My ears are burning. First I read this
spectabillis wrote:i realize most people here have figured out what observer/traveller is about
and then this
Badger wrote:He's been gone a couple of years and now he returns.
Your worst fear. Hell, Google the clues.
Oh my, yes, I see what you mean. Like the time I fiendishly spoke up in support of the job being done by the current modstaff (
1
2), right before finding myself being attacked by them, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. Then there was the time I spoke up in support of Bob Stahl's concerns on
the Dicky Box thread and proposed a compromise that would have addressed the needs and concerns of both of the artist and of the bystander walking past the then proposed installation. My God, standing up for a member of the LLC. It's exactly what JD would have done.
Oh, wait. Didn't he hate and despise Stahl and start something called the "BMORG Can Kiss My Ass" ring? But you guys still have me nailed on the fact that I tried to get people to engage in a little give and take. How is a community supposed to endure that sort of thing?
Then there was the time I
rebutted attacks against Burning Man posted by stopburningman.org, tried to
hook up the teahouse people with the ceramicists from burningchicagoans, presented some (appreciated)
feedback on the battleboard post expiration concept and then showed my true trolling ways by
defending Camp Arctica when it was attacked by MoisturePup, exactly the way you'd expect a member of JD's posse to do.
Oops, my mistake. I hear that one of JD's alleged socks attacked Camp Arctica on the old ePlaya. What Badger is therefore asking everybody to believe is that over the last two years, I've been getting myself flamed in the course of supporting people I supposedly couldn't stand and in support of positions I've supposedly disagreed with, and stayed the course at sometimes considerable cost to my own popularity, as part of some evil plan of mine to destroy Burning Man by supporting it. How very clever of me.
This is not to say that I have never been critical of any burner at any point, but a community that could not endure reasonable criticism of its members' words and deeds would not be much of a community. When, for example, one has community members old enough to know better pitching the proverbial bitch because a property owner was unwilling to allow her property to be endangered, somebody should voice a few concerns, and
I did. By the way, so did at least one member of the Burning Man Limited Liability Corporation, twice, namely Mr.Stahl (
1 2) I supposed that he's part of my evil conspiracy to bring down Burning Man as well? Or am I him, as well?
That thread did very little to dispel the perception some hold of Burning Man - that it is a gathering of spoiled little rich kids who want to swap drugs and show off their toys in a place where they'll never have to be reminded of the uncomfortable thought that the rest of humanity does not exist for their personal convenience. This view would have been greatly reinforced by the antics of certain members of this alleged community on
the Refugee Camps a la George thread, including AntiM herself, who spoke up in defense of an alleged pair of incidents in which impoverished refugees from Katrina were supposedly placed in detention camps, in one case in the middle of the Utah desert, being told that if they were to step out of the gate they wouldn't be allowed back in, which would leave the departee without food, water, funds or transportation in the middle of a desert and not long for this world. Such treatment of refugees would have been unheard of in living memory in the United States prior to the alleged incident, and I'm glad to say that it largely still is now. Those reports never seemed to have been corroborated by any sources not derivative of them in the months that followed, suggesting that they were nothing more than attempts to smear an administration that would not sink so low as to commit the acts alleged. The sad news is that a good chunk of this supposedly progressive and caring community was ready and eager to boldly go where no modern bureaucrat has gone before - or since, and heft chips onto their shoulders about the subject on the way there. Consider, for example, that when I rebutted AntiM's defense of this alleged travesty
People were sent where there were facilities, I bet the thinking was "Get these folks to safe shelter and food and medical facilities, and then we can sort out where the families are."
Why use military bases? They're small contained cities, easy to administer to needs, and ready for an influx of people.
Ask anyone who is ex-military, civilians rarely "get it" when it comes to a working military facility and standard security practices.
by pointing out the lack of necessity for it
As for moving people to Utah, Utah is certainly no closer to New Orleans than is the Midwest, and we've been enjoying a bright, mild sunny summer, weather than no relocatee should have any trouble coping with at all. Given the fact that our cities dwarf yours, we would certainly be better set up to handle mass lodging and God knows we have more drinking water. I'm a few blocks away from a 500 foot deep supply of the stuff that covers an area much larger than that of Switzerland.
Guess how many refugees we've been offered? Judging from the fact that nobody I've run into has even heard of one, much less encountered one, apparently the answer is "none" and yes, we do have shelters, none of which offer anything resembling the prison camp experience described. Oh, and we're in the middle of America's grain belt, where most food tends to be cheaper, dropping the cost of feeding people, in a location where many have family ties to Lousiana and Mississippi, meaning that many who came would be much less likely to feel isolated, and I haven't met anybody here who has said anything other than "what can we do to help" or "we'd love to have them".
