Co-pilot gets sick, stewardess helps land airplane
On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:50:32 +0100, JohnT wrote:
"Wingnut" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:30:32 -0700, Hatunen, who had formerly been on
my side, suddenly launched an attack and called me incompetent at best
and a liar at worst.
What gives? You were the most vocal of Mxsmanic's detractors, yet now
suddenly you're taking his side against me. Is he paying you, or
providing some other consideration? Because I doubt you had a genuine,
spontaneous change of heart. Not TO rather than FROM the dark side.
That kind of thing is generally rare and generally only goes in the
other direction.
Then again, maybe you've recently suffered a head injury or something.
All I can say is this is disappointing and unfortunate. Nonetheless it
still leaves Mxsmanic with what, two allies and at least a dozen
detractors? Things are still not looking good for Mxsmanic, no matter
what dishonest tricks he might be using to try to bolster his side and
undermine mine.
What you seem to be saying is that anyone who disagrees with you must be
incompetent or a liar or must have recently suffered a head injury or
something.
No, I'm saying that someone who just suddenly CHANGES sides like that is
PROBABLY either suffering something or has been suborned.
From the looks of things, Hatunen and Mxsmanic have been against one
another for years. Then I come along and, innocently, say:
"Consider who would have been landing the plane if something had caused
the pilot to also conk out, though. Then her prior flight experience
would have become quite relevant indeed."
This shouldn't even have been controversial but apparently Mxsmanic saw
it and has a bee in his bonnet about such things, so he posts attacking
me. And Hatunen follows him and starts posting attacking Mxsmanic.
For whatever reason Mxsmanic is really, really incensed by what I wrote,
so much so that he's very persistent, nigh-relentless, in trying to frame
me as some kind of moron or incompetent. All the while just making
himself look like a know-nothing self-styled know-it-all in front of a
brand new audience of rec.arts.tv regulars, and being flamed by Hatunen
and several other people he's apparently made enemies of over the years.
Until last week, when all of a sudden Hatunen starts flaming me instead,
apparently having gone over to Mxsmanic's side.
You aren't enemies with someone for years and then suddenly take their
side one day without some kind of precipitating incident. Head injury,
payoff, something. Considering also that Mxsmanic is simply wrong, it's
not like Hatunen just had an epiphany and saw the light or something.
That kind of thing only goes in the opposite direction.
If you say you're sure he hasn't been suborned, then I'd like to know
what you think DID convince Hatunen to abruptly switch sides in this
little dispute.
Usenet exists for the exchange of views and this thread has
been boringly tame so far. Not even (to use an English expression)
"handbags at 4 paces". And I can never ever recollect Hatunen being a
detractor of anyone.
Until now. He's just called me several nasty names in a couple of recent
posts.
He disagrees with Mxsmanic frequently, as do many of us,
or rather, he used to,
but that is just a simple exchange of views and I have never ever
noticed a trace of personal animosity to anyone in any of his many
postings over the years.
Again, until now. Personal animosity against me is dripping from his
posts of June 29 and July 1 -- condescension, lecturing at me like I'm
some wayward little child, the whole works. Standard-issue Usenet flaming
of the first kind: portray your opponent as an imbecile in need of
special hand-holding in order to discredit whatever he's been saying.
(The second kind would be to suggest, somewhat slyly, sexual peccadilloes
or outright perversion on your opponent's part; the third is simply to
come right out and blast him or her with torrents of vulgar profanity,
namecalling, accusations, and other unsubtle invective. All three amount
to logically-invalid ad hominem arguments of course.)
The key thing is that in flaming me in any of those ways he shows that he
now considers me to BE his opponent, rather than an ally against
Mxsmanic. His having switched sides is thus apparent; by the logic of
"the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and the evident fact that he now
regards me as an enemy, plus the older fact that Mxsmanic is my enemy,
one concludes that Mxsmanic and Hatunen have become allied; the only
remaining question is why.
The danger represented here is obvious: if one person could suddenly
switch to Mxsmanic's side, presumably others could. If Mxsmanic has
discovered some strong means of influencing others all of a sudden, it's
conceivable that he might suborn all of us into supporting his craziness.
Knowing the mechanism would allow this hazard to be better quantified.
For instance, if it's simple blackmail I'm immune, lacking any dirt in my
past for him to dig up, but he could turn the rest of the people here to
his side and then have them all gang up and hound me mercilessly about
Usenet with vicious flaming, effectively neutralizing me by discrediting
me under this name. (I'd just start using a new one, but presumably if I
touched this topic again history would repeat itself, with my words and a
Google search by Mxsmanic bringing the whole lot of 'em down on my head
like a bag of hammers.) On the other hand, if he has some kind of zombie
slave potion he's feeding people, I'd have to meet him in person under
circumstances that enabled him to slip me a mickey to be vulnerable, and
it's likely only a handful of people here are actually at risk of being
suborned. If he has some sort of bogus "proof" of his nonsense sufficient
to fool imbeciles, it won't work on me. If it's a mind control ray, I'm
in trouble -- I left my tinfoil hat behind the last time I moved
house. :-)
|