Nalbar is the Zero Weasel!!! (One of them, anyway.)

Posted by Arthur Gilroy | Feb 16, 2018 | 22 |

As I mentioned fairly rcently, I am saving all of my comments and replies in context so that they cannot be zeroed out by the neo-McCarthyites on this blog. A little while ago, I replied to a comment on one of Booman’s most recent posts, Did Trump Commit Treason or Not?.

Posted by lacerda-the first comment after Booman’s post:

Re: Did Trump Commit Treason or Not? (4.00 / 3)
I can’t think of a more serious act of war against the United States, short of nuclear attack, than stealing its people’s right to self-determination.

Trump was not only aware of this plan, but complicit in it. The plan continues. Trump is still complicit.

It damn well is treason. Nothing short of that word suffices at describing the treachery involved. You may be right that pursuing treason as criminal charge is too messy a matter to try, but if the American people come to understand Trump and his co-conspirators as traitors, some measure of justice will be achieved.

I replied:

[lacerda] writes:

I can’t think of a more serious act of war against the United States, short of nuclear attack, than stealing its people’s right to self-determination.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think that anyone who in any way tried to steal people’s right to self-determination…the Trumpists/Russians as well as the DNC and its massive moves against Bernie Sanders in the primaries…should be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, convicted and punished unmercifully.

Right on!!!

AG

Nalbar zeroed me.

Others have rated this comment as follows:
nalbar 0

Zeroing is an attempt at censorship. It is also the act of a craven coward without the intellectual ammunition to speak to me directly. As I said earlier…I will not be censored. You have something to say to me? Fine. Lay it on out there. We’ll talk.

But sneaking around like that? It’s rat-like.

P.S. Now…I am not at all sure how zeroing works. Is one zero enough to immediately disappear someone’s post? I wouldn’t know because I am totally against the idea. If so…why is the post still up? Does it take two consecutive zeroes? If someone uprates it before someone else zeroes it, is the post then saved? It seems a perfect system for bot-lke hustlers to eliminate any information in the comments section that they deem unacceptable to their own goals.

Wow!!! If them damned Russkies had zero power, we’d all be in deep trouble!!!

WTFU.

P.P.S. I wrote:

I think that anyone who in any way tried to steal people’s right to self-determination…the Trumpists/Russians as well as the DNC and its massive moves against Bernie Sanders in the primaries…should be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, convicted and punished unmercifully.

With what part of that sentence do you so seriously disagree that you would want to zero it out, nalbar?

Certainly not these parts:

I think that anyone who in any way tried to steal people’s right to self-determination…should be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, convicted and punished unmercifully.

Right?

It must be this part:

…the Trumpists/Russians as well as the DNC and its massive moves against Bernie Sanders in the primaries…

I included the phrase “…should be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, convicted and punished unmercifully.” Why? Because that is what I believe, that’s why. Trial by impartial justice. There is certainly a great deal of evidence that Russian interests conspired to mess with the recent election, and fairly recently there were weeks and weeks of leaks and articles about collusion against Bernie Sanders inside of the halls of power in the Democratic Party as well.

I think that a fair trial is due both sides of that particular Scylla and Charybdis contretemps. I guess that you don’t. So it goes.

That’s un-American, nalbar!!!

So sorry to hear that about you.

Maybe they’re gonna come for you, next!!!

Doesn’t believe in fair trials; doesn’t believe in free speech.

Off with his head!!!

Could happen…

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller

Did happen.

A poem for the ages.

About The Author

Arthur Gilroy

Born. Still working on it.

22 Comments

boran2 on February 17, 2018 at 10:22 am

Umm, I don’t believe that comments actually disappear at BMT with zero ratings. This isn’t dkos. Beyond that, it remains unclear exactly how the concept of censorship applies on a privately owed blog.

I’ll go out on a limb here and speculate that it was the portion of your comment directed at the DNC that found disfavor.

