Katrina Rabble Sightings

[Lathanar]

Well, he obviously didn't read my blog where I trashed Liberal Demos and Ted Kennedy then I got some slaps by the left. As for physical harm to those who politics I disagree with, well frankly, I think Tom was practicing the old "Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud." As for Bubba, what you got against a little companionship?

Why should he read your blog? Why would your trashing of libs on there justify your rants on here? I imagine you were 'slapped by the left' for spouting the type of things you are here.

How many hits dose my blog get? Please tell me. And yes, my response was aimed at the lack of sensitivity of Dismuke. I know of elderly people who died in their attics, not because of Katrina; but because of a Governmental agency that admits to have made errors in constructing levees to protect the people of New Orleans and the Port of New Orleans. Their race, class or religeous beliefs and anything else that "our" or should "I" say "My" constitution provide protects all of us, even those who could care less about just plain decency towards another human being.

Let me remind you of what you posted (ignoring the garbage characters the dirve crash inserted).

I was surfing the net the other day when I stumbled upon some disturbing generalizations about me! Well, not exactly about me, but if you are from Louisiana, you can't help but take this kind of garbage personally. And yeah, I know it’s old stuff but I believe this perception continues to exist in some corners and since I cannot find an apology, follow up or retraction from the author, a person from Ft. Worth, TX who calls himself “Dismuke”; I figured—Blog it. I mean, hell, it’s still sitting there today for anyone to read. It is still as hurtful, insulting and distasteful today as it was the day it was posted. And—I just got plain angry and decided if “Dismuke” wanted to put this out there for people to read, then I would assist him.

The point of your response to him was that you were offended at what he said, where in this is anything about the people who died or the government's mismanagement of the response (which I might add is 95% on the shoulders of the state government for which I suppose you'll take as a generalized attack against you again.). If you had simply tried to refute his post by showing what he was stating about the 'refugees' was wrong, you would have had a chance, but you didn't. You attempted to ridicule him by lashing out at corrupt Texas politicians. How is this showing Dismuke's insensitivity to those that died which you somehow preceived? You later lash out again by posting two quotes from Hitler on his Nazi party philosophy, saying Dismuke would obviously agree with them (which, by the way, is a pretty reasonable assumption that your referring to him as a Nazi). Once again, you never try to state how Dismuke is wrong in his statements. You keep spouting things with no evidence to back them up, such as the Reagan comment, so how would you expect anyone to accept your case? Try sticking to a little fact about what is being posted for once, if you can.

[Dismuke]

I never said he was a Nazi. If they had not taken down my post, you would see that. I suggested a little reading for him may be in order. Besides, didn't Ayn admire Joe McCarthy?

I do have a request for the moderators to please allow Dangle to say whatever he likes in this particular thread about this particular topic so long as he is not rude to anyone else (he can be rude to me if he likes) without taking his postings down.

As to Joe McCarthy - no, Ayn Rand was not admirer of him and I seem to recall that she actually wrote a negative comment about him somewhere. Unfortunately, I am having trouble remembering where exactly I read it. Ayn Rand was a willing witness at the HUAC hearings - but that does not translate into an admiration for McCarthy.

In closing, what began this discussion was Dismuke's insensitivity to those who lost everything and to those who died. I have answered him and he has answered me back.

The whole problem, Dangle, is if that was the point you wished to make, there are intelligent and rational ways that you could have gone about doiong so. For example, you could have pointed out in your initial posting the facts that you presented in your last posting: people dying in their attics and such.

The simple fact is, however, a normal person reading your first posting would have no idea what you were specifically concerned about. All they would have known was that you disliked my posting. In fact, my first guess when I read it was that you were likely some sort of pro-Louisiana chauvinist who has a knee-jerk reaction against any sort of negative comment made about the state. Another more charitable possibility also occurred to me: that you felt that I was inappropriately stereotyping people from Louisiana by attributing the charactersitics of SOME people from Louisiana towards ALL people from Louisiana.

Instead of making your point - you basically asserted that I was a nasty, rotten person and then went off on some sort of wild tangent about various politicians from Texas as if, somehow, your attack on Texas politicians is going change my mind about Louisiana or offend me in some way because they just so happen to be from the state that I am from.

Had you made your point rationally, I would have responded accordingly. I would have disagreed with your assertion that my remarks were "insensitive" - but I would have politely elaborated why I continue to stand by them. I would have also conceded that, had I put my posting up on a forum or other venue that was targeted towards a more general audience, then, yes, the posting would have been inappropriate. It would have been inappropriate because I would have had no basis to expect a general audience to understand exactly where I was coming from on such issues.

