And again I am posting the zeroed-out comment as a standalone.
It happened on Booman’s most recent “Casual Observation” post regarding the ongoing Northam ruckus. (http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2019/2/2/152020/9213)
I will not be censored, nor will I be in any other way be silenced.
Bet on it.
Read on for more.
Centerfielddj posted a long and scurrilously inaccurate comment that…as usual…accused me of being some sort of right-wing sympathizer trying to promote dissension on this blog. Go to the “Casual Obervation” URL above if you want to read the whole thing. It starts with words “It’s generous to infer …”
I answered it quite thoroughly.
Following is my…now missing…reply to a comment by NJersey that seemed to accept some of centerfielddj’s inaccuracies as facts. I had considered posting it as a standalone instead of a comment/reply when I wrote it, but I had students to teach and ran out of time.
Thank you, centerfielddj or whichever other neocentrist tool and/or fool who zeroed it out.
Now even more people will read it.
Great work!!!
My reply to NJersey follows:
Please do not be fooled by this entity’s attacks. My non-lockstep position below (from my post above) sums up the essential source of all of the trolling done against me on this site.
This partisan bullshit has got to stop!!!
Rotten DemRats as well as rotten RatPubs need to be called out, and called out hard!!!
On every level!!!
Please!!!
Here are a few other red herrings that this [centerfielddj] entity throws out on a regular basis about my positions:
AG campaigned for Donald Trump here from August to November 2016 by concentrating his participation in this community by lodging nonstop attacks on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
No. I did not “campaign for Donald Trump.” I opposed HRC because she and her neoliberal/neocentrist (and crooked as hell) DNC satraps backstabbed Bernie Sanders in the primaries in every way that they knew how to do it. I still to this day maintain that Sanders would have beaten Trump if given a fair shot in he primaries, and even if he had failed at that he would have moved the Dem battle lines way left and way sooner.
During that same general election campaign, he wrote diaries here which documented his travels in conservative areas of New York and Pennsylvania. He not only conceded then that he did not try to talk conservative voters out of voting for Trump as he tried to talk progressives out of voting for Clinton, he angrily defends that behavior to this day.
Truly…in the simple interests of sheer self-survival…I did not try to talk rural white working class strangers in Dunkin’ Donuts, local restaurants and other places out of their political stances.
I have roots in Maine equivalents of those places and I know better than to mess with the beliefs of strangers of that sort. Things can get ugly in a hurry, so I kept my peace and simply listened/observed. I was in automobile transit for more than a week at that time. Had I gotten to know them and gained their trust to some degree, I most certainly would have tried to reason with them. I have had many discussions with people much like them who know and trust my family in Maine, and have not only gotten somewhere with them but also have begun to understand why they support people like Trump.
Long story short?
Sure.
We know he’s an asshole. But he’s our asshole!!!
Can’t argue with that. Not really. It’s not true, in the long run…he’s only in it for himself and his political/economic allies…but the same could be said of many people who support most mainstream Dems today. The Dems have fucked up 6 ways to Sunday…Trump’s election was just the capper…since Clinton I’s nifty little NAFTA move, and the whole country has paid for it. Talk people out of supporting them??? An almost Sisyphean task, as the give and take on this blog has so readily illustrated over the past several years. The Dems think that they’re better than the Republicans; the Republicans think that they’re better than the Dems, and the truth of the matter is that both parties are currently full of shit at their highest levels. The only truly good news as far as I can see it lies in the new Dems like AOC and Beto O’Rourke.
AG’s attacks here on Barack Obama and his Presidency were constant and frequently way over the top for most of Obama’s eight years in the office. He spent far, far more time here criticizing the first African-American President than he has spent criticizing our incredibly racist current President.
There are plenty of people…here and elsewhere…doing a thorough job of criticizing Trump, but not so many people understand that Obama’s reign…and the DNC/DNC-controlled media that supported and publicized him… were con jobs. Why pile on one side and ignore the faults of the others? The Dem’s problems are what brought us Trump.
Obama?
The “Peace President?”
No.
Obama the War president.
The Universal surveillance president.
The Wall Street president.
The globalist corporate-owned and operated president.
Bet on it.
