "Bush is going to win, isn't he?" title change was poor moderation, IMHO, but anti-Bush rather than anti-American. The face-kicking is outwith the scope of this discussion, I think.
Incidentally, Tuna Ghost:
Lazy thinking to me and several others, but if it makes Chad horny, then I suppose we can let it slide, right?
Tell me - is this a useful or intelligent way to add to this discussion. Will it, conversely, make people think that you are perpetuating personal vendettas to the exclusion of having people take your thoughts on the issue seriously? Take a view. More generally, could you insert links to your references to specific instances? It makes it easier to cross-refer. |
|
|
