Is That Legal?

Vicious ad hominem attacks diminish us all.

I have often wondered the psychology behind such brazenly antisocial and irrational behavior on blogs. We all know that people act differently when hidden behind an electronic veil.

But why?

Writing, for most of us, gives us a chance to pause and reflect on the thoughts we are about to convey and the words we are about to employ.

But there is something other than refinement going on in the minds of some bloggers. There is an almost animalistic desire to maim, to destroy, to violate.

Some people dream in colors. I have the unlikely ability to see verbal violence wreaked on others in animation.

In mithras' comment I see red splattered everywhere. The Mithras stands over his kill. Blood drips from his mouth. His hyaena eyes dart here and there, at once gleeful of the act and fearful of the lion. A sound behind him. He wheels around, tail between his legs. It was the wind on the leaves.

He awakes afraid and alone.

Eric-
She is one of the country's most influential scholars on federal courts and jurisdiction.

I never commented on her technical abilities as a lawyer. I commented on her politics, her sense of right and wrong, and the motives for her views.

If I am being "vicious and wrong", then please correct me. Do the links I provide go to the wrong places? Are the quotes inaccurate? Is she actually not arguing that it would be a good thing for certain people - fairly, people of certain ethnicities - not to run for subway trains? More broadly, does she not express contempt for liberals and liberalism? If she's so reasonable, it should be easy to take one of her baiting attacks and explain how it's "moderate."

I don't want to pull the conservative trick of demanding citations for every assertion. But if you really think she's reasonable, Eric, then tell me why, don't just claim it. Just because she doesn't curse doesn't mean her ideas aren't contemptible.

Marshall-
In mithras' comment I see red splattered everywhere. The Mithras stands over his kill.

You have a very vivid imagination.

Mithras,

You called her a "smug, complacent, self-absorbed, materialistic" law professor, and, more generally, a "loathesome person."

What good does this sort of thing do? This approach detracts from your point about Althouse's views on the London police shooting. It does not help it. It is also just mean, and I don't really see the point of meanness.

By the way, Mithras, when I said the attack on Althouse was "wrong," I meant that in the moral sense: it's just a bad thing to do to somebody.

I don't really see a problem with it. Its moral clarity.

There's a time for reasoned debate with people who hold vile points of view, like approving of the incarceration of entire ethnic groups on the basis of rank prejudice, of approving of the cold blooded murder of random citizens on the streets.

But there's also a time for taking a stand on the moral aspect. Not everyone who holds despicable points of view does so because they're thinking is muddled and emotional, and can therefore be talked out of it by a decent, logical person. Some people hold these views because they're worthless wastes of flesh. Saying so, shouting it from the rooftops, is worthwhile.

Racism wasn't pushed out of the american mainstream by reasoned debate. It was pushed out by the creation of a political atmosphere where a public expression of approval of racism is something from which the public recoils in disgust.

That needs to happen here as well.

Eric-
I was listing things she had in common with Reynolds. I should have put "and a" in front of "law professor." I'll correct that now.

But I am standing pat on smug, complacent, self-absorbed, materialistic and, hence, loathesome. Would "person with loathesome opinions" go down easier? Then read it that way.

What good does this sort of thing do?

Sometimes politeness is an ideology; it prevents you from saying certain things that you believe are true, or from saying things in a way that conveys the true depth of your feeling about it. She disgusts me - did my words make that completely clear? If so, I succeeded. And I have offended you, as you make clear with "vicious and wrong." But I think I am being vicious and right. As I said, I am open to evidence that I am wrong.

She disgusts me - did my words make that completely clear?

Well, I had to read between the lines a little, but I think I got it.
;-)

when I said the attack on Althouse was "wrong," I meant that in the moral sense: it's just a bad thing to do to somebody.

Morally wrong why? Is it always wrong to be mean? Or is my post disproportionate? I think that depends in part on whether you think it's factually wrong, too.

Do you read Althouse regularly? I do - as evidence, I offer the fact that I have criticized and praised her before. If you have been following the overall line of argument in her posts, I hope you would not be cutting her so much slack.

You're a nice, reasonable guy. In most cases, that would be the right approach to a disagreement. But sometimes invective is the right response to dangerous nonsense.

Yes, it is always wrong to be mean. I just asked my mother.

Try being scathing, cutting, withering, cold, blunt, skewering, back-handed, satiric, parodic, sarcastic, scornful, mocking, derisive or caustic instead. Each of these are better than being mean.

I'll agree about the personal attacks and cut-rate psychological analysis.

But I just went and read her post and...oh, my God. The first words that come to my mind are "morally repugnant," not eclectic or interesting.

I will grant that it's provocative.

Andy, I didn't mean to say that this particular post was eclectic and interesting. I meant her blogging as a whole.

The stridency in this country on all sides has reached a mind-numbing pitch.

Is it the caffeine, the trans-fatty acids, the high fructose corn syrup, or my imagination?

Prufrock has been replaced by a Kafkaesque abomination. As a country we have been reduced to electric animals, devoid of decency, programmed to react violently to the slightest whiff of adverse sentiment. (Are we reading too much Nietzsche or Rand?)

And I am left with an ineffable sadness hunched in a dark corner.

:) That's my brave smile. I've wiped my tears.

Is it the caffeine, the trans-fatty acids, the high fructose corn syrup, or my imagination?

I blame Bush.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you, Professor Muller. She implied that Menezes was responsible for his own death. She described comments which disagreed with her as "foolish". Then she claimed that those who disagreed with her assessment were motivated by hostility to the police rather than disagreement with her position. That is hardly an example of reasoned, respectful discourse so I don't worry overly about her having her feelings hurt. To use a really extreme example, if someone was to write that the Holocaust was unfortunate but at least the bodies of the dead made good fertilizer, I wouldn't feel restricted to arguing respectfully about the relative merits of human corpses vs manure or ammonium nitrate as an aid to growing cabbages.