A cursory reading of some truly progressive sites should be enough to establish that truth. Try back issues of Counterpunch for starters. (https://www.counterpunch.org)
I could go on puncturing centristfielddj’s red herring balloons, but I have to go to work now. That entity and its allies are not going to stop with the false attacks here…they hold to mainstream, neocentrist/neoliberal Dem positions and as I said above, the sum total results of those positions since Clinton I is a downward curve for this country any way you look at it. That applies to the RatPublicans, too. They both suck!!! You are relatively new here, I believe, and I hate to see new people poisoned by this kind of bullshit.
Think on it.
Later…
AG
No more need be said.
You either get it or you don’t.
Centristfield and his little gang of neo-McCarthyites most obviously do not.
Sad.
Later…
AG
Not until faithfulness turns to betrayal-and betrayal into trust-can any human being become part of the truth. — Rumi
. . . lying, which obviously merits “mega troll” rating:
Base lie: that valid critiques/downrates/refutation of your many oft-repeated lies are “trolling”.
Squaring that lie: the lying pretense that those valid critiques/downrates/refutation are instead for your “non-lockstep position” (or other previous deflections like “political position” or “criticism of the Democratic Party as it stands today” . . . all complete and utter hogwash).
Cubing of the lie: endless repetition of these lies despite repeated, definitive refutation of them by the only individuals in a position to know our basis for criticizing/downrating/refuting: the individuals doing the criticism/downrating/refutation. As always, you run away from the valid, substantive criticism/downrating/refutation to hide behind this lie cubed.
Lest we forget, Arthur has also demonstrated that he’s a genius at coalition building.
Arthur, has it ever occurred to you to reflect on the fact that Booman has provided you a platform to launch your attacks? You crank out these diaries on a near-daily basis (thereby displacing Oui, who has taken most of his rants elsewhere, it would seem). You pass up no opportunities to insult other readers. You bob and weave and dodge and obfuscate when other readers ask you to provide sources, to acknowledge your past support for fake libertarians like Ron Paul, or to back up the occasional arguments you make that are more than ad hominem attacks.
You take this platform granted to you for free by Booman, and turned by you into an opportunity to spew abuse and insults, and then flip out when someone gives a low rating to one of your diaries. It’s ridiculous.
It’s worth mentioning that BooMan is also tolerating AG’s regular postings from other online publications whose communities he declares superior to the Frog Pond. It’s blogwhoring by proxy.
Well, he should go to those places and stay there then. Instead, he chooses to come here where we hold him responsible and call him on his baloney.
JDL, has it ever occurred to you to reflect on that same fact?
Booman could very easily ban me…and/or you cadre of locksteppers as well.
But he doesn’t.
Why?
I’ve never asked him, but it seems to me that he wants to hear all sides of the story…to keep an open mind.
Good on him!!!
Y’all oughta try it.
Through most of the many years that I have been here, I never paid much attention to ratings. When I agreed or disagreed with people, I stated my case and then went on about my other business. It’s only been the last couple of uears that a small group of posters here have used the totally McCarthyite tactic (totally Daily Kosite as well, i might add. Also DNC-like, on another level) of zeroing people’s valid posts out because they disagree with them. That tactic has succeeded in thinning the pack here, to the point where I am about the last poster of that sort who hasn’t simply walked away in disgust.
Why haven’t I?
Well…my nickname was “Mule” as a kid, if that’s any indication.
Plus, my work is about 60% at home…teaching, practicing, writing music, etc…and my practice schedule calls for long breaks. On those breaks? I spend some time here and otherwise wandering the web.
Y’all are unlucky that I don’t play a less physically demanding instrument, I suppose.
But I don’t.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
P.S. Zero this one out and I’ll just add it to the initial post.
Go ahead.
Prove my point once again.
As Joseph N. Welch said to Joe McCarthy:
This applies…on a much lower level of importance, of course…to you little Dem McCarthys.
But it’s the same syndrome.
Bet on it.
I don’t rate anyone’s posts, Arthur. What’s the point?
JDL? That would be “Jewish Defense League”. Not sure why you called me that.
Thanks for demonstrating for about the 5000th time your allegiance to Roger Stone’s code of ethics:
Admit nothing.
Deny everything.
Attack, attack, attack.
It’s kind of funny, Arthur, because Roger Stone attributes this ethical code to Roy Cohn. And Cohn is someone you like to attack. If I were a cynic, I’d say it’s just one more effort by you at distraction.
Again, you’ve been informed ad infinitum and ad nauseum that that is a lie by the only individuals in a position to know why we downrate/criticize/refute your comments.
