In reply to
American Power: Ban, Block and Report Walter James Casper III in 2013
Some excerpts, and my replies:
As concerns
PUBLIC COMMENTING SYSTEMS:
"Since then, Walter James Casper III has continued to stalk this blog, claiming "trolling rights" to comment here whenever he pleases. Of course, no one has a "right" to comment on someone else's blog. The right to freedom of speech guarantees freedom from discrimination by government."
The only one talking about
rights (in the legal sense) or
freedom of speech (in the government sense--though I suspect that most folks think "first amendment" for government censorship or discrimination, but view "free speech" more broadly to include other instances where one person or group tries to keep another from speaking out. YMMV...) in this situation is Dishonest Don. What I said was,
as long as he posted about me on his blog, I would not agree not to refrain from commenting on those posts just because he demanded I do so, which sent him into a spittle-flecked, semi-litrate rant just about every time I said it. (Lost to ol' Dishonest Don was the fact that while I said it, I didn't actually do it. I even let him in on the game at least once, but he still came out ranting like some drug-addled stuffed-full-of-himself-to-bursting Charlie Sheen, regardless.) (There's links for this, somewhere... I'll post 'em when I find 'em.)
And keep in mind, almost all of this whining Donald Douglas is doing is about things that happened long, long ago (in blog-time, anyway). I'm almost certain that the last comment I tried to submit to an
American Power blog post was in late January or early February, 2012. The fact that he's still this worked up about it--
and still lashing out at me on his blog and on Twitter, largely unprovoked--should tell you all you need to know about the kind of guy Dishonest Donald Douglas chooses to be.
"In denying his stalking and harassment --- criminal activity of which I have reported to the police" (and for which they've probably laughed at him profusely, and definitely done absolutely nothing about, because no matter how much Donald Douglas wishes it were otherwise, unwanted blog comments are just not covered by criminal statutes - wjc) "--- Repsac3 claims that he was only "submitting comments to an area open to public comment, in rebuttal of posts attacking me by name." See that? He was only harassing this blog on the justification that the commenting system here is an area "open for public comment." The problem, of course, is that there's no such thing as a "public" blog open to "public comments.""
Dishonest Don keeps using that word "harassment," but shows no evidence that he has clue what the word means.
"Put aside the obvious fact that Blogger blogs are owned by Google and not the U.S. or any state government (and hence privately owned), the individual proprietor of a blog, even a Blogger blog, retains all the rights to allow any and all comments at the site."
I've acknowledged the fact that a blog owner may accept or reject any and all comments at the site repeatedly, including the very first time I said Dishonest Don's "banning" was a load of horse shit:
"As long as Donald Douglas is posting a public blog that accepts comments, I'm going to continue to comment on what he posts, whenever and wherever I choose. He's welcome to delete anything and everything I contribute to his blog if he so chooses--it is his blog, after all--but that won't stop me from making the contribution in the first place, and pointing out every cowardly deletion he makes (on my blog, I mean), as well."
I don't think I could've been more clear. Donald's "proprietor of the blog" argument is a non-responsive strawman smokescreen.
As Dishonest Donald probably understands full well (no matter how hard he tries to convince his readers and other gullible fools otherwise) whether or not what one posts is a public blog (or has a comment section open to the public) is not about "rights" or "ownership," but about whether or not the blog appears in public or the comment section allows the internet hoi-polloi to post public comments. And to put it plainly, Donald's blog is public, and has always had a comment section open to the public...and he well knows it.
(As to his other point, it's worse than that... As the owners, Google ultimately decides what can and cannot appear on a blog proprietor's blog...and if a given proprietor doesn't like Google's choices, s/he can go find another blog platform. The proprietor may have rights, but it's Google that's in control.)
"And this is after being repeatedly warned to cease and desist, the legal threshold over which Repsac3's actions became criminal."
Dishonest Donald Douglas is making that up. There is no law protecting Donald from blog comments that he doesn't want, no matter how often or
BOLDLY IN CAPS he types "stop."
(That's not entirely true... If someone were actually harassing Dr. Douglas--submitting tens or hundreds of comments every day, or submitting comments threatening to injure or kill him or those he loves--I'm sure that Google and the law would be all-too-happy to make that behavior cease and desist and to punish the person(s) responsible for it, as well--and probably without Don's ever having to ask the person to stop a single time, besides.)