Stil, I hope we can all agree that what Althouse said was moronic in the extreeme at best, and also morally disgusting (especially in light of what has come later- that what she's talking about was also made up.) Let's hope that she doesn't believe it. Let's wonder for a monment if she'd feel the police would be justified in putting 7 bullets in to the head of one of her kids or friends if they 'wore baggy clothes, ran, and jumped a turnstyle" (though of course we know now that this was all made up.) Disgusting.

That she is a respected law professor is a pure red herring here. What counts above all is the quality of her argument. Does she support her position with well-developed reasoning and other evidence? Is it apparent that she considered other positions and possible objections to her argument before making her case? No and no, imo.

I would have loved to have seen a provocative argument--but I didn't, at least in this one instance.

No, it's not a red herring. Mithras called her a "loathesome person." So aspects of her personhood that are non-loathesome are entirely relevant.

Wait, are you really arguing that being a law professor is evidence of non-loathesomeness?

It's conclusive evidence of non-loathesomeness, Mithras.

Eric,

I find Ann Althouse particularly loathsome. I don't know her personally and likely never will. I don't know her writing on federal jurispudence. What I do know is what she writes. She writes with an unholy smugness supporting the rightest of rightwing memes. She refuses to believe that she is firmly in that camp even though all her blog friends who are not personal friends are most definitely to the right and all her blog adversaries are to the left. She ran a poll last year where the results (unscientific as they may be clearly indicated even her readership thought she was right wing), but she concluded with the poll results in front of her that they really showed she was a centrist. Her defense to these charges are utterly predictable. 1) I voted for Gore in 2000 and I mistrusted Kerry. 2) I split my ticket. 3) Some of my best friends are liberal. 4) I support gay rights and women's choice. 5) I don't want to belong to a Left that is reactionary and says mean things. 6) I write a lot of things critical of this adminstration and Republicans.

None of these defenses really change the fact that she is pretty firmly right wing and occasionally makes idiotic, morally repugnant post. Her self-delusion is appalling and it is that refusal to acknowledge the obvious which, in many ways, is the most irksome part of her blog personality.

I wasn't that bothered by Mithras' post. Sometimes things do leave you just sputtering in outrage, and, while it's nice to remember the person you're sputtering against is human too, I don't see much harm in a little venting. I'm very bothered by what I'm reading on this thread though. Does anyone honsestly believe our only alternatives are visciousness or cringing politeness? Since when has black-and-white thinking been a virtue?

The real problem with replacing reason with outrage isn't that it's impolite, but that it's unproductive. Instead of complaining about how mean Prof. Althouse was to question her detractors' motives, why didn't Mithras point out that the source of our outrage is not "deep-seated hostility to the police," but deep-seated hostility to a police state. That was the real obscenity in Althouse's post: her implication that conformity and automatic obedience enforced through the fear of summary execution is a good thing.

Someone once said, "If the facts are on your side, bang on the facts. If the law is on your side, bang on the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, bang on the table." We have the facts on our side and we have the law on our side, but no one's ever going to know that if all we do is bang on the table.

Eric,

What does someone's occupation have to do with whether a person is loathesome or not? I would hesitate to call anyone loathesome, and I do not consider Prof Althouse anywhere close to that, but I find it disturbing that a "respected law professor" would offer such a weak argument.

I am referring to Althouse, btw.:-)

I mean, I am a history professor, and I KNOW there are some historians with questionable integrity in my profession, some of whom have already been exposed on your very blog.

Beth,

Other than the fact that you were ok with Mithras' post, your comments are right on.

I loved that last bit about banging on the table. Reminded me of Khrushchev.

Mithras! Put that shoe back on!

This topic is probably dead by now - but the BBC just chose Althouse as the American representative on the shooting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4173060.stm

As you might expect, American bloggers have had plenty to say on this. Among them is one called Ann Althouse, whose characteristic tough talk on Menenez ("a further good has been created") provoked much response, and who has since added more thoughts, maintaining that "terrorists need to get the message that this one mistake isn't going to make life easier for them".

I don't want to offend anyone, but I feel I have to comment on this debate.

Ann's analysis is absolutely awful, and very dangerous. Calling her loathesome IS not productive, but at the same time Eric's post avoids the real issue, Ann's meme, and focuses debate on Mithras. This seems not dissimilar from the Republican pattern of ignoring real issues of debate and focusing on some trivial, tangential matter (i.e. ignoring the substantive points that Joe Wilson made and only talking about his arrogance and self-importance).

This is not to criticize Eric, for whom I have a great deal of respect. Nonetheless, please, Eric, take a stand on Ann's meme. It may be better to deal with the two issues in distinct posts, one on Ann, and another on the stridency of some on the left (Mithras is certainly not the only one). It seems clear to me which is more dangerous and harmful, is it also clear to you?

The shooting was loathsome.

Ann's idea that it would teach people to be polite and stylish was loathsome.

Someone's idea that Ann's idea was loathsome was right on the money.

Eric doesn't want loathsome people to be outed. What has he got to hide?

I wear a bulky jacket and bring along a briefcase or backpack. It's my choice -- not the choice of trigger-happy cops. I ride transit in my choice of clothing and with my choice of packages. And a government that tells me I'm putting myself at risk of being shot by the government, because I'm wearing something that MIGHT allow me to commit a crime, is undermining, not supporting, a free society.

The real good that came from the shooting is that the London cops are far less likely to harass anybody else. And that is the correct reaction on their part. (They should also explicitly repudiate their policy of premeditated murder).

[Yes, I have ridden the London subways since the shooting.]