What is important for you to understand, Dangle, is that my posting was put up on an Objectivist message board and was intended to be read by an audience that is sympathetic towards Objectivism - i.e., an audience that agrees with and shares the same premises of the author of that TIA Daily article that I linked to in my last posting. Such an audience has the specific background knowledge necessary to understand that I was not poking fun of decent people from New Orleans who fled, lost property, lost loved ones or who died. Nor was I poking fun of refugees in general. I was poking fun of people who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives and expect decent and productive people to bail them out of every emergency that comes up in life as an entitlement and, when such assistance is provided to them, they don't even have the decency to be grateful and instead act obnoxiously and squander other people's hard earned money on expensive non-necessities.

Since you are very obviously not an Objectivist, Dangle, I would have no expectation in the world whatsoever that you would understand the point of the humor in my posting. For that reason, had you explained in a rational and fact-based manner that you found it offensive and insensitive - well, I would not have agreed with you, but, at the same time, I would have considered your reaction to have been understandable and reasonable given your lack of knowledge about the context that my posting assumed.

Please go back and re-read your posting in as objective a manner as you know how. The only thing you actually said that had anything to do with my posting was your assertion that it was "hurtful, insulting and distasteful" without offering any explanation at all as to why this was the case. All you accomplished in your posting was to perhaps vent some of the anger you felt - as if the fact that you feel angry or disapprove is going to somehow change my mind or anyone else's.

Bottom line, Dangle, my primary beef with you all along has not been so much that you disagreed with my posting and found it offensive but rather with the way you went about attempting to communicate your disagreement.

Is it safe to say that Texans are a bunch of loud mouth red necks who.......

Dangle, what on earth does Texas and Texas politicians have to do with the matter? Ask yourself this: what if I had been from Arkansas or Massachusetts? Would you have still rambled on about Tom Delay, Bush, Haliburton, etc.? All of that is just so totally besides the point. The particular state that I happen to live in is also totally besides the point. And to assume that just because I am from a particular state that insulting and spinning conspiracy theories about politicians from that same state is going to somehow either offend me or change my mind on matters - well, that is just simply bizarre. On what possible basis would you conclude that such an approach is going to accomplish anything at all towards effectively communicating the central point that you wanted to express?

How many hits dose my blog get? Please tell me.

His statement regarding your blog traffic was in response to something I said. When you emailed me your link to your blog and I followed it I entered the URL in google to see how many other websites link to your blog - which, more of than not, is a pretty decent (though certainly not infallible) indicator of how popular a given website is.

Well, he obviously didn't read my blog where I trashed Liberal Demos and Ted Kennedy then I got some slaps by the left.

Dangle - I looked at your blog the day you emailed me the link to it and I looked at it the following day when you put up some additional remarks about how easy it would be for you to "take Dismuke out" or something along those lines. I have not been back to it since.

Dangle, there are twenty gazillion blogs in this world - and with the sole exception of Noodle Food which I am positively addicted to, I rarely follow any of them. I subscribe to four email discussion lists on various subjects that I am interested in - one of which sends me on average between 80 and 100 postings per day. I subscribe to TIA Daily which I linked to in this thread and which, as the name suggests, is published daily. In addition to Objectivism Online, I regularly follow and occasionally participate in two other (non-Objectivist related) discussion boards on top of the discussion board I own and moderate about early 20th century music and pop culture. While I do my very best to keep up with all of the postings on my own message board, I rarely manage to read but more than a small fraction of the postings on the other discussion boards. Bottom line, Dangle, I already have more cool and interesting reading material about things that I am passionately interested in placed before me each day than I could ever possibly get to. So the notion that I should somehow follow your blog based on the mere fact that I know it exists - well, I am afraid that is the height of presumptuousness on your part.

Edited May 8, 2006 by Dismuke

[Bold Standard]

I never said he was a Nazi. If they had not taken down my post, you would see that. I suggested a little reading for him may be in order. Besides, didn't Ayn admire Joe McCarthy?

Deleted posts remain on the board in the Trash Can for a certain period of time, so your posts can still be accessed for now. So I'm confused.. were you saying he should read Hitler? Are you an advocate of Hitler's ideas? Bhuddism? "Rage and hate"? Prayer in school(?!)? Or were you intending to accuse Dismuke of these things... You really lost me there.

Ayn Rand gave a fascinating testimony before HUAC, but I'm not aware of her ever saying anything positive regarding Senator McCarthy. She later refferred to the hearings as "a dubious undertaking," and "futile." There is a book out now, by Robert Mayhew, discussing the hearings and AR's involvement in them, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.

