#1 Piston Fighter was British

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message rthlink.net...
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" wrote in
message ...

It's a bit sad really, and sounds paranoid. I hope he finds what he
wants from veterans groups or lists, as it doesn't sound like he's
getting the audience he would prefer in r.a.m.

The starting point for this inanity was my repsonse to Dan Ford about
the Mustang and Spitfire "shooting aircraft down over Berlin". Art
went on, in response, to describe everything that happened in the west
before D-Day as "trivial" or "impotent thrusts that lead to nothing".
While this annoyed me, I initially responded with moderate followups
which included statements like:

"I'm grateful for what you did, Art, but you weren't completely alone
in what you did. That takes nothing away from the risks you and your
crew and group ran and had to face every day to get your job done."

This, of course,was immediately cut from Arts response, which was
characteristic of his standard "You weren't there so you know ****-all
about it" approach, which has been a staple of r.a.m. from at least
1998 and has been used to delegitimise numerous poster's contributions
since then.

I gave Art the option of responding to reasonable discussion over that
issue and make the effort to explain my motives:

"I'm not questioning your personal experience or trying to discount
it, I wish you could see that."

Or he could opt for a flamewar if he preferred. He clearly prefers to
cut the relevant rational discourse and go for a polarized flamewar.
The only explanation I can think of for this is deliberate trolling.


Agreed.

Art's typical approach of denigrating the efforts and contributions of
others in order to somehow make his own seem more valiant or valuable
is unfortunate. He could be a good source for information specific to
his experiences, but his continual belittling of anything and
everything that does not involve B-26 operations in whatever group he
was in in the ETO merely makes him sound rather shrill and casts
doubts regarding his veracity on anything of value that he may
actually have to offer. Kind of sad, really.

Brooks