Wee Who See the Deep
Giambattista said:
Permanently banned? WHA?? That's an awfully harsh proposition for a political avatar. There's no reason that someone should be banned for something like that at all.
There would have to be more to it than
just the avatar.
Because a few people are overly sensitive to a messianic politician does not mean someone should be banned.
Well, that doesn't help, because the fact that a few people have suddenly decided to decide that the black man doesn't get to be the same as the white man—really, what politician
doesn't have an outsize ego?—isn't something people should have to pretend to not notice because some racists are overly sensitive to being identified as racists.
It's stupid to have to tiptoe around and apologize because people get easily insulted by images.
Well, when you're deliberately trying to goad people, what do you expect?
I suppose I should appreciate the effort to "warn" me or whatever the motivation was. I guess I do, although I didn't feel that it was an issue that I should heed, for the reasons I've already stated (if people get offended by a favored politician with a Hitler moustache, that's their problem!).
"That's their problem!" does not fly around here. It is certainly something to consider, but society just doesn't work that way. Just because we can't virtually kill one another in a duel doesn't mean the disputes don't cause problems.
I still don't get it. I'm sure most people don't have a problem with that kind of picture. Having policies that are based on the emotional frailty (bad description?) of a few individuals is not a good idea.
A bit provocative a description. I mean, there is a policy in effect in a couple of our subfora that literally says one should not offend the emotional frailty of a racist by suggesting he is a racist. Now, sure, that might make for a good line, right? But it doesn't help resolve the issue of contention. In fact, all it really does is remind my colleague just how goddamn stupid he's being. And that's not going to help, either.
So it really comes down to why one makes the point. Are we hoping to solve a problem, or are we simply jabbing at people?
Additionally, we risk creating a sense of disparity. Why should you be allowed to display a picture that is simply intended to goad people's "emotional frailty", while they are prohibited from expressing what they honestly think of that maneuver—prohibited in deference to your own "emotional frailty"?
In the end, it's more about what is
fair.
But even that invites its own questions. Fair? In what context? There are assertions of fair that simply say, "Might is right, and the moment is now." As such, it wouldn't matter if you inherited your advantage, or if you're a well-armed super-soldier enjoying the benefits of your advantage by cutting through the maternity ward with a flame-thrower. Fair? What business is it of yours that the babies are defenseless?
And, sure, within the boundaries of demonstrative anarchy, yes, that would be fair.
But that's not what societies are. Not even virtual communities.
I'm a long subscriber to the "Intelligent Community". It's an old concept that you might have seen in the first days after your registration. The motto disappeared from the site within a year or two.
It's not that people can't be emotional. It's not that they can't have their say. But this was supposed to be about people having those things according to a pretense of intelligence. Take, for example, the recent bit with Rep. Michele Bachmann. When ABC's George Stephanopolous put the certificate of live birth in front of her, pointed out what makes it legally binding, the former Minnesota Birther-in-Chief acknowledged that such a document would settle the issue, if only someone would introduce it.
In other words, if only someone had introduced the document that was introduced over two years ago, she would have been satisfied.
Now, I know it's not "polite" to call someone stupid or dishonest, but ...
really? If one of our members brought that argument here, that if only it didn't take until 2011 to offer up what was offered to the record only two years ago, what deference do you think we owe that member's emotional frailty? Would it be rude to wonder aloud what business that person has asserting any sort of opinion on a matter they are so blatantly ignorant about? When someone objects to the suggestion of ignorance—after all, it's not polite, and since it's, say, a liberal calling a conservative ignorant, there's only one reason for that—is it appropriate to point out the only other alternative is that the argument is a ham-handed attempt to deceive people?
At what point, then, would the people who are supposed to accept that argument be overly sensitive and emotionally frail if they are offended by the idea that they're supposed to be so stupid as to not see what is flamingly, obviously wrong with it?
And you can literally spin down the rabbit hole doing that.
At some point, we have to draw a line. And if that line is that we should be fair in the context of a pretense of intelligence, yeah, sometime it's going to seem unfair to the implication of demonstrative anarchy. Being the biggest brute on the block is not a guaranteed human right here.
Come to think of it, I think quite a few people would get a good laugh from this...
Some. Then again, you might also be overstating the idea that people are offended by the Hitlerizing of Obama in and of itself as they might simply be sick and tired of putting up with the same old stupid statement intended to piss people off that isn't even worth being creative about. Really, you're trying to goad people with a cliché. At some point, they're just going to say, "Oh, for fuck's sake,
really? What the fuck is your problem?"
I do. Few things are more satisfying than seeing a politician be made fun of. That a few people get offended? They can either put their feelings into words and do something constructive, or they can look away, pout, cry, whatever.
Some people have more complex views of the circumstances than that.
Few things are more obnoxious than a joke that's been beaten into the ground.
Banning or forcibly removing something like that is the coward's option. The action of someone who themselves deserve that moustache.
The psychology of that proposition is demented.
The lightest way I can express it is that it reflects the attitudes of many of the complaints we receive in which the end value is that the object of complaint simply succeeded in being more offensive than someone else. Not every ice chip in the snowballs is deliberate. Not every rock in the mud clot is attempted murder.
As long as it's about
individual might, and not the fact that this is, in the first place, a
community, we're going to continue to bump up against the issue.
It's a community. People are expected to behave according to at least a bare outline of civility. Even if everyone agreed to abide by a bare outline of civility, they would still disagree about what it means; regulation is inevitable in any communal function. We continue to lower our standards in this community, and it's never enough. But that constant lowering of the bar is also why these issues arise in the first place.
