Generals Gone Rethuglican; or, Shattered Faith & Pressing Deadlines

UPDATE #4

The General has requested that I not contact him through email again.  You read the email I sent him below, so it must be obvious to you why he reported my address to abuse@gmail.com.  Clearly, he is the one being abused.  He is the one whose career is being threatened by the actions of one of his commenters ... wait, that's me. I will honor his request—and would have, even if I had not independently discovered the IP address of the man stalking me—and would inform him of such, but doing so would constitute harassment. 

The strange thing is, by virtue of being harassed by one of his commenters, I have been summarily banned from commenting on Jesus' General.  I think this speaks volumes about the General's priorities, but I don't want to speculate.  Maybe he is not trying to defend the person whose identity he conspired to hide from me.  Two days ago, I would have given him the benefit of the doubt.  Today?  Not so much. 

My fear is that they will begin slandering me over there again, and I will have no recourse to respond.  (I will not stoop to using proxies.  What I write online I write under my own name.  This is a matter of principle.)  If my fellow liberals should choose to slander me again, I would not be upset if one of you voiced your dissent. 

On another note, in the comments I see two trends emerging.  The first is that I'm experiencing my first taste of how liberals behave. I don't buy it.  Many of the General's commenters have expressed their outrage both in the comments and via email.  I do not believe the actions of "John Casper" or the General reflect upon liberals at large.  A certain type of liberal whose life plays out online, maybe, but these clowns do not represent the left.

The second trend is that I should remove the gloves, pick up a roll of quarters and give as good as I'm getting.  I can't stomach that. I'm not some common internet thug.  I know who "John Casper" is.  I know where he works.  I even know his home phone number.  I may be a brawler, but I am no tattler.  I will not tell his employers what he does on company time.  I will not stoop to his level.  I believe in the medium, no matter how much "John Casper" and the General shake my faith.

The irony in all this is that I need to put the finishing touches on an article espousing the virtues of blogging sometime tomorrow.  You may be surprised to learn that I'm not as sanguine on the idea of online communication as I once was.  I hope that this all passes over, and that my optimism returns shortly, so that my praise for the possibility of online criticism might not ring hollow ... but who knows.  Maybe tomorrow I'll toss my hands in the air and declare that I'm done with all this.

After all, if the anonymous can effectively calumniate this easily, there may be no place for the likes of those who would own up to their words.

Comments

[Dr. Virago]

Scott, I'm just catching up on all of this business and I just wanted to comment to say: Wow. This really sucks. I'm thinking of you and hoping it all blows over soon.

[Thers]

why won't you just curse blogger and erase your blog?

I did that myself once. It worked out pretty well, actually. A bit drastic, but it did defuse the situation.

Not that I recommend that as a course of action here. I've been there, Scott, & I sympathize. I think you're doing the right thing by declining the invitation to escalate. Hang in there.

[Timothy Burke]

Also catching up. Basically just my sympathies here, and a hope for the sanity and mad online reading skilz of all at UC Irvine.

[daelm]

scott, delurking to say that I think you should consider getting legal opinion, and then reserve action until you see which way this goes. also to say, if it's really bad and it screws up your life, remember: at least it was the cause for belle's comment. which is genius. yay. upside.

[Nonpartisan]

Your silver lining, at your service: I hadn't heard of you before this dustup, but I'll definitely be linking to you now.

[flawedplan]

How wonderful that you're working on an optimistic paper on blogging in the midst of this mess. Keep the faith, please don't hang up your blog, this place is like college, not everyone got to go to college!. Good schooly blogs are hard to find, this one is very welcoming.

No one ever *knows* if what they do is right. People fuck up and grow. The General is going through a time too.

[anon]

The General's stance regarding IP addresses and privacy seem eminently reasonable from a privacy standpoint.

I don't see why you linked to them and think he is out to do you personal harm.

Contact haloscan, and blogger with the proper authorities regarding defamation. I assure you haloscan and blogger deal with the fbi, et. al., all of the time.

I don't see some of my posts of the past several days. Sorry that the so called "liberal" feminists have started up all of this crap. You appear to be collateral damage to the speech and thought police.

But again, the General as Rethuglican for having a solid privacy policy? As much as your troubles are unwarranted, that's an asinine position to take.

[Xanthippas]

But again, the General as Rethuglican for having a solid privacy policy? As much as your troubles are unwarranted, that's an asinine position to take.

"Solid privacy policy"? What does that even mean? A more solid privacy policy would have some flexibility as well. And again, lets remember that we're talking about a blog here, and protecting the privacy of someone who has not only posted comments for the public at large to read, but gone WAY out of his way to have his comments read by 3rd parties. We're not talking about the privacy of someone who doesn't want the credit card number they used to book a hotel sold to a 3rd party. There is a difference between protecting someone's privacy and protecting someone's ability to harass and slander anonymously, and a "solid" privacy policy would account for that.

[anon]

And if it's slander, then get a lawyer, file a suit, subpoena and depose JG and his ISP. That's how it is done.

The other thing is, that not being you, a reading of the General's blog tells a completely different story. Maybe he is some sort of public fooling schizoid man, but reading his blog post-facto, his posts and actions seem entirely reasonable and principalled, and he is not calling you some sort of Rethuglican. (This is the sort of dipshit namecalling that Auntie B started when she called him a misogynist because her type sees misogyny everywhere.) Don't be a dipshit too, Scott. Use your bean.

Until then stop asking people to invade other people's privacy.

You folks claim to be progressives, but you are not acting like it.

I dunno Scott, perhaps you aren't the progressive you think you are. It may explain why you find yourself in so many strange beds this week.