Or it could have been just a misclick by longtime member nalbar.
- Arthur Gilroy on February 17, 2018 at 11:52 am
  
  Oh, I am sure that it was the DNC thing. And comments do indeed disappear here. Plus… it wasn’t a misclick, it was part of a continued pattern of abuse of the ratings system from several members of this blog, a blog which is headed straight into dkos waters if Booman doesn’t take care not to let that happen. Getting rid of Trump and/or defeating the Republicans on whatever levels it is possible to do so does not excuse the many serious mistakes…you might even call them crimes…of the Democratic Party. A “kinder, gentler” but still murderous foreign policy and a mouthful of marbles social contract while cooperating with the corporate monsters that are really running things here for their own, sole benefit does not make a political party “progressive,” it only serves to make it an acceptable…to many people…front for anti-human actions on numerous, very serious levels.
  
  AG
- Don Durito on February 17, 2018 at 1:33 pm
  
  The way it works:
  
  A single zero rating won’t change anything, absent subsequent ratings. If the average rating goes below zero, then the comment will be invisible (I believe) to nontrusted users and lurkers. It will still be visible to trusted users, unless they decide to zero out a comment (at which point it becomes invisible to them as well).
  - Arthur Gilroy on February 17, 2018 at 2:46 pm
    
    Thank you. It’s clear to me now.
    
    I have been so thoroughly downrated by the kneejerkers…the ones whose criminal use of downratings to hustle their own positions should itself be grounds for revocation of their trusted user status…that I am no longer a “trusted user.”
    
    Ironic, isn’t it? On a so-called “progressive” blog where I have tried for years to get its audience to understand that much of the power structure of their chosen party is itself quite demonstrably anti-progressive, I am the one downrated by the most anti-progressive members of the community.
    
    There is an interesting article up on Counterpunch today – In the Post-Truth Classroom by Joseph Natoli. It’s worth reading in the context of this site.( Emphases mine)
    
    “It already feels as though we are living in an alternative science-fiction universe where no one agrees on what is true. Just think how much worse it will be when fake news becomes fake video. Democracy assumes that its citizens share the same reality. We’re about to find out whether democracy can be preserved when this assumption no longer holds.”
    
    Henry J. Farrell and Rick Perstein, “Out Hackable Political Future,” The New York Times, February 5, 2018
    
    A Post-truth Corridor to the Classroom
    
    “Post-truth” registers fear in the Heartland, a kind of devolution into a place where “no one agrees on what is true.” It is also a term unconnected with our Western culture paradigm movement from classic realist, Enlightenment modernity, 20th century modernism and postmodernity.
    
    Any variation the word “postmodern” launched attacks from both portside and starboard side thinkers, representing to the former a deconstructing of a rod of critical reason needed to slay the Capitalist monster. For the latter, it represented a deconstructing of absolute and universal foundations of Truth and Reality.
    
    There was, however, no popular and everyday level of representation of the postmodern. Not so with “post-truth” which has a large press online and offline mostly related to the awareness that we can no longer convince each other as to what is really going on, what is really true and what is patently false.
    
    Extending that to the awareness that perhaps we all do not share the same reality does indeed make us think we are in “an alternative science-fiction universe.”
    
    We now have a street level awareness that there doesn’t seem to be any external points of adjudicating reference that are acceptable to those who disagree with you or those disagreeing in Congress or with the President.
    
    There does not seem to be any foundation upon which we can mutually rest our arguments and come to some mutual acceptance of what is true and what is false. Both are frightening epiphanies. What we awkwardly termed “postmodern” simply registered the observation that we have always been without an Archimedean lever that moved us outside the flux of our own disputes, the tyranny of our own opinions.
    
    What has brought us to an almost Kiekegaardian fear and trembling is a street level, around the kitchen table awareness that we have narrated ourselves the existence of fixed stars we could point to that would guide us through and beyond the mis-directions of our own personal compasses.
    
    We have concocted for ourselves universal and absolute foundations that we all recognized and upon which we all stand. And built on this is an edifice of Truth universal and absolute. An awareness that we all don’t stand on such foundations and that indeed such foundations are made variously, here and there, is like a sudden viral invasion of the American mass psyche. This remains a kind of subliminal awareness, one that we are not interpreting or understanding but to which we are reacting nonetheless.
    
