Irony

[joshwriting]

I am a member of a message board that was created when the NY Times stopped supporting all but two of theirs. It covers pretty much everything.

In an unlikely turn of events, in the Bush Administration forum, I found myself defending the current occupant of the White House from a comparison of him to Hitler.

One of the respondents explained:

When Bush got ready for the invasion of Iraq, he closed all the east coast military bases and at first they were used, like the one in New Jersey, to receive Serbian refugees who had to be processed through immigration. But it has come to light in the last year, and I was quite shocked, from information sent to me by my sister who was married to a Sephardic Jew that out here my congressman, who is considered so caring to the needs of religious minorities, had okayed the outfitting of the military bases in this state as detention camps for Peace movement activists who were arrested willy nilly although little was reported in the news because that is censored and has been ever since the first campaign demonstrations when Kerry was running against Bush's re-election. That has been the administration policy. However most of the inmates of the detention camps are either senior citizen or religious leaders, ministers, nuns, etc.

I asked for some support for her assertion. Her initial response, while not providing any evidence for her claim that there are active detention camps holding religious leaders, did observe that "they have shown some insight into scalar technology". Look it up - it told me what I needed to know about this interaction. Just in case it hadn't, her next post finished it off for me:

josh

"would put Truman in the same place as Hitler and Stalin by your stance. I don't see it."

No, as with Bush; because you are a fuckin Patriot.

By now, I am quite convinced your name isn't even josh but something like john, or melsme, or danielthree, or tonymaher7 or some such that I've dealt with before although you sound so juvenile. Have you been taking "sounding innocent" lessons?

I might have continued to engage in this discussion, but for an NPR story I had just heard a few days ago about Rachel North, a survivor of the London Bombings who, in trying to respond rationally to those who believed that there was no such bombing, was attacked and accused of being "a composite" or "employee of M15" or some such thing.

Too bad. There had been some rational discussion going on.

Comments

[anonshadow.livejournal.com]

Can I go in and say that you really are Josh, I've met you? People saying people are who they aren't makes me cry...

[joshwriting.livejournal.com]

You can, but...

Have a listen to the PBS broadcast before you bother. It's called What Part of “Bomb” Don't You Understand?

It's a subsection of an episode of This American Live: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=338

It has a link to the quicktime version of the broadcast, but in essence explains the utility (or, I should say, futility) of debating with conspiracy theorists. I have no reason to expect her to listen to you - I expect her to assume that you are either a plant, another name for me, or something of the sort.

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of "scalar technology." I looked it up via google and found what claimed to be a primer on it. Yeah, I guess its mention was much more than a hint about the intellectual quality of your debating opponent. (Yes, I know "debate" is kind.)

[dpolicar]

Later, she'll advance to vector technology, which has many more pointy bits on which one can cut oneself.