That makes me calling Ian B a cunt (which he is) into the start of WWI!
No, that was a border skirmish.
Now, I will agree that it was inappropriate for Ian to call your wife an idiot, but don’t forget this is an abuse site, not least through your own contribution, and has been for a long time.
If you didn’t want to expose Mrs Nick to the possibility of abuse you shouldn’t have:
1, Exposed her on this site.
Or
2, Helped create this as an abuse site.
You come across as believing that abuse is all fine and dandy, unless it is directed at you and yours. Well, you reap what you sow. At least Ian didn’t lace his words with obscenities and violent sexual imagery, calling someone an idiot is as mild as it gets. If you object to that then consider what else is written here, and how objectionable it can be.
Why did FT make his ugly comment the other day? Because he thought that was the way we speak on this site, that’s why. I was ashamed.
Now, when I posted my first comment on this I was possibly a tad intemperate, but by that time verbal daggers had already been both drawn and used. I merely entered into the pre-existing tone.
What caused WWI here was:
A, Telling Ian to “fuck off”
The reasons you told him to follow this course of action? Being rude to Mrs Nick, and his repetition, or focus, on certain core issues. Well, on the one hand you were defending your wife, good for you. Absolutely the right thing to do, but you were defending her from a situation you helped create, as I pointed out earlier.
As to Ian’s supposed repetition? Have you examined your own past writing lately? You return again and again to certain themes, phrases, metaphors and images. Ian is not alone in repetition.
Why have I never mentioned this before? Because I don’t care. I am aware of it, but fine, you can be a bit repetitive, but it’s your choice. Why is it an issue now? Because in criticising Ian you chose to make it so. In fact, when it comes to this, the metaphor is not pots and kettles, but rather his mote and your beam.
B, On my raising the issue of the abuse, obscenities and extreme sexual imagery we use you responded, in part, with “The pigeon-chested abatoir creeping basement tin-foil-hatter wanking his miniscule cock to destruction in a Primark sock in some fucking shit-hole and considering himself the sage of the age.”.
I am aware you were talking about someone else, but the words were nonetheless directed at me, and my concerns, demonstrating your contempt for what I had to say.
If you speak to your mother like that, fine, your choice. If she wants to put up with it, then again fine, her choice, but no one speaks to me in that manner, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason.
Now, frankly, Ian owes both Mrs Nick and you separate apologies, true, but you damn well owe him one as well. In my opinion, a grovelling one.
Now, I think we can agree that I have put my point across here, clearly if not always elegantly. I have demonstrated your hypocrisy and have otherwise (mildly violent metaphor alert) nailed your hide to the wall, not once having found it necessary to abuse you, use an obscenity, or elicit a single sexual image, extreme or otherwise.
The shame of it is, you are a far more inventive, nuanced and eloquent wordsmith than I can ever hope to be.
Oops, I said damn.
Blimey, yesterday Anna Raccoon packs it all in, today one of the best-written and amiable of the remaining group blogs descends into an unseemly public spat… is it full moon in Blogland?
Should I start banging the drum for prison rehabilitation or greater benefits for the underclass on mine?
Can’t we all just…get along?
Seconded, Julia!
On ‘Fuck off’.
Just a few years ago my mother, who was suffering from Parkinson’s and dementia, went into a care home. Although she mostly didn’t recognise any of us, at 82 years old, she did tell all and sundry to ‘fuck off’ (and worse stuff).
The thing is, none of us had ever heard her swear in any form before. Ever.
Maybe ‘fuck off’s innate.
Does that mean no more Nick posts?
I guess it will raise the average a bit. No regrets here.
Yes, it’s all getting a bit Bolshviks and Mensheviks, isn’t it?
Mr (?) Cats, you seem to me to be a gentleman, a personality type in such short supply it should be a tradeable commodity. If, I may say so, I like the thrust and balance of your post (if one can have both thrust and balance at the same time, and I imagine rocket scientists agree that we can), with a small caveat: I think you downplay everso slightly the impact of calling a chap’s missus an “idiot”. At the time it was said, I thought Mrs Nick dealt with it very well but it understandably rankled with her Mr. And that despite the moniker being intended as a rational observation rather than as an insult. Anyway, it festered as I suppose it was bound so to do. But I agree that the turbo-charged response from Nick M is harder to unsay than Ian B’s buddha-like dismissals.
