...and the funny thing is how much things have changed in a relatively short time.
A lot of people are gone. Some people are dead.
Castle was, ironically, on the side of Anc and gul, if my humble editing is to be believed. Talk about your useful idiots. He sure got threw under the bus in a big way.
Another irony is that I saw RickDeckard as the most dangerous person to get in power. Who knew it would be sweet inclusive John? W.
Um. Me. About two weeks after I first encountered him when he popped a cork and everyone in TNZ went "OMG! Not John!"
I grew up around hard core Southern Baptist preachers. Talking the gospels, talking ethics and the right thing all the time does not rule out being a rather mean and ruthless person. They are almost unrelated. Most religious folks are genuinely warmhearted and honest, but others wear their religion like a suit of armor they inherited. One handy test is to see how they react when something gets under their skin. Some fly into a rage and reveal the blackest of hearts. Some nurse hatred and vindictiveness. They may strive to be better than that, and are fine as long as they stay away from the wrong stimulus, situations, and opportunities, but handle with caution because they aren't strong enough to resist their nature.
Americans might better relate to this if the person was the villain in an aristocratic British costume drama. The person has the speech, mannerism, upbringing, and behavior of a true and noble gentleman. But that's not who they are when there's something they want or someone they want to hurt. So you have this fine, noble, well-mannered gentleman pursuing someone's utter destruction. They don't turn into Dr. Jekyll. Their speech and mannerisms don't change. They don't ever sound like a gutter rat. And yet they do horrible things. And they especially target those who see through their disguise.
Now of course none of that would apply to Anna, who is a sweet person in a tough situation, and perhaps too easily persuaded by others.
I don't know enough about gul to have an opinion.
That may surprise some, and more strangely, I have trouble telling some of you apart. In most cases I'm not really interacting with a person in a forum, I'm letting the concepts in my head do battle with the concepts in their head. I am generally responding to a previous comment. Not really the person who made the comment, but the comment itself.
The comment was left by a person, and we're both people, and we both have ideas in our heads, but the ideas in our heads are not who we are. They are not people, they're ideas. We are more than the fluff of the economic and political theories we picked up in the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. I try to understand my ideas inside out, and have nurtured and tested them enough to be quite confident they will prevail in a debate. But faith in an untested idea is a blind faith. There will be gaps and holes that you won't even suspect until you put your idea in combat with a competing idea. But in debate, there's also how you deploy and maneuver your ideas against other ideas, and for that you need an opponent, a good opponent, because ideas must be tested, arguments tried and tried again to expose their weaknesses. And for that you need a debate forum, and for the forum to work you need people willing to debate.
This approach is of course bound to impact my debating style because I'm trying to find positions where my ideas will win or where I need to swap out to a new set of ideas. The goal is to end the game not with victory, but in possession of the best ideas. So when my debate opponent has a winning position based on one board position, I'll redeploy my pieces as best I can to change the board position. If I lose, I learn from it and try not to repeat the mistake or discard the pieces (ideas) that were flawed or weak, or take note of their particular foibles. "Don't leave that pawn undefended." In theory, my opponents are learning from this too. Ideally, we are both making each other smarter. In theory, we are also making all the spectators smarter. Not perhaps in general intelligence, but in the fitness of their ideas against other ideas. And having a brain full of fit ideas is conducive to general success in life. If nothing else it can make you entertaining at parties, especially ones where you find yourself in a room full of losers.
So where some at WF are scratching their heads at why I would contact someone who I seem to disagree with most strongly, or that assume I was reaching out to my bitterest enemy, I ask if they've ever watched someone spar? The person their sparring with, even as they're both bleeding, is not their enemy. There is no hatred or disrespect running through their veins.
They may trust their sparring partner with their life, and give their life to defend his, and both might not trust their own right-hand man.
Who you debate and who you trust and who you like are completely different questions.
I trust El Chup because I've debated him in bitter combat and yet he is still fair, willing to take hits if his position demands it, and willing to sacrifice self-interest to higher principles. That's rare. It shouldn't be, but it is. Lots will talk the talk, but he is walking the walk. That takes character.
And when we're back in a proper forum we will again be at each other's throats, because that's what we do. My ideas will battle his ideas as we deploy our best arguments.
