What is with folks obnoxiously demanding to know where other people’s proverbial “lines in the sand” are (see here, here, and, hell, all the way back here)? (1) It is rude (both the question, and how it is delivered the vast majority of the time). (B) It is none of your gorramed business. And (III), do you honestly think I would be stupid enough to publicize when I might start taking a… more-proactive stance… in protecting my rights?
Look, if you want to go braying from the rooftops about the exact place and time when you will start voting from those same structures, shiny – but for the love of all that is Holy and Good, stop acting so offended and put-out when people understandably tell you to piss off after you make some kind of half-assed, condescending accusation (sometimes) cloaked in an insulting question. Act like a jerk, get treated like a jerk – deal with it already.
(Roberta X beat me to the same ground, though considerably less jerkily.)
Yep
Your above statement is valid….UNTIL you make the statement that you will never, ever, ever start the fight. At that point the question does, indeed, become valid.
I am sorry you and I disagree here.
B
@Rustmeister –
@Mr. B – Not only are all of my above statements still valid in that situation, that is the perfect time for them to be valid. It is quite simple:
1. I am under absolutely no obligation to tell anyone a gorramed thing, unless a previous contract or agreement binds me as such. No such contract or agreement exists in this case.
2. Absolutely no one has the right to demand anything from me that I am not willing to freely give up. Strangely enough, that concept applies to information as much as it does personal property.
3. No one has any place to play the self-righteous prat who turns out to be a petulant child when it gets slapped down, and doing so only exposes the inherent weakness of that person’s argument, along with its emotional, rather than rational, basis.
Look, the Threepers’ cause would be significantly improved if they could ever bother to demonstrate even a modicum of intelligence – instead, the conversation normally prceeds somewhere along these lines: “So, where is your line?” “I am not going to tell you.” “HAH! YOU HAVE NO LINE!!1~!!! You SUCK!121!! WE ARE TEH SUPERIORE!!!!111″
Yeah. Because “I am not going to tell you” is 100%, absolutely, and completely equivalent to “I have no line”.
*headdesk*
That which I choose to keep private is my own business, and anyone who seeks to strip me of that privacy, whether it is by force or by insults, is more than welcome to piss right the frak off.
Well, at least this dismissal of the Threepers is better than your usual vitriol. I have not announced any particular “line in the sand” for much the same reasons as you have stated, but rest assured that such a line exists.
No, I’m not going to tell you what that is. Why spoil the surprise?
There is a differencebetween “asking” and “demanding”. I asked. She declined to answer. I left it there. Roberta and I disagree on several major fronts. However, despite this, I respect her greatly…and, I think, after sharing food and beer with her, that she respects me. She does not think that my question is invalid, she chose (as is her right) not to answer.
Thus we parted….still friends.
@Peter – Oh, do not fret – everything I said all those years ago applies just as much today as it did then, if not moreso… After all, this past year has brought us a tremendous amount of “restrict(ions) (on) our God-given liberty”, but a hardly-unexpected dearth of “killing anyone who tried” to do so, clearly indicating that the Threeper insurrectionists (and specifically The Ringleader himself) are liars, cowards, or both. But I pointed that out a while ago, so, like I said, not exactly surprising.
At any rate, those in power already know what they are doing is wrong – how can they not, in light of the Constitution spelling it out in plain language, the people already expressing their displeasure, etc. etc. In reality, the line was crossed years, if not decades ago, and now it is just a matter of when anyone is going to do anything about it… and I agree – I see no reason to give them a warning they can use to prepare themselves.
@Mr. B – In point of fact, you did not “leave it there” – you repeated the question (your exact words were, and I quote, “… I ask again: At what point…”) in an increasingly confrontational, and borderline insulting, fashion. To be certain, you where nowhere near as bad as some folks have been in regard to that stupid little question, but the undercurrent of “you owe me” was definitely present. You are absolutely right – there is a difference between questioning and demanding, but employing insinuating questions in order to coerce a response out of your target definitely tends towards one end of that spectrum.
and both the first request for an answer and the second were in the SAME COMMENT (context and all that). When she said (paraphrased) “I do not want to answer you”, I dropped it. As far as I can tell, she and I are cool with this.
But your point is well taken, and I will consider your view when posting comments here and in the future.
Not really, they were not – your 0727 31AUG10 comment did not spell out, exactly, “Where is your line?” but the surrounding context that you are so concerned about definitely made it clear what the topic was. An hour later, Roberta made her position clear, and then you launched into the next volley of questions.
*shrug* As I said, do as you please – just try not to act so surprised when people react as they do.