Yet you go right on lying that lie ad nauseum, just as if nobody had ever definitively refuted it.
And then you pretend to be wronged when —
after having been taught the long and annoying lesson —
by the repeated experience of seeing the substance of every good faith attempt to engage with you normally (whether by pointing out/refuting your falsehoods, anti-logic, estrangement from reality, flawed/unsupported conclusions, self-contradictions, and repetitive outright lying) —
that all honest attempts at good-faith, Reality-Based reasoning with you are utterly pointless exercises in futility —
lose all patience with attempting to engage with you in good faith, and instead just proceed directly to using the ratings system for its intended purpose.
Which you — of course! — then lie is “coward[ly]” and [LOLOLOLOL!!!!11!!] “centrist”. When in fact it’s simply sane.
Your sound to me like an old-line, NYC Lower East Side methamphetamine head, oaguabonita.
I dealt with them then, and I guess that I am dealing with them still.
Go get some help.
Please!!!
AG
. . . “sound to [you]” as you continuously run away from substantive criticism and factual, documented refutation of your lies, including lying endlessly about why you get criticized/refuted/downrated.
More of the same…
We shall see whose positions end up in the saddle.
Won’t we.
If the last 50+ years of American history maintains its current substantial lead in the false polls/false news of the day?
You win.
So far.
Until then?
Miracles do happen…sometimes!!!
My bet?
On the miraculous.
Yours?
Not so much…
Best of luck, arguebonita.
The ongoing collapse of the American Dream is in your favor.
Hustle on…
AG
Seriously.
To quote the Beastie Boys
Arthur’s “got the boomin’ system, but it’s sloshing out doo-doo
You think it’s chocolate milk, but it’s watered down Yoo-hoo”
Arthur, what a whiny little infant you are.
Ya dish it out, and you whine when you get it back in response. So, so unfair.
LOL
I do not “dish out” zeros centristfield, nor did I when I able to do so. And NEVER for ideological or tactical disagreements.
You?
And your allies?
Not so much.
AG
If you don’t like the treatment you get from the community with the tools we are given, you have alternative options to these tantrum sessions:
It appears to me that you’re addicted to the drama. Problem is, you’re supporting a dangerous President and political movement with your bullshit, and you’re trying to manipulate progressives to do your bidding. Many of us here are unwilling to abide your attempts to bring your truly reprehensible domestic policy views to fruition.
Tell us again about your desire to make Roe v. Wade null and void by breaking up the U.S., followed by your wish to split New York State in two so the northern portion of the State could force juvenile victims of incest to carry pregnancies caused by their rapes to term.
For once, please just stay with that and really grapple with the real consequences of your fake libertarianism, instead of throwing a dirty object which you attempt to get community members to chase.
Shorter Arthur: Someone said mean things about Arthur on the internet. Fodder for yet another inspiring AG post. :::yawn:::
I don’t have to zero-rate you, Arthur, although you have earned every single one of those goose eggs.
My strategy is usually to ignore you, except when you say something truly preposterous, self-serving, or in this case pathetic.
Then I do a drive by, kind of like when people slow down on the interstate to look at a particularly bad car accident.
I mean, a while diary about how someone gave you a shitty rating? Gimme a fuckin’ break man. I’m old enough to remember when you actually some interesting ideas to contribute. That was… that was a long time ago.
It’s not about “getting a shitty rating,” brendan. I never, ever complain about 1 ratings.
It’s about getting zero ratings that are used to censor what I have to say.
And those “interesting ideas” you mentioned? You liked them because you agreed with them, more than likely. And I am betting you no longer like what I have to say, so now…same person, same brain, same sociopolitical experience and positions, pretty much..it’s “Gimme a fuckin’ break” time.
That’s ok with me. I don’t really care who “agrees” or does not agree with me. I have my say and that’s the end of it…until actions are taken to not let me have my say. At that point I start to take actions to protect my right to say what I believe.
So it goes…
AG
P.S. I hate meta, myself. Never much indulged in it here or on any other blog until the last couple of years, and I did not start that war.
The last days of dKos’s freedom of speech got pretty nasty as well…I suppose it’s still meta heaven there if anyone dares to step out of the official dKos “reality-based,” neoliberalist box…and I was relieved when The Little King pulled the plug on the free thinkers…including me…there.
So that goes as ell.