What Donald is talking about here are single on-topic comments (generally links to a reply post at American Nihilist) offered to those blog posts where he wrote about me, generally unprovoked. (And as often as not, prolly, I didn't actually bother making the comment. As I said above, just saying that I
might comment was enough...) I think I figured out once that it came to about 30-35 comments over a two year period. And like I also said above...that period ended almost a year ago, which makes one wonder why Dishonest Don is STILL so obsessed about it...
By developing a psychotic theory of "public commenting," radical leftist harassers delude themselves that they have a "right" to torment their targets. A blog, of course, is nothing like, say, a public park. Anyone can use the park, regardless of whether they contributed to the provision of that park, a public good, through tax contributions or user fees to the government agency responsible for providing that service. In other words, there are distinct realms of consumption of good and services. The oceans are common pool resources that no single nation-state owns. The public good problem is the incentive for one state to use more resources than it would be allowed under existing norms, regimes, or legal treaties. Even in this case, an otherwise common resource is nevertheless restricted in its use by state actors, otherwise the common resources --- say fisheries --- would be depleted. In sum, Walter James Casper III has invented a system of "public commenting" that only exists in the dark recesses of his addled and hateful mind. There is no right to comment on someone else's blog, no matter the kind of commenting system the blog uses.
Again, Dishonest Donald Douglas is arguing against a strawman he built all by himself. I never said I had a legal (or even ethical) right to have my comments appear on his blog. Indeed, I fully expected that Donald would refuse to allow them to appear, showing him to be a coward afraid to be confronted at his own blog. That's why I generally simultaneously posted the comments I submitted to American Power on my own blog, showing that they contained no threats or off-topic nonsense, and very little bad language or other content that would justify their not being allowed through moderation.
(And yes, I fully understand that a blogger can refuse to allow specific comments or commenters for any reason s/he wishes, right down to bias against anyone whose name begins with their least favorite letter of the alphabet...but we who regularly read, write, or comment on blogs judge bloggers in part based on how they treat their commenters, and especially how they handle those who disagree with them... While a blog owner has every
right to moderate away all comments written by folks whose online names begin with "R," it will affect how crazy or arbitrary the blog reading public thinks that blog owner is...and whether their online time might be better spent reading a blog with an owner more sane...)
If Dishonest Donald was really
"tormented" by my posting a single on-topic comment in rebuttal to somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3's of the blog posts he wrote talking about me over a two year period, I think the problem lies with him, not me. The fact that not one of the political, law enforcement, or legal individuals or offices he's contacted about me has ever so much as sent me a text on his behalf speaks to how serious his allegations of criminality against me actually are. (I had one lawyer tell me that his accusations of criminality are the only actionable offenses he sees between us, and that he wants to represent me. Anecdotal and worth every cent you paid to read it and not one penny more, but true, nevertheless. Unlimited quantity of salt grains available on request.)
A better question might be why Dishonest Donald Douglas was and seemingly still remains compelled to write all these posts--many of them unprovoked--where he mentions me by name in the first place. I'm not saying he CAN'T write them...but I AM saying it's mighty odd behavior for a guy claiming he has been stalked and harassed by me, and who claims to have been
tormented by the blog comments that I used to submit in reply to some of those posts. Something to really consider, that...
And one more time, for the record... I submitted my last comment to American Power in late January or early February, 2012, which was a long time before Donald ever changed to the Disqus commenting system--three to six months before, if I'm not mistaken) Not only do I not
"rue the day" Dishonest Don made that switch, I'm not entirely sure he has even successfully banned me via the
"fabulous Disqus black-listing system" at all, seeing as how I never tried to submit a comment since he made the change. (I'm also pretty sure that I actually suggested he make the change to a commenting system that has a mechanism for banning, somewhere along the line...though damned if I can find and cite where I did so, now...) ((I'll plug the cite in here, if ever I come across when/where I said it...and actually remember where the empty "socket" is by then...))
Yeah... Dishonest Donald Douglas' attempt to criminalize blog comments is still a big ol' bust, just like it has been every single time since first he ever tried to sell folks on this big bad bag of nothin'. While it may be rude, there is no law or term of service against submitting a reasonable number of on-topic comments to a blog post, even if the author or blog owner would rather that you didn't. That's why Disquis and others have such "
fabulous black-listing systems."
As regards
NO SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS:
"Repsac3, at his Twitter profile, claims he's against 'sweeping generalizations.'"