Seriously, we have no obligation, in the context of an "Intelligent Community" to entertain birthers, racists, or fanatics of any stripe. But we've seen so many interpretive disputes about what constitutes that bare outline of civility, or any other standard we might invoke, that we keep letting the discussion sink into the mire.
In the Intelligent Community, Giambattista, you would be allowed to have your avatar without there really being any question. To the other, people would be allowed to laugh and tell you to go fuck yourself. And if you complained about those insults, we would tell you to lump it, because you're smart enough to understand the implications of your juvenile behavior. While there would always be extenuating—especially preexisting—circumstances to consider, you would generally be identified as the epicenter of that particular tremor. In the Intelligent Community, we wouldn't just punish the "fuck yous", we would figure out whether the appearance of incivility was in any relevant and significant way warranted, and deal with that.
For various reasons, though, we pitched any pretense of intelligence out the window a few years ago. I'm not sure if it was a bizarre numbers game, or what, but in the last few years, the difference between whether something is banworthy bigotry against Americans has often been a question of whether or not an American says it. At least, that's as much as I could figure of the standard applied by one of my international colleagues. And, yes, like "emotional frailty", that
is a provocative description° of the problem.
There is a question of whether accurate criticism is too insulting to be permitted°. Frequent questions of who should be held responsible for illiteracy°.
But neither is it all the fault of the staff. We've bubblegummed and rubber-banded and scotch-taped the system in order to account for all manner of circumstantial objections, appeals, and special requests. For instance, though it pains me to recall, as I'm done rubbing one of my colleagues' noses in it, we once had a back room question about friendship between moderators and members, and whether that had an undue effect on duty. It was a sometimes intricate discussion, and sometimes it was a spittle-spraying, purple-faced brawl. But all the public saw of it was certain people getting away with murder.
Of course, getting away with murder is all about perceptions, too. We've never successfully resolved the variances in our perceptions of severity and, in truth, the membership has been exactly
no help in this.
The Intelligent Community, apparently, is a form of tyranny. Of course, I get it. I see where that comes from. Yet even those seem to have limits, and will appeal to us for intervention. Okay, yes, I get it. I see where that comes from, as well. But, in the end, we might phrase it provocatively by saying that
all anybody ever wants is their own idyllic tyranny.
Because we all have limits, right? And there will
always be someone out there willing to denounce this or that boundary as tyrannical, or cowardly, or bigoted, or conspiratorial, or fascist, or otherwise worthy of one of those dumb-assed moustaches.
Few actually want demonstrative anarchy. Not even the capitalists who appeal to the "free market" variation, or the libertarians who would rather enforce the law with their own Smith & Wessons.
Everybody, even if pathologically insane, has a limit.
Everybody has their tyrannical boundary.
Or not. It's a matter of how reasonably we define tyranny. What is extremity? What is moral and wise? Well, these, then, are not tyranny. Isn't that how it goes? I mean, whether here at Sciforums, or in cosmopolitan America, or in "real" America°, or anywhere around the world, that's kind of how it seems to go°.
It's enough to ask everyone else to live according to one's view of the community; it is too much, though, to compromise on that point. Nobody gets their idyll in the Intelligent Community. That is its greatest tyranny.
Lucky for all of us, perhaps, that it isn't in effect°.
____________________
Notes:
° provocative description — cf. The Simpsons, "Last Tap In Springfield" (#BABF15):
Vicki: Self-tapping shoes? I'm ever so pissed!
Lisa: I'm sorry, Vicki. I just wanted to be a dancer so badly.
Vicki: (sighs) I understand. We all do crazy things when we're desperate. I once destroyed Buddy Ebsen's credit rating.
Lisa: Why?
Vicki: He knows why.
° accurate criticism is too insulting to be permitted — Yes, provocative; see note above.
° who should be held responsible for illiteracy — I think it's obvious what goes here.
° "real" America — Some would suggest that my deliberate delivery and timing of this expression is intended to be provocative, and inappropriately so.
° kind of how it seems to go — Of course, this is even subject to interpretation. We all assert logic. To wit, given thirty years' consideration of First Amendment consideration in terms of art, generally, on the one hand, and religion, generally, on the other; and after twenty years of attending civil rights questions pertaining to homo- and hetero-sexuality—questions, I might remind, put to me by Christians—I would assert that it is illogical to say that I am a tyrant because I will not censor a library book to meet a specifically religious standard. Yet some would assert that in refusing to allow that person to use his religion as a device to suspend someone else's First Amendment rights, I was being tyrannical, and even persecutory against the religion. So, no, the Christian doesn't get to kick Madeleine L'Engle, or Robert McCammon out of the library because something about their books offends his Christianity. That's my form of tyranny. I won't allow that same Christian to own the legal institution of marriage under civil law. That's my form of persecution. Some would express it differently. But we all have our boundaries. And we all assert our logic. And, yeah, sure, once in a while that logic even makes sense. Whether or not that difference is of any importance is still left each to his own.
° it isn't in effect — Something about being provocative goes here. And here's the fun part: Toward whom? Because I stopped talking about you ... well, a while ago. Stopped talking about you, and instead to you. I don't know; there's one line in there I can pick out—and it isn't even the bit about demented psychology. It doesn't really matter if there's anyone in the crosshairs of that line. Nor is there any riddle. It was all about you, always. No, it wasn't. Yes, it was. No, it wasn't. (Really, it wasn't. Stop being so paranoid.)