    —snip—
    
    Precisely.
    
    In the case of this blog, there exist here a number of people who react with “Kierkegaardian fear and trembling” to the suggestion that there is foul play afoot within the Democratic Party just as there is within the Republican Party.
    
    Result? Panicked name-calling and downratings. Ain’t no dialogue possible when “Kierkegaardian fear and trembling” takes hold…just playground name-calling and bureaucratic-style downrating.
    
    —snip—
    
    What we are broadly aware of now is that our empirical and rational ways of knowing, which survived and indeed flourished when faith was shaken, are no longer sustaining, protective, and paths to civilized agreement.
    
    President Trump shakes us in a number of ways, the least being our failure to put a harness on his antics, the most being our failure to nail down as falsehoods what he announces as truth. What previously was incontestable may now be a matter of dispute, although we do not dispute in any way that allows evidence to defeat personal opinion.
    
    If the President’s mockery of our established ways of knowing had not reached center stage, the practice of spinning reality into a hyperreality, which marketers and politicians have long done would have continued quite nicely alongside the mythologies of unquestionable truth discoveries made in a reality that never multi-plexes because true narratives never multi-plex.
    
    The cat is out of the bag, although he is now in Schrodinger’s box, by which I only mean that we can no longer know in any indisputable way what is going on, has gone on, or will go on.
    
    —snip—
    
    Right on!!! Schrodinger’s box, the Booman Tribune edition!!!
    
    So when I ask the gentle members of this blog to consider healing their own house before casting further aspersions on the Kettlehead in the White House, Kiergegaardian fear takes over and tries to throw me into the same inaccessible cage in which “The Truth” apparently resides.
    
    Good work, O leftiness philosophers!!!
    
    Only…I won’t go there gently.
    
    Keep trying, though.
    
    Every attempt reveals your own fears and shortcomings.
    
    Later…
    
    AG
    - Oui on February 17, 2018 at 3:33 pm
      
      Usually “4”s … just a misclick 😉
    - Neon Vincent on February 17, 2018 at 5:53 pm
      
      “Schrodinger’s box, the Booman Tribune edition!”
    - Neon Vincent on February 17, 2018 at 6:51 pm
      
      “[T]he kneejerkers” — I’ve told you before, you have the wrong reflex. Think gag. I suspect you make them ill.
      
      “I am no longer a ‘trusted user.'” I don’t know if it is wise to trumpet that development in your situation. The people who have been downrating you might read that and think “success!”
      - Arthur Gilroy on February 18, 2018 at 5:02 pm
        
        You write:
        
        <B.”I am no longer a ‘trusted user.'” I don’t know if it is wise to trumpet that development in your situation. The people who have been downrating you might read that and think “success!”</b>
        
        Yes, but…I don’t care what they think. In point of fact, I am not at all sure that they do “think.” At least not in any recognizable way as far as how I was taught to think…to access all sides of a puzzle and then put it together in as logical fashion as one can manage. They have simply chosen a ‘side”…just exactly like the Trumpists…and are now only “thinking” about how they can best discourage anyone who disagrees with them. here is no broader picture for them…”It’s our way or he highway” is really their single “thought” besides tactical issues hat will help their strategic goals. In this they are exactly like the two major parties now. No consideration of real morality or real facts, just kneejerk reactions against people who do not kowtow to their wishes. McCarthyism at its worst. Bipartisan McCarthyism.
        
        Nice.
        
