Journal ptomblin's Journal: That cowboy attitude 1
I belong to a couple of mailing lists for pilots. One of my favourites unfortunately gets extremely political at times. A lot of pilots are extremely right wing, as you'd expect in a hobby as expensive as flying. You might have gathered that I'm *not* extremely right wing. This has lead to a bunch of blow-ups, to the point where I actually quit the list for several months. But I came back, resolving to avoid political discussions. I also took the precaution of using procmail to filter out any posts by one particular person whose hatred for my politics lead to him attacking, mischaracterizing and outright lying about anything I said, even non political statements. (By the way, Dan, if you're reading this, I'm still waiting for your apology for all the personal attacks because I said that the administration had not proven a connection between the September 11th attacks and Iraq - it appears that recently even George W Bush has had to admit that this is the case)
Anyway, a month or so ago, one of the nicer guys on the list had his plane partner and best friend die in a plane crash in their shared plane. Randy wasn't in the plane, but the loss of his friend hit him pretty hard. One of the bigger idiots on the line started mouthing off about what a terrible and reckless pilot his friend must have been to do an instrument approach in such conditions, and it was all his fault. Never mind the fact that the NTSB hadn't even published a preliminary report, never mind a little thing called tact, he just went on and on with his attacks. Randy left the list because he didn't want to be reading this stuff while he was still burying his friend and dealing with the grief. Most people were pretty mad at Greg for being such a tactless jerk.
A few weeks later, Randy came back. Somebody made some joking remark about how nothing much had changed, but that Greg had learned his lesson. Evidently Greg treated that as a personal attack, and immediately started talking about what a terrible person Randy's partner had been for killing his passengers like that. I told him to shut the fuck up. He emailed me another justification for his actions off the list. I wrote him back telling him that he's a tactless jerk, and why doesn't he just shut up? A few days later, he emailed me and said "So, do we have to do this on the list?".
It took a few back and forths before I figured out what he was getting at. It appears that he didn't get my response, and so he was "calling me out". Yes, evidently if you insult this bozo, he has to strap on his six shooter and spurs, and walk down the main street yelling for me to come out and face him like a man. And if you don't come out and face him, he'll make sure the whole community knows that you're a yellow bellied coward.
I haven't seen Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", but I understand that his take on the gun problem in the US is due to this cowboy mentality. After watching Greg in action, I can believe it.
Fortunately, I'm strong enough to eventually realize that an argument is not worth engaging in, because neither side is going to learn anything, so it's time to just let it go. Let the other guy think he's scored his points, but don't read his final emails because they'll just made you mad. Who cares if he's being a jerk, annoying or outright lying? Anybody worth caring about will spot the flaws in his arguments without you having to point them all out.
Two can play that game (Score:1)
E-mail isn't the same a real life, and the bullies come out of the woodwork.
Stand your ground, and refuse to get involved in any kind of debate. If he persists, just point out the facts of the situation: he's being extremely d