UpDownPoet and Ida Mint Tea

"Sadly, being a senior citizen doesn't mean you get to beat up the junior citizens." ~~Maxine~~

***I have disguised the identities of the people who I am about to ridicule as well as the name of the group to which they belong. This has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the innocent, because there are no innocents here -- just morons... with the exception of yours truly, of course. ***

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I performed a little experiment at Shelfari in the Hot Cross Press group. There is a liberal running amok in that group who falls into my 'typical fibberal' category. He relies on little if any facts upon which to base his points, and I use the term "points" very loosely because after reading UpDownPoet's gibberish, it doesn't seem to me that he has any legitimate items he's debating. All he does is assume a position of superiority and lambast anyone who offers an alternate point of view with name calling, finger pointing, and general obnoxious rhetoric. In other words, he's one of those guys I like to go after just to see what happens when someone challenges what they say. I'd hate to appear self-congratulatory here, but what the heck, it's my blog and I can do what I want. UpDownPoet is a fucking moron who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about when it comes to the Iraq issue. Zilch. Nada. Not A Thing.

This is not to say that I hold any answers either. But I do think there's room for intelligent debate about what we do now that everything we've done so far hasn't worked. We do seem to be at the end of the line, and no one is available with a quick fix or even a really good plan to get us out of the quagmire Iraq has become.

There is one person from the Hot Cross Press group who is well informed and doesn't go off into never never land when she talks about Iraq. She read an article published in The New Yorker, posted the link to it in the group, and asked what others thought about a particular assertion made by the author.

I read the article. It was well written, well researched, and definitely a good subject for discussion. Until, unfortunately, it got hijacked by UpDownPoet and one of his cronies. UpDownPoet didn't even bother to read the article he attacked. He'd rather enter into a debate with guns raining bullets on the heads of all the spectators and make wild assertions that have no basis in fact but are merely products of his over-stimulated, pathetically inept mental process.

I do not say these things about him lightly or without basis. This is his response when asked if he even read the article mentioned in the original topic of discussion:

"I do not to read anything to know what we need to do. Sorry if you can't accept that. I don't need to read anything else to know that Hitler was a bad, Jesus was a good guy and which way the wind blows.

We have lots of things we should do to fix a country that we broke, but keeping troops there is preventing us from doing any of them, so that is the first step, undo the criminal invasion, then we can begin to fix some of the related disasters we have created. staying where we do not belong, when the people there do not want us is no way for a civilized nation to behave. i am sorry if you have an issue with me pointing that out."

If there's one point upon which most everyone who talks about Iraq agrees, it is that we cannot just pull out all troops from that country and walk away as though we were never there. The reasons for that should not have to be explained to anyone familiar with the Iraq situation. UpDownPoet concedes none of that. This is because, in my opinion, he is a member of The League of People With Shit For Brains.

This is the point at which I decided to try my experiment. I wrote a response to UpDownPoet questioning his interpretation of the facts and his unfounded assertions. In my post I inquired as to whether he had any idea at all about whom he was talking because it seemed to me if he knew anything at all he could not be saying such ridiculous things. Here is his response to me:

"wow! ma titwonky, yeah richard nixon and lbj and 50,000 dead soldiers did so much more than tea and cookies. i am sorry, but you are truly an idiot, and i know name calling is a sign of a weak argument, but you are amazing. you seem to buy every piece of crap this administration throws at you. we did not invade iraq because of al quieda, but in spite of it. the iraqis are fighting the al quieda in iraq, not because of the surge, but because they are patriots who realize, as much as they dont want us around, the like them even less. we are risking people like a's husband for stupid political positions. i guess iraq is the new domino. in fact, when all of southeast asia fall it did not spread communism around the world, it didnt even create a ripplle, but the war ripped our country apart. this is the same thing 30 yrs later. wake up, maybe you are as old as your picture, probably not, but you cant be that stupid. most americans have finally awakened to this fact, i bet you still think we could have and should have won the vietnam war, even if we had to kill all of to do it and kill another 50,000 americans to do it, because somebody in office said we should."

I was prepared to rest my case, but I decided to post once more pointing out that a verbal assault on me does not prove he knows anything at all about Iraq.

Enter IdaMintTea stage even lefter.

IdaMintTea appointed herself arbiter of the verbal gymnastics match between UpDownPoet and me. She's another bleeding heart fibberal who likes to go on and on with a string of lengthy non-sequiturs that defy comprehension. She added absolutely nothing about Iraq at all; she just wanted to make something all about her.

That's when the Administrator of the group intervened. She reduced me and UpDownPoet to the level of juveniles on a playground. I pointed out that what I did was stand up to UpDownPoet's diatribe and look where it got me. He attacks me personally. I asked if she were aware that people do not express views in her group because immediately they are personally attacked. She informed me this is not "her" group. Okay, well I did assume that since she was listed as the sole Administrator of the group because she was the one who started it, that meant it was her group. I stand corrected. And confused, but never mind that.

My mission there was complete. I proved to my own satisfaction if to no one else's that there is yet another fibbie on the loose out there who has no clue about what's going on in the world, doesn't care to learn, but wants to influence public opinion to be as negative as possible.

What annoys me these days is that fibberals like him have been gaining momentum because they are so loud and so obnoxious that people who differ won't put themselves through the onslaught of personal attacks they get simply for saying "but".

Fortunately I'm of the Sticks and Stones mentality, and I enjoy a good verbal battle particularly when, as was the case with UpDownPoet, it's as easy as taking candy from a baby. And as for IdaMintTea - she's of no consequence at all. One of these days she'll just mumble herself off into oblivion and not leave so much as a wet splotch on the latest message board she's polluting with her absurd bilgewater.

If anyone is interested in reading the article that sparked this unproductive discussion at Hot Cross Press, Click Here. If that link is not working because the site is undergoing maintenance, the article appears in the September 17, 2007 issue of The New Yorker

It would be interesting to participate in a discussion about this article, but I would definitely not recommend doing it at Shelfari.com in the Hot Cross Press group.