Anyway, it’s so much more interesting to argue, amicably, with those with whom one has much in common than with, say, an unthinking collectivist. There’s so much more intellectually to gain from the exercise. I’m somewhat surprised that some of you posters appear not to know each other, other than via these pages. Where communication is solely dryasdust words on a page, interspersed with smileys, it seems to me that could be a problem. But yes, apologies are needed. A certain amount of humble pie ought to be eaten, a drunken dinner might be had, with wise spouses holding the ring. And there might also be a recognition that in these two BSDs we have a couple of bloggers who bring different things to the party, and for my part it would be a shame to see either or both, or you, for that matter, Mr Cats, biff awf.
I suspect this all reads a little patronisingly. So be it. I live in London, Big Government central, so I like an exchange of opinion with like-minded souls wherever they may be, and I find this all rather saddening.
Cats,
I’ve always enjoyed reading what you had to say.
I hope this isn’t your last post.
SD
Okay, look, I will be disappearing now from this site to solve the problems I’ve caused, but before I go I would just like to point out that I didn’t call Mrs Nick an idiot. I described her as a “useful idiot” which is a well known terminology meaning a naive enabler of (originally, communism). That is, somebody who aids a cause while being unaware that they are being used.
That isn’t actually the same as calling somebody an idiot. In the same way as calling somebody a “Grammar Nazi” isn’t the same as calling them a Nazi and saying somebody is “fishing for compliments” isn’t the same as saying they are fishing.
This is a political blog. I made a political point. Although it was probably unwise, and was taken very badly, I didn’t simply start throwing out random insults at Nick’s wife or anyone else. It was a political comment.
Ian B: Hold the phone! Just a minute there, lad! If you’re not here AND you’re not on Samizdata (or was that somebody else?), where the heck DO we look for you?
I’ve been hoping for an excuse to address this on Samiz, but I consider this is a good opportunity.
Back in 2007 there was a long back-and-forth there on abortion. Your comments were particularly interesting because I didn’t know there’s anybody other than I who sees it that way! (Although I get there by slightly different reasoning–and I do make an exception where the mother is at substantial risk of death or permanent disability) I was hoping it would come up again, so that we could discuss this statement of yours:
“I’m pro abortion, but frankly I can’t think of a single coherent argument in favour of it beyond pragmatism (women will do it anyway, may as well be legal).”
See, the thing is, if that’s an overriding “pragmatic” issue, then we shouldn’t outlaw murder either. Or, of course, theft.
PS. If anybody’s interested, see
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/12/oh_good_grief.html
And if you also commented on the issue elsewhere, I’d like to see what you said.
Thanks.
“Okay, look, I will be disappearing now from this site to solve the problems I’ve caused, but before I go I would just like to point out that I didn’t call Mrs Nick an idiot. I described her as a “useful idiot” which is a well known terminology meaning a naive enabler of (originally, communism). That is, somebody who aids a cause while being unaware that they are being used.”
And the funny thing is Mrs Nick has a Russian degree. I think she knows about useful idiots better than most! But frankly Ian that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ian you don’t debate because as you say you have the inside track on proggies which are the cause of everything wrong on the planet. The milks gone off! Wedgie Benn left it out. The cat’s got fleas! It got them from the Guardian in the litter tray. Ian B can’t find his keys or phone. Obviously Polly Toynbee crept in in the dead of night… It’s monomaniacal. And it is infuriating. It’s real tin-foil hattery to connect the dots you do. You connect I dunno the pub smoking ban with wind-farm subsidies with anti-porn crusades and an animal welfare charity. It’s not right but that is not my issue. My issue and my flow of invective is simply because you don’t debate. You repeat.
Julie reminds me of something. Quite a bit back we had some discussion on abortion - specifically on the conception for want of a better word of “pre-pregnancy”. Well nobody Godwinned that and it remained civil. If I have any especially proud moment here it is starting a thread that verged into abortion and got into double figures of comments and remained civil. I started it because I found the term “pre-pregnant” vaguely Orwellian.
Ian B, I suspect most of us here know the origins of the phrase “useful idiots”. And indeed I referred to it, above, as intended to be a rational observation rather than an insult, but it’s not the same as calling someone a “grammar nazi”. A “useful idiot” is an idiot who happens to be useful. Nobody would suggest that a “grammar nazi” is really a nazi. And “fishing for compliments” is simply a metaphor. It seems to me there are two types of people one might call a “useful idiot”: 1) people one despises and whose feelings one cares nothing for, 2) people one respects enough to suppose that they can appreciate the phrase, despite its harshness, as revealing a truth about them that one wishes them to know, because one cares enough about them that they should know it.
