The mind reels (with corrections)

[pecunium]

In another blog I read conversation got heated (very).

In the course of the invectional back and forth the following was said to one of the participants:

...i’m sorry you’re jealous that some people went to college, and you were not able to. but you were too busy slaughtering iraqis, were you not?

This wasn't a conversation about the war, or military service. This was a completely unrelated subject. The purpose of the attack was to make the other person more "other". To tain't them with the brush of, "hired thug with no morals," (note the use of the word slaughter, which implies the dead were merely killed out of hand, as cattle in an abbatoir), and the modifier, "busy" and the statement that going to Iraq was done, rather than (and so preferentially to) attending college.

My first, concious reactions were too rude to share. I don't understand how someone can think up such a retort, much less use it. I am not, all things considered, a violent person. I don't know that, were I too hear such a thing, that I might not punch the speaker. I do know that I'd be pissed as hell (even if it were someone I really didn't like of whom it was said). I know that I'd not feel any real pity were the sayer of such a thing to get decked. I might even help shuffle the decker out of the place.

I am ever surprised at the meaness of some people's souls.

(nb, I am not going to allow the conversation that was in, to travel here. I am declaring an exeption to policy, and may be purging comments if the discussion goes that way. I am commenting on the statement, and not entering into discussions about the merits of the person to whom it was directed. I don't think such a comment is ever deserved, and talking trying to justify it because of "context" isn't going to fly)

Comments

[ms-tek.livejournal.com]

it is ignorant. it's not even worth replying to such a person because their mind works on such a two dimensional plane that they aren't worth it.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Dear. Me.

Not that a university-level education has done much for that pour soul's ability to construct an argument, keep track of recent history, or any other of a number of useful things you'd expect someone to get from an expensive investment like that.

Bless their little pointed head, as we say down here.


I'm so glad I spend my time at home watching weird DVDs and such, and keeping up with my roommate's dish-dirtying capabilities, instead of finding the pinheads on-line that you manage to locate.

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm just a bit...gabberflasted. Um.

Geez.

[delicata77.livejournal.com]

That's gross. I am sorry they said that.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I can't believe you haven't encountered that before. For me, that was at least the fifth time. Baby killer, paid assassin, 'isn't the Army kind of sexist?', 'you knew you'd have to kill people', 'how many people have you killed?', and so on, usually from the usual suspects. The stuff from the other side just tends to be, "you didn't do shit in Iraq, you lying bitch."

[wcg.livejournal.com]

What a jerk. They can kiss my G.I. Bill paid-for physics professor a**.

[yuripup.livejournal.com]

Pinhead comes to mind.

Then again you must have been winning the argument--they pulled out the ad hominem attack.

I would also uninvite the speaker to whatever discussion I was hosting.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Not that a university-level education has done much for that pour soul's ability to construct an argument, keep track of recent history, or any other of a number of useful things you'd expect someone to get from an expensive investment like that.

What Fidelio said. Good effing grief.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I've seen that sort of comment before, but this is the first time I've seen it tossed in as an ad hominem aside.

I've had it tossed at me, in various guises, but it was always an attempt (weak, and wrong) to make a point about the topic at hand (interrogation, war, duty, etc.).

To have it tossed out in a discussion about anything else (e.g. teaching inner city residents how to do urban gardening) is just incredible.

TK

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world. Whereas some people feel compelled to inform me that I murder infants, the ones with actual military experience seem to think their dicks will fall off if they don't insult my quality of service or something. It's quite common.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I was unclear. It was someone else who made the statement.

TK

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

I gather some people don't bother to consider why a person may join the military - economics is usually a big factor(educational opportunities both formal, informal & on the job training are included in this category) and/or a duty/obligation to serve/defend their country. I also understand that if a person joined the military solely to have the opportunity to kill, the psychological screening would find them unsuitable for military service. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

That used to be correct. Now, however...

There's lots of idealists and liberals in the military who've never fired a shot.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Crikey, some people.

[hundakleptisis.livejournal.com]

Comments like this, I think, generally stem from the anonymous nature of the internet. The highest level of insults and generally rude behaviour that I've encoutered have been in online gaming where the only recourse to such behaviour is to appeal to one of the game masters and they generally mutter sympathetic apologies and send you on your way.

Unfortunately respect, and honor, are very much in short supply on the internet.

S.J.

[redbird]

Economics is a big factor. And the remark pecunium quoted sounds as though it has more than a bit of class bias in it.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Variants on the theme go back to SEA when I was a teenager, likely delivered in the same thoughtless manner, for, as you've stated, to make the addressee the "other."

My son, who's a Marine combat engineer, had several discussions with his older sister about serving -- she's dead against it, but respects his choice and reasons.

One of the reasons she does is that he told her (paraphrasing from memory) "Everyone's saying things are screwed up and need to be fixed, I'm going to fix them."

My family's had worse reasons to go to war in the past, one of them was a family named Stuart.

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

I was really hoping not to be corrected on that one, but from reading about that one fellow who was arrested and tried for rape & murder committed while on duty in Iraq and background commenting negatively on his psychological profile, I suspect that the military ha had to lower standards with no draft in place.

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

oh I thinkso!!!

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I might say something like that to a Blackwater mercenary. I would not consider saying it to someone in the armed forces.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You don't want to be in the room when I speak with someone from Blackwater.

TK

[pindar.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be. Stupidity like this isn't just reserved to your side of the pond. The irony is that many of the "peace" lobby would find that many British servicemen would violently agree that BLiar took us into a war on false pretenses, but being the professionals we are, we are stuck doing a job we would not have chosen rather than abandon the people of Iraq. That distinction is lost on those who think that I am a baby-murdering heathen hell bent on violence and death.

[pindar.livejournal.com]

Oh come on Terry, we both know that we were, in euqal parts, too thick to be educated to the point of independant thought and that we are too warped with the lust for indiscriminate slaughter to devote our time to higher moral means. We should just be grateful that there are people out there all too ready to point out our inadiquacies that we might have that Damascan moment, see the error of our ways, and devote ourselves to the agenda of those who despise our profession. Expectantes beatam spem, as they say.

As Johnson said "any man thinks less of himself for having not been a soldier"

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'd actually rather like to be in the same (OnLine) room when (or if) you do it. (In a Real World room you would, I suppose, speak _very_ quietly, in order to attract everyone's attention in a way yelling doesn't, as well as in an attempt to keep your temper under control, and I don't hear well enough to catch many of the words.)

But yeah, the comment you cited, that started this discussion off, is totally unacceptable in the intelligent discourse universe you and I live in. Not that we couldn't, with accuracy, say such -- or equally bad -- things about some people in The Military, but merely because it's totally _ad hominem_ and was immaterial to the topic at hand, which is Right Out in any serious discussion among intellectually-oriented people.