I do...and I am... But (in yet another example of my having no trouble admitting when I'm wrong, much to the chagrin of Dishonest Donald Douglas), I just went over and changed my profile. I've been using the wrong term for what I intended to argue against. What I meant to say was I'm against "hasty generalizations," and especially against hasty generalizations backed with intentionally "cherry-picked" evidence.
A sweeping generalization goes from whole to part, suggesting that because a thing in generally true, it's true for every individual. For example:
Republicans supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...
...and therefore, Ron Paul (a Republican) supported those wars.
A hasty generalization--the fallacy Dishonest Donald so often commits--does the opposite, going from the individual to the whole. Donald cherry-picks the ten or twenty communists he finds at a protest attended by fifteen hundred people, and says or implies that everyone who attends the protest or supports the cause is therefore a communist.
But don't take my word for it... Let's use Donald's own examples:
"...when union goons are repeatedly caught out as violent thugs..."
Number of "violent thugs" in this example: 3
Number of union folks attending the protest:
hundreds of union-tied protesters... Maybe even
thousands of people.
"...and when the union leadership advocates violence..."
Two links (though Dishonest Don tries to make it look like three) about one guy, Richard Trumka, and one thing he said to the press about not inflaming an already bad situation by sending in scab workers to cross a mineworker picket line in 1993. (The company subsequently did try to hire scabs, violence broke out, and one man was murdered.)
"To be clear, generalizations are a form of argument to explain general tendencies. To say that unions are violent and thuggish is a generalization that is repeatedly demonstrated as true. The examples of individual union members who do not engage in violence or thuggery don't disprove the generalization."
A generalization only explains "general tendencies" if one can show that a significant number of the whole (over half, at the very barest of minimums) actually exhibits those "general tendencies." It's not the "
individual union members who do not engage in violence or thuggery" that disproves the generalization, but that
MOST union members do not engage in the violence or thuggery that does. Besides which, it isn't
me using individual acts by individual actors to generalize about the whole...It's Dr. Douglas, so perhaps he ought to direct his argument back toward himself. What I'm saying--and what Donald apparently understands himself, at least when he thinks it works to his advantage--is that "the examples of individual
union members actors who engage in
violence or thuggery a given behavior don't prove any generalization about the larger group to which they belong." When there are hundreds or thousands of union members attending a given protest and even 10% of them commit some act of violence or vandalism while the rest do not, the threshold of Dishonest Don's "general tendencies" theory simply isn't met and neither hunts nor holds water. To say otherwise is to engage in a hasty generalization using intentionally cherry-picked evidence.
The rest of Dishonest Donald's examples--
"seat belts save lives," "progressives favor high taxes," "Occupy Wall Street," "..."--all follow that same pattern of suggesting the behavior of a statistically insignificant number individuals "speaks to" or "proves" some generality about the whole group of those individuals. (In some cases, like with seat belts, the generality itself is born out by the numbers, but Donald throws in an argument that no one's making about individual deaths even with seat belt use. Again, it isn't the individual examples that count; it's how many of them there are relative to the whole. If four people out of a hundred die while wearing a seat belt, it's an anomaly; if seventy-five people do, it's probably safe to make a generalization about the deadliness of seat belt use.)
As concerns
"LIBERAL-DEFENDER NOT LIBERTY-DEFENDER":
"Walter James Casper III has used his hate-blog American Nihilist to publish my workplace information with exhortations for progressives to contact my college administration, with the obvious intent to get me fired for my conservative advocacy and allegedly politically incorrect statements."
Quite the mouthful, but pretty much all untrue.
I have never published Dishonest Donald Douglas' workplace information.
Not only have I never made any exhortations for anyone to contact Dishonest Donald Douglas's college administration, I have repeatedly and consistently spoken out against every single person who ever has made exhortations to do so, who actually has done so, or who has ever talked about contacting any college administration about any professor's online behavior--including those times when Donald Douglas
threatened to do so (and according to some accounts, likely actually did so) and when he
posted approvingly about a mob of rightwing bloggers who contacted a school and succeeded in getting a liberal professor fired for he online partisan behavior..
According to those who did threaten to or actually did contact Dishonest Donald's college superiors, just about all of them claim to've done so in an effort to get him to stop harassing them online, which is awful ironic, in light of Donald's many protestations about me. Make of that what you will... None of them referenced his conservative advocacy or political incorrectness.