Saying that, I generally agree with your anti-progressivist analyses. I don’t think it’s tin-foil-hattery at all but, having been on the receiving end of similar accusations myself, I think it’s important to learn how to reach those of similar, if less developed, sympathies without seeming monomaniacal or extreme. Personally, I’ve never learned this trick, so I tend just to keep quiet, except on sites like this, because I know that “you’re nuts” look all too well, and provoking it can undo much good work. But it’s such an important trick to learn. In fact, it’s one the Proggies have mastered (not that they don’t have their opinion stormtroopers supported by unthinking foot soldiers…it’s more to do, I think, with their ability to silence dissent with a look) .
You’ve developed a sophisticated and compelling worldview, but the dark Proggie art of slipping it into the mainstream needs more study.
The thing is, Ian B’s analysis can sound like a grand unified conspiracy theory to people who haven’t thought it through.
It is, of course, no such thing. Rather it is individuals and groups working with a community of interests, with the philosophy advancing on many fronts simultaneously. These people do not always agree, but they seldom impede one another.
Collectivists who are also supporters of free speech will nonetheless work with, make common cause with, and advance the interests of, other collectivists who actively work to shut down dissenting voices, because they are in agreement in some other area. We saw that in Australia with respect to the Bolt trial and the Finklestein Media Review.
“Ian B’s analysis can sound like a grand unified conspiracy theory to people who haven’t thought it through.
It is, of course, no such thing. Rather it is individuals and groups working with a community of interests, with the philosophy advancing on many fronts simultaneously. These people do not always agree, but they seldom impede one another.”
I agree, Counting C, although - partly because intellectual journeys can take many years - I don’t think it’s always a failure to think things through so much as a reluctance to acquiesce in conclusions so far removed from those one has reached already. I think Ian B’s conclusions on the culture are objectively true, therefore they are not extreme. But the culture in which we all swim is so far removed from those conclusions that, to many, they seem extreme. Nick M, on the other hand, is a visceral libertarian, proudly so. Which is what I meant when I said they both bring something to the table.
There are few enough of us around as it is. When widely-read opinion-formers in our rockpool of the subculture can no longer talk, we’ve got problems. We can’t afford the luxury of a Greer/Burchill spat, the Proggies can.
I was thinking of sounding my final post too. I probs shall but Cats and Edward that is sixth-form debating society stuff. Do you realize how much that all sounds like Marxism in style if not content? “Conclusions on the culture objectively true” could come from someone’s little whatever coloured book. Personally elsewhere I shall stick to calling cunts cunts.
Yes, Nick, I do realise. Still, it hasn’t done the Proggies any harm.
On a point of order, I’m more of a tosser than a cunt.
Julie, you have a long memory!
This isn’t really the time and place for a discussion on abortion. I doubt the new Lord Of The Blog will want me commenting any more anyway. But for the record, if anything discussions like that have made me feel more strongly that there is no real justification for abortion beyond genuine medical emergencies. The issue really is all about abortion on demand, i.e. abortion of foetuses because they are simply unwanted, rather than because the mother is in genuine peril.
I think it is entirely Libertarian to consider a right to life paramount and, since the unborn are surely alive, they have such a right to life. But I think the problem as I see it is that we could virtually entirely avoid the need for abortion if people took responsibility and either used contraceptives properly or resisted the urge if none are available. It is entirely possible for human beings to suppress the sexual urge in the immediate term (i.e., not “now”, but later) if not in the long term.
I also said in that thread that current contraceptives could do with some improvement. Many women don’t like taking drugs all the time, and condoms are kind of rubbish, even if we all officially pretend they aren’t. From a male perspective, sex is much less fun with a condom than without. But sex which is less fun still beats abortion hands down.
But of course this is just my opinion, and I’m giving it since you asked.
As to me, I comment a lot in a couple of other places- the Libertarian Alliance Blog, and Tim Worstall’s mainly, and at Ambush Predator. Cats is looking at this new Zanzibar Gazette site, so maybe I’ll be there, along with my tinfoil hat and Primark socks.
along with my tinfoil hat and Primark socks
Eeauh, yuk.
Washed, please.
Thanks, Ian. I know you’ll be missed here. Maybe we can compare notes on this sometime at your Zanzibar Gazette spot.
Cheers. :>)