The Latest #politics tragi-comedy

Posted on September 25, 2002 in IRC/Chat

I’m probably in line to be perma-banned from #politics because I told an op off in private. This time it was Basker who first fell all over himself on the channel jumping on me for rebutting, in no uncertain terms, the repeated contention by another chatter that God was behind George Bush — even after I stopped. The other chatters kept going.

After blowing off on the channel, (I could see that I was getting too hot) I took my complaints to Basker off channel. He patronized me:

[19:45] <Basker> Hold it. I did not ‘come down on you’. I thought I was a polite and gentle as possible is putting a halt to something that had run its course in the channel. As I said, I am not Cerebus and do not see everything, but I do call what I see. I can do no more. Okay


[19:47] <EmperorNorton> YEs, you fucking came down on me. cator has been going on and on about his GOd thing and what I said was a direct response to that. You let Rix and cator get away with crap and then said you couldn’t keep up. If you can’t be even handed, then resign because you can’t be fair.


[19:47] <EmperorNorton> Everyone who is paging me is asking what the fuck YOUR PROBLEM is because you haven’t said anything to cator or Rix.


[19:47] Okay — you want to be nasty when I have tried to be polite — suffer the consequences.


[19:47] <EmperorNorton> Basker in private? You’re going to come down on me [for a] private?


[19:48] <EmperorNorton> YOu come over to #peanut_gallery again and talk about this. But this time, I’m not deopping. You can feel what it is like to disagree and not know what is going to happen next.


[19:48] <Basker> You do not talk to an op in that tone of voice nor to me in public or private.

I waited a few minutes, then reentered the channel which was not barred to me. The one exchange I had there was:

[19:51] * EmperorNorton comes back cooler.


[19:53] bush is the worst president the u.s. has ever had in its history


[19:53] LarryJ`, Franklin Pierce runs a close second.


[19:53] *** Basker sets mode: +b *!*@66-81-16-214-modem.o1.com


[19:53] *** You were kicked by Basker (insulting language)

The point that began this bears on this: if someone starts saying that God is behind America, it is perfectly reasonable to refer to the Bible in rebuttal. Which is what I did. When asked to stop, I did. But the op who did it gave no warning to the fellow who kept repeating that God was on America’s side or to a Jewish woman who made disparaging remarks about Islam and Christianity — though these things are explicitly prohibited under the channel rules.

Basker’s excuse may have been valid, but his response wasn’t entirely ethical. Private exchanges are not matters for action on channels. An op or any chatter can choose to use /ignore at any time. I state that any op who cannot separate the channel from privates should not op. Furthermore, I see a better way Basker could have handled this.

An op must realize that people will get upset and lose their temper. He must avoid the appearance of patronizing. If someone complains of unequal application, it is not enough to say “I did my best”. The evidence remains in the op’s log. He may scroll back and test the claim. If it is true, he may act to rectify things.

Basker did not do this. He could have settled things by making a general call for an end to religious references. Rix2 seized upon the confusion to make a disparaging remark about my blog which a friend, JimL, rebutted as a personal insult to me. (I don’t know what it was. I have learned to keep this person on /ignore.) He could have gone back and given her a warning, which never seems to happen on #politics when the mushy middle attacks either of the extremes. Instead, the focus remained on me, even after I stated quite clearly that I was dropping it. I reacted to this and Basker reacted to my protest in a high handed way. My profanity was not uninvited by his cold attempts to deflect criticism. I did keep it to private.

Ultimately, I think we all must learn to live with the discomfort that some people around us are religious and some are not. It’s not much of a discussion if one side can chant “God Bless America” and another cite the central texts of the faith of the person in question as rebuttal.

I strongly suspect that Basker, like many atheists, wants the religious viewpoints expressed around him to be contradictory and wrong-headed because these don’t challenge his atheistic certainty. (I am an agnostic. I honestly don’t know, but if you’re going to claim to follow Jesus when you go off gunning for Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein, I am going to remind you about turning the other cheek.) This probable conflict of interest in dispensing channel justice undermines his authority. To recover from the damage he has done to his reputation, he must realize that he does this.

Freedom of speech means that people can say things that make me uncomfortable, but they cannot expect that I will not respond in kind. If they say that God is behind this war, I am within my rights to rebut them. If I cannot bring in the Bible to test such a claim, then they cannot make it. The uneven enforcement of secularism in this context has the curious effect of promoting fundamentalism. No one should be banned for pressing an alternative when slogans are getting shoved down their throats.