"But Repsac3 offered his co-bloggers front-page posting time to launch ideological attacks on my livelihood."
No... I never once said anything about ideological attacks on anyone's livelihood. Dishonest Donald is lying.
"The fact is that Repsac3 always had --- and still has --- editorial control over the contents published at his blog. If he didn't, then the post targeting me would still be available at the blog. (It has been edited by the blog administrator, Repsac3, to remove my contact information, as it should have been from the start, but wasn't.) Of course, it should have never been published in the first place, under any circumstances, and the "personal responsibility" for the post rests not with the author but with the person who provided the pixels at the front of the hate-blog, Walter James Casper, the blog publisher of American Nihilist."
I can appreciate that Donald Douglas has some very
nanny state ideas about personal responsibility and how one should run a group blog, but these are things that reasonable people can and do disagree about.
To me, the idea that anyone is responsible for the words and ideas expressed in a blog post or comment aside the author who wrote and posted them is absolutely crazy. To my way of thinking, each person is wholly responsible for what they themselves say, and for deciding whether and when to amend or retract their own words.
Maybe there are group blogs where the authors discuss their posts ahead of time and the blog owner approves every post is for publication before the fact...but I've never heard of a single one.
Here at American Nihilist, (and at most group blogs, I'm willing to bet) every author is his own editor and publisher. And here at American Nihilist, every author takes personal responsibility for their own posts and comments, including deciding whether and when to admit that something they wrote crossed an ethical line.
To me, personal responsibility means giving the author of an offensive post the space and freedom to defend what he's written or apologize and edit or delete his own post. Donald seems to believe personal responsibility involves having some authoritarian daddy figure step in and censor the post for that author.
Each person reading this can decide for themselves which version of personal responsibility they ascribe to and judge Donald Douglas and I accordingly. If anyone wants to take me to task for my beliefs or behavior in this regard, please avail yourself of the comment section below. No literate comment will go unanswered...
Dishonest Donald is free to run his blog(s) any way he chooses, but he is not free to dictate how other bloggers must run theirs.
"No amount of dodging can possibly escape the truth, which is why Repsac3 has been universally condemned for his intimidation campaigns among conservative bloggers and free speech advocates."
Yeah,
not so much...
Not so much at all...
"After Carl S___ and SEK launched their vicious libel campaigns at my workplace, Repsac3 praised those attempts to get me fired, remarking that such attacks worked in having me no longer blogging about those pricks."
Again, Dishonest Donald Douglas is stretching the truth.
Here's what I actually said:
"The reason most of the folks who contacted LBCC about Donald gave for doing so, was to stop him from attacking them via trolling comments on their blogs and attack posts on his own. That certainly doesn't justify their solution--though ironically, it worked, in most cases; Other than repeatedly going back to the endless well of legitimate outrage and less legitimate victimhood these incidents seem to provide for him, Donald barely mentions any of the people who contacted LBCC, anymore--but it does shed a little more light on the situation... If you explore some of the posts and comments they made about these incidents, a few of 'em sounded pretty desperate to get Dr. Douglas to back the hell off."
And if that's not enough,
here's what I said when Dishonest Donald first tried to spin my words about his focus on the guy who didn't (and said in no uncertain terms that they shouldn't have), rather than all the guys who did:
"What I said was, Donald barely mentions the folks who contacted LBCC anymore... And correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what Donald just said, too... I don't know his reason... Maybe it's because they took action against him, or maybe it's just because they're "no longer worth Don's time." But whatever the reason, aside these ridiculous whiny, weepy "I'm such a victim" diatribes, Donald barely mentions the folks who actually contacted LBCC, anymore... For whatever reason, Donald would rather lash out at me over this whole "workplace intimidation" thing, even though I never contacted anyone... I leave it to others to deduce why..."
I fail to see how I could've been more clear.
"Further, as the left's campaigns of lawfare and workplace intimidation have become widespread, Repsac3 has repeatedly defended the hate and laughed off attacks on conservatives has "wingnut" whining."
One only has to read the posts and comments I've written discussing "
Team Kimberlin" to see how far off the mark Dishonest Donald is as regards lawfare. My posts about workplace harassment--including those situations involving Donald, himself--show him to be lying there, as well. As far as
"wingnut whining," I could only find one
tweet, which had to do with Michelle Malkintent and the supposedly liberal media... What Dishonest Donald was referring to is anybody's guess...