Yet the recently dehydrated get shipped off into the middle of a desert, instead, where they are not free to move and others are not free to visit. How very interesting. No, sorry, but the moment these folks were moved out of the disaster area, they became just another group of fellow citizens down on their luck. There is no reason for their housing to become a military matter, or for them to lose their civil liberties in the process.
we had AntiM, a moderator and supposed voice of reason on this board respond by acting as if she and her home state had been attacked
Yes there is a reason. Military facilities are in place and paid for already. Utah has plenty of drinking water and food, we aren't the backwards asshole of the world. Golly, we have wells and trucking companies and Wal-Marts and everything!
and responding to
a rebuttal of mine in which I dared to bring up facts known by any reasonably well informed 4th grader in the US
Utah has plenty of drinking water and food, we aren't the backwards asshole of the world. Golly, we have wells and trucking companies and Wal-Marts and everything!
Your defensiveness on this point is inappropriate, and your childish attempt to play the hysteria card is not appreciated. No remark was made in my post to the effect that Utah was the "backwards asshole" of anywhere, explicitly or implicitly, and no sane person could feel otherwise.
If, living as you do in a desert state in which the largest body of water is only a few tens of feet deep and so salty as to be nearly lifeless, you really do find yourself feeling personally offended at the suggestion that fresh drinking water is in more abundant supply in the Great Lakes area, then you need to get back on whatever medication you just went off of, because that's insane. If, as I suspect is likelier, you're trying to whip people up into an emotionalistic frenzy in which they are so busy coming to the defense of somebody who is claiming to have been wronged, that they're no longer really listening to what others are saying, then shame on you for stooping to that.
Check your cost of living index, Utah is a pretty darn cheap place to live.
Check your meds, Anti. We're a food exporter on a mass scale; Utah is heartstoppingly beautiful, but one would need a vivid imagination to see it as being either lush or fertile. We, on the other hand, having so much food here that we have to dump a lot of it, because saving it all wouldn't be cost effective. Even during the infamous drought of 1988, the year without a corn harvest, our silos came nowhere near being emptied.
Largest city in Illinois: Chicago, 2.7 million people, about 8 million
people in metro area.
Largest city in Michigan: Detroit 1 million people, 4.82 million metro
Largest city in Utah: Salt Lake City, 181,743 people, 800,000 metro
If Salt Lake City were to be picked up and moved into the Chicago area, not only would it come nowhere close to being the largest city in its area, it wouldn't even be the largest suburb for very long. The numbers speak for themselves, dear. Either Chicago or Detroit would be far more able to handle a large influx of refugees than Salt Lake City. Your sense of victimization on this issue is either feigned or seriously misplaced.
Sheltering folks in private homeless shelters and homes and churches would raise an entire different set of howls, separation of church and state,
Really? Because people have been housed here by the thousands in such facilities, and I have yet to hear the howls.
by sharing with all the news of how offended she was by basic geography
I know I'm being ignored, and after the last post (which I no longer can see unless I dig for it) I've done some plonking myself, but the "breadbasket" comments are driving me nuts.
In her case, a short trip. One might well ask how such an attempt to respond to reason with hysteria served this or any other community. I will grant that in the course of this and similar discussions the image of the community was probably tarnished in the eyes of many of the lurkers passing through, but it was not damaged by the introduction of a little reality into the discussion. It was damaged by behavior best typified by that of AntiM, our illustrious moderator, who seriously tried to claim that I had misrepresented the Great Salt Lake, by describing it as being only a few tens of feet deep and salt saturated to the point of near lifelessness. In point of fact, the north end of the Great Salt Lake is
as salty as any body of water can be under earthly conditions, having reached full saturation, and supports no life aside from halophilic bacteria. One would have to be insane to consider it as a source of drinking water, yet here we have AntiM asking all to do just that.
Such a moment makes the board look insane. The board didn't get to that moment of rhetorical self-immolation because I or any other alleged evil troll drove some of the regulars into their derangement, be it affected or otherwise. They got there on their own, because that's where they wanted to be, a fact that trying to scapegoat those of us who really have been voices of reason on this board will not dispel. I could go on and maybe at some point I will, but right now the weather is beautiful and the company is much less so, so there is a sharp limit on how much time I am willing to spend here during a day.
Spec has stated that everybody on ePlaya knows what I'm about. I doubt that everybody on ePlaya has even heard of me, but to those who have I will simply state without pride or shame that I have stood up for the truth, and for those basic individual rights which used to be supported as a matter of course, and view with no small measure of horror the thought that such a thing could be viewed as being a cause for comment at all.
