Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Why you shouldn't feed the trolls.


Back here, we have the most exciting SWC-related brouhaha going, in which increasingly-annoying commenter Olaf seems to think everyone else is obligated to do his work for him. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Olaf's argument is this single line of his:

Since the funding cuts for the SWC program have been announced, it would therefore, logically, be upto you (or others who oppose the spending cuts, which you haven't explicitly stated) to argue how such cuts will be detrimental to the goal of women's equality, and how, were the funding to be reinstated, women's equality would receive tangible benefits.

See how that works? Apparently, in Olaf's opinion, the CPoC need only announce and implement cuts utterly arbitrarily with no justification whatsoever, whereupon it will be up to critics to do all of the legwork to defend a "reinstatement" of the aforementioned funding.

How convenient for the CPoC and its Kool-Aid swilling followers -- a "guilty until you prove yourself innocent" attitude -- sort of like tossing people in jail arbitrarily and making them prove that they're not terrorists, or invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein couldn't prove he didn't have weapons of mass destruction, or ... well, you get the idea.

The CPoC never justified even minimally why the SWC deserved to have its funding cut. All we heard were horrified gasps of "advocacy" or "radical feminism," and the funding got chopped, whereupon those who want the funding restored are now expected to produce detailed justification for why the funding should be reinstated -- justification that, as I'm sure you're aware, will be invariably dismissed for one reason or another. Or simply ignored.

What a great gig. Although, in its defense, it really is the only way to be governed by the intellectually bereft. It's not like those folks have a lot of other options.

5 comments:

Olaf said...

You wouldn't want to quote the context around my statement, would you? Cause although completely reasonable, it wouldn't make for good morning reading. That's just blatant manipulation, I'm dissappointed.

Ti-Guy said...

We'll just have to bear with the rightists until they're out of government. Y'see, the rightists don't believe in government, except as a way to manipulate business regulations to favour the economic/ruling elite (or some unknown entity such as the invisible hand of the free market, which is really just a ruse) or to funnel public funds to their cronies. Otherwise, they don't want government to do much of anything.

The cuts to the SWC were politically and ideologically motivated (a sop to the so-con, blue-haired, non-orgasmic, anti-sex ignorant harridans) and a statement that classes of people who can't fund themselves the way wingnut think-tanks do (with wingnut welfare) don't deserve the chance to advocate for their civil and constitutional rights. Remember, the rightists consider wealth to be equivalent to democratic worth.

This is obvious to everyone, of course. But since the rightists are dishonest, they can't very well admit this openly, so they have to claim (baselessly) that these programmes are either uneeded or not cost-effective.

And then comes little Olaf, water-carrier for the rightists and an intellectual sloth (not to mention a very bad writer), demanding everyone else show HIM the worth of something because, as is common among solipsistic youth (and rightists) the default, uninformed belief (or opinion) is the correct one. This is, generally, the result of poor socialisation.

He'll probably grow out of it; if not, he'll be just like Peter MacKay in his 40's. And that will be a shame, because by then, it's usually too late.

Olaf said...

*sob, sob*

Ti-Guy said...

By the by, I can't decide...is Olaf more solipsistic than supercilious, or the other way around, or is that question entirely moot?

M@ said...

I'm sorry, Olaf, but I thought CC quoted you in plenty of context, and I thought he exactly got the intent of your statement.

Not true? Well, that's your responsibility to prove it, isn't it?