"So, for all of my readers and blog allies, remember that this is a dangerous ideological opponent and political enemy who is working to do harm to those with whom he disagrees. Like Zilla of the Resistance has advised, the best remedy is to ban these assholes, block them from your comments sections and block and report them on Twitter for stalking and intimidation."
Yeah... I don't even know what to say to that, except to suggest that, rather than taking Dishonest Donald Douglas' (or anyone's) characterization of another person as Gospel, folks ought to read what that person has to say and see how s/he behaves toward others firsthand, and then judge for themselves.
Please do...
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Links:
American Power: Ban, Block and Report Walter James Casper III in 2013
Oh noes!!! "Repsac3 Banned from American Power"
Donald Douglas just can't let me go
Donald Douglas Abuses His Google
“Shoot, I’m not even always right, LOL!” - Lawyers, Guns & Money
American Power: Jeff Goldstein Knows a Thing or Two About Low-Life Leftist Scum
Donald Douglas - An Ethical "Push-me, Pull-you"
What'd I Say?: In Reply: "I never thought that person did it because of their political leanings, I think they did it because they were cowardly bullies." (Popehat, Team Kimberlin, Donald Douglas)
Saberpoint: Strange Things Are Happening....Donald Douglas Annoyed by Leftwing Blogger
Online Disagreements and The Offline World We Live In...
Dishonesty and Ad Hom: Is this all Donald Douglas Has?
What'd I Say?: Search results for Kimberlin
Twitter: "Whiny Wingnut Victim"
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Dishonest Donald Douglas Cries "Victimhood!!!" (and changes the definitions of common words to "prove it.")
BTDT FAQ Files - Workplace Harassment
Obsessed much, Dr. Douglas?
---
If it was one of Dr. Donald Douglas’
many specious accusations and allegations about W. James Casper (repsac3) that brought you to this site, either directly--or far more likely, via your own due diligence (Dr. Douglas seldom actually provides links or citations, himself--please go back to the post, comment or tweet you read, and see whether Donald 1) paraphrased and characterized whatever it is he is claiming Mr Casper said or did, or 2) provided quotes, citations and links to Mr Casper’s
actually saying or doing the thing Dr Douglas is alleging.
And then really think about why Donald Douglas (almost certainly) didn’t do the latter, and what that omission tells you about how seriously anyone should take his accusation(s)...
It'd be one thing if the primary source material of Dr. Douglas' complaint was no longer available to read and view in full context,
verbatim, in whatever place he originally found it. But I know of no instance where that is the case. Donald Douglas is intentionally keeping his readers from the primary sources of his many complaints, and it's incumbent on every honest reader to take that fact into account, and to judge both the complaint and the complainer accordingly...
(Try it yourself. Decide on a page and link number--say the fifth link from the bottom on the ninth page of
the Google search link above (pick your own page and link location, obviously)--and see for yourself whether Dr. Douglas backs his accusations against Mr Casper with anything concrete (quotes, links to or screencaps of exactly where he said or did whatever Donald is accusing him of), or whether it’s all paraphrase and characterization. While there may be exceptions, in the vast majority of cases there will be no quotes, no links, and no screencaps. There will just be Dr. Douglas
telling you what
he claims Mr Casper said and meant--as well as telling you exactly how you should feel about it--rather than
showing you the supposed offense firsthand, and letting you judge it for yourself.)
While folks like Donald and liars like him want to hide what those they disagree with have to say by moderating their comment sections for content and limiting the number of verbatim quotes, citations, and links they use when blogging, I want nothing more than to give folks every opportunity to read exactly what they have to say, in all of it's contextual glory, and thus will quote and link to their exact words as often as I can...
Please read what Donald Douglas has to say about me and about the world in general. Weigh his arguments (as well as the arguments of those who disagree with him, of course), judge as fairly as your conscience allows, and come to your own conclusions.
I ask for nothing more.
And I ask for nothing less.
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Oh yeah... The tweets...
The call for helper-trolls (which seemingly didn't get a whole lotta response):
...and the cliquey mid-teen mean-girl attack (which oddly, did... Go figure.):
Gotta love this crazy fuck... Yeesh!
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Added:
Oh lookie... Another
wingnut "blogger ally" using "he must be a faggot" as an attack against someone they disagree with politically... Could these assholes
BE any more predictable? (or homophobic?)
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An
American Nihilist X-post