        AG
      - oaguabonita on February 19, 2018 at 10:48 pm
        
        . . . re:
        
        Yes, but…I don’t care what they think.
      - Don Durito on February 20, 2018 at 12:28 am
      - Don Durito on February 18, 2018 at 10:00 pm
        
        A ton of research on persuasion suggests that the best way to turn an audience against you is to insult them. I think the phenomenon is called polarization. AG knows exactly how to turn an audience against him. He doesn’t care, except when some of those frustrated individuals use whatever meager means are available to express their disapproval. Reasoning does not work. Asking nicely does not work. Maybe zeros don’t work either. Maybe the only thing that works is when the host of the blog one day logs on and wonders what happened to his traffic. There’s only so many times anyone wants to reads stuff that makes them gag.
      - Arthur Gilroy on February 18, 2018 at 10:21 pm
        
        You are right, DD. I no longer care about anything except the truth as I see it. The time for gentle diplomacy is over. I think that the corporate owned, bipartisan, uniparty, neocentrist, multinational cabal that is running this place is going to take the U.S. right over the cliff…if of course Trump doesn’t manage to do so first. Either way…unless an extraordinary number of people very rapidly wake the fuck up to what is really going on here…this culture and the very union that birthed it are as good as dead. I don’t know what else to do except to continue my Paul Revere ride…a ride that really started when I tried to tell y’all that Trump was going to win. You laughed then and you mock now.
        
        Gandhi:
        
        First they laugh at you.
        
        Then they fight you.
        
        Then you win.
        
        I hope with all of my heart that he was right.
        
        AG
      - Don Durito on February 18, 2018 at 11:07 pm
        
        Not sure there is much left to say but:
- The Voice In The Wilderness on February 17, 2018 at 7:16 pm
  
  Yes, they do.
- JoelDanWalls on February 27, 2018 at 10:16 pm
  
  The concept of censorship does not apply on a privately owned blog. Everyone here comments at the sufferance of Martin Longman. Not everyone recognizes that fact.
Marie3 on February 18, 2018 at 1:04 pm

Duncan:

How To Talk To A Gun Nut

Don’t bother.

Faith is impervious to facts and logic. (Not that you’re without some faith and not that your presentation of your facts and logic aren’t often flawed. i.e., Perot and the Pauls are nothing more than stopped clocks and as such, your idealization of them is deeply flawed.)
- Arthur Gilroy on February 18, 2018 at 1:37 pm
  
  They may be “stopped clocks” now, Marie, but in their time and place they were telling the right time…the true time. Perot was actually some ind of prophet. He told what would be happening in future time, and he was right on the money if a few years off in terms of calendar years.
  
  The mainstream media have a way of stopping people that disagree with he time that the Deep State wants people to accept.
  
  So do the intelligence services.
  
  Non-personing has many levels, from the destruction of reputations right on through to wetwork and threats thereof.
  
  They were correct in their time and place.
  
  And…they got their asses handed to them.
  
  Nuthin’ new there…
  
  So it goes.
  
  AG
  - The Voice In The Wilderness on February 19, 2018 at 7:08 pm
    
    Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but only by accident.
    - Arthur Gilroy on February 19, 2018 at 11:02 pm
      
      As you wish…
      
      But they were right on the money about many things at certain times.
      
      Accident?
      
      I am not sure that I much believe in “accidents” anymore.
      
      Everything has a time and purpose.
      
      We will soon see what ours was.
      
      If we live that long.
      
      AG
      - The Voice In The Wilderness on February 20, 2018 at 10:15 pm
        
        If we live that long.
        
        Aye, there’s the rub.
      - JoelDanWalls on February 27, 2018 at 10:12 pm
        
        So when an asteroid slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and caused the extinction of most life, there was a purpose?
      - Arthur Gilroy on March 7, 2018 at 10:43 am
        
        I am going to answer you honestly, JDL.
        
        Truly.
        
        I believe in a living, “intelligent” universe. One that is driven by a sort of evolutionary system…way past real human understanding.
        
        You have stated here that you are Jewish, I believe. Practicing Jewish, or simply hereditarily Jewish?
        
        Genetically Jewish.
        
        Either way, you might want to read the tale of Moses and Al-Khidr.
        
        Or…you might not.
        
        Your choice. If of course “choice” is even a possibility for us human beings…fragile motes of dust blowing in the wind of the infinite universe.
        
        Float on…
        
        AG

Nalbar is the Zero Weasel!!! (One of them, anyway.)

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Arthur Gilroy

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