Is it safe to say that Texans... live in a capitalistic state

I wish!

[Dismuke]

There is a book out now, by Robert Mayhew, discussing the hearings and AR's involvement in them, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.

I bought the book in April of 2005 when I went to New York City for the Ayn Rand Centennial celebration. ARI had a display there of books for sale and that is the one I purchased. My thought was I could read it on my plane trip back. Bad idea: since I hate flying and being on a plane is a very stressful experience for me - well, let's just say that I really was not able to concentrate on the book very much. I managed to read the first couple of chapters on the making of the pro-Soviet propaganda film Song of Russia and that was about it.

Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is your posting reminded me about the book and that I really ought to finish it. So I just pulled it off the bookshelf - and out of it fell a piece of stationary from the conference hotel with a few notes I had scribbled during the lectures. One of the lecturers mentioned the Ambassador Theatre which was where Night of January 16 was performed. I had made a note to add that to my list of places to see during the remainder of the time I was there. Well, my note did not do me much good because, until right now, I forgot all about it. Yikes! I just found some info online about the place and some photos at: http://www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1036 But it would have been cool to see it in person - especially since I was in that same neighborhood a number of times on that trip.

Based on that one chapter, I do recommend the book. That chapter goes into great detail about the power that the OWI - The Office Of War Information - had over the motion picture industry. The office was staffed by New Dealers with pro-Soviet sympathies - and these people had a major say in the behind the scenes makings of motion pictures. What I have read so far covers a lot of history that I simply was not aware of.

[Dangle]

What is important for you to understand, Dangle, is that my posting was put up on an Objectivist message board and was intended to be read by an audience that is sympathetic towards Objectivism - i.e., an audience that agrees with and shares the same premises of the author of that TIA Daily article that I linked to in my last posting. Such an audience has the specific background knowledge necessary to understand that I was not poking fun of decent people from New Orleans who fled, lost property, lost loved ones or who died. Nor was I poking fun of refugees in general. I was poking fun of people who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives and expect decent and productive people to bail them out of every emergency that comes up in life as an entitlement and, when such assistance is provided to them, they don't even have the decency to be grateful and instead act obnoxiously and squander other people's hard earned money on expensive non-necessities.

You have it right. Your first post belonged here; I didn

[Lathanar]

Wow, I haven't laughed this hard in years.

[Dismuke]

At some point a tragedy will hit you and you will find yourself not only questioning your philosophy, ethics, morality and your purpose, you may have to go into the

[RationalBiker]

I'm am out of here.

I can only hope that this statement is factual because the rest of your response is an unconscionable evasion.

[Capitalism Forever]

What you report about those conservatives probably does not come as much of a surprise to most people here.

I'm almost sure she was lying when she wrote that. People like her like to fantasize about such conversions and frequently post their fantasies to message boards. See www.democraticunderground.com(*) for hundreds of illustrative examples.

Have a nice life, Dangle.

I'm afraid she'll find that too much to ask for.

----

(*) CAUTION: Hippie-infested website. Proceed at your own risk.

[Sherry]

Wow....one has to work really REALLY hard to misunderstand a philosophy that badly.

Good ol dangle...giving it the communist try.

[Bold Standard]

Based on that one chapter, I do recommend the book. That chapter goes into great detail about the power that the OWI - The Office Of War Information - had over the motion picture industry. The office was staffed by New Dealers with pro-Soviet sympathies - and these people had a major say in the behind the scenes makings of motion pictures. What I have read so far covers a lot of history that I simply was not aware of.

The website for C-SPAN's American Writers series has a panel discussion on "Ayn Rand, Communism and the Hollywood Blacklist," if anyone's interested in this topic.

[Edit: For some reason it doesn't link directly to it, so you have to click on "Watch the program," and then the link to the panel discussion is on the right. Michael Berliner, Jeff Britting, and Scott McConnell are the panelists, moderated by Yaron Brook.]

Edited May 19, 2006 by Bold Standard

[Dismuke]

The website for C-SPAN's American Writers series has a panel discussion on "Ayn Rand, Communism and the Hollywood Blacklist," if anyone's interested in this topic.

Thanks for that link. I was not aware of that program - or that it and other programs, including a 1961 interview with Ayn Rand were even available on the web. I very rarely watch TV unless there is a tornado heading my way so I have never bothered to subscribe to cable. Nice to know I can catch at least some of the small handful of things that I would actually watch and enjoy if I had cable.

[softwareNerd]

Here's a more direct link.

[Bold Standard]

Ah, thanks.. I remember they had a link to that up at the ARI website when it first aired, but I just stumbled across it again the other day. Some interesting stuff..