From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 12:30:45 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
In-Reply-To: <v03110741b08e51241192@[139.167.130.248]>
Message-ID: <v03110778b08e8b0ead48@[139.167.130.248]>
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At 3:36 pm -0500 on 11/11/97, Tim May wrote:

> >Remind me not to lock myself up, all alone, with a bunch of live ammo and
> >almost no one to talk to but the internet, in an isolated hilltop
>    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Ad hominem becomes you, Bob.
>
> A variation of the old "get a life" put down of anyone whose opinions one
> disagrees with.

I call 'em as I see 'em, Tim. Actually, I would probably call what I said
there an "amateur psychological diagnosis". :-). Your mileage may vary.
That's what I get for indulging in the pseudoscience of psychology, I
suppose.

I *do* know what an ad hominem is, however, and you missed on that one. I
should note that there are quite a few in your reply below, if you're
interested in further elucidation of the concept...


Anyway, I was stating, in the quote above, my opinion about the possible
cause of your sense of impending doom, doom which I personally find to be
unfounded generally (see the quote in my .sig, below, for details), except,
of course, in unusual circumstances, which you seem intent on percipitating
upon yourself.

> So we're back to the old "if we won't restrain our opinions, Reno and Freeh
> will have to."

Fair enough. However, in an era of no-cost "technology transfers" of
military training and hardware to your local police, of marines shooting
down shepherds who are in the wrong place at the wrong time and thinking
nothing of it, and of the entrapment and armed seige of people who knock a
few inches off a shotgun, the saying "the squeaky wheel gets greased" is
probably truer now than ever.

Remember my old Neitsche joke about the rabbits demanding their rights and
the lions asking to see their claws? You, Tim, or anyone else we know, even
those with arsenals :-), are but mere ferrets in comparison. In that case,
I'd say it's better to be more clever, and to avoid, than to try to
confront, the lions.

> I say what I think.

And so you do. Lots of people do. In this country, they don't go to jail or
dissapear or get killed for it as easily as they do elsewhere, but you can
bet it happens.

Particularly when they threaten, even in an elliptical fashion, the lives
of people like judges. :-). Mr. Bell seems to be our canonical proof of
that result at the moment, and all he did was threaten the tax man.

Once you have their attention, all it takes is one trumped-up charge and,
with armed resistance to that charge, poof... One more "armed extremist"
goes away, constitution, due process, or no.

> Recently I was using my ComSec 3DES phone to talk privately (with one of
> those rare persons, according to Bob, that I talk to outside of the Net)
> with someone. He sent me later saying, "Nice talking to you this evening
> (afternoon, for you) and nice to be able to speak freely. What used to be
> taken for granted is now a
> luxury. <sigh>"

Glad to know that you can afford the luxury yourself. Buy a few more, and
drive the price down for the rest of us. :-).

Clearly, the nosy nation state has replaced the nosy switchboard operator,
and, yes, the consequences are much more serious, and I think both should
be defeated by technical, and not legal means. I also think that privacy is
more economical than surviellance, especially in finance.

Meanwhile, on a *recorded* prison telephone line, a cocaine kingpin makes
$400million arranging dope deals, in traceable phone calls to *Medellin*,
with complete impunity. All because there's just too much recorded
information to monitor it all, even on only three little prison phone
lines, for Club Fed to process.

And, to make my point again, you can bet that *all* this guy's phone calls
are listened to now, even if he did turn state's evidence when someone,
someone who was not listening to his calls, mind you, snitched on him.

So, remember Mongo, again. *If* you get his attention, he *will* punch your
horse's lights out. And, of course, if you shoot him, you'll make him mad.
It's funny, of course, but Idi Amin was funny, too. The problem is being
able to laugh at these guys from a safe distance, which is hard to do if
they now know who and where you are, and they've decided they don't like
you anymore. Fidel reached out and touched several people in the US in the
late 70's, for instance. One was in DC, right under some apparent federal
surviellance.

> More over the top nonsense from Bob.

Well, over the top, I'll except. It's what I'm good at, after all. :-).
"Nonsense" I would normally except also, but not in this case. Your first
ad hominem, by the way.

> I've done nothing that will "force a
> showdown." Precisely what crimes, Bob, have I committed? Cite a charge.
> Even a single one.

You've just threatened a judge in public, among other things, over the past
24 hours alone, and, even if you haven't done it "technically",
"technically" doesn't count when one of Mongo's bunch decides they have
"probable cause" to bust your door down, shoot their way in, and plant
"evidence" on your body. Or, more probably, like they did with the shepherd
kid in Texas, or Mrs. Weaver in Ruby, or Waco, or the preacher who died in
a no-knock here in Boston, they'll just say "Woops. Our mistake. Sorry.
Never mind."

> >On the other hand, Tim, I suppose, there *is* Bosnia as a prima facie
> >counterexample, and I bet that *that* little fandango probably started with
> >a bunch of "freedom fighters" like the one you fancy yourself to be these
> >days.
>
> More typical Bob Hettinga insult arguments. You ought to form a club with
> Kent Crispin, Detweiler, and Vulis.

Ah. Now *that* last bit was a genuine ad hominem. Congratulations. (Notice,
class, the direct attack on personal charactistics, without reference to
the merits of the argument at hand... Woops. So sorry. Double score, Tim.
An ad homenim, *with* a red herring thrown in. Score: 2 ad hominems, 1 Red
Herring)


Actually, Tim, I think you *do* fancy yourself a freedom fighter. Certainly
most of us think of you that way, these days. Clearly your comments lately
seem to indicate it. You've made veiled intimations of impending
confrontation for, well, months, now, if not longer. Your attempt to get
arrested when Clinton went to Stanford this fall, something about hoping to
refuse to identify yourself if asked by Secret Service, I think, is a good
example of this. More recently, your thinly disguised threats against
anyone with authority to throw you in jail is the same kind of thing. I
don't think there's any doubt that you're trying very hard, at least in
your conversations on the net, to test that arsenal of yours some evening.

More to the point, I think what I said about Bosnia makes perfect sense,
even if I don't believe it's going to happen. The net result of a
population forceably homogenized for more than 75 years and then armed is
something like Bosnia. In the case of the US, we have a population which
was homogeneous and armed, then gradually disarmed and "diversified" with
various political policies and subsidies. Now, if you rearm those people,
or more precisely, they rearm themselves in attempt to keep themselves from
being disarmed further (your posting yesterday about the gun show was a
case in point), we could get another Bosnia, or Somalia, or whatever.
Clearly it's better to let Americans keep their guns, and stop trying to
"diversify" them.

I mean, Stalin went out and deliberately created these "ethnic" republics
where none existed before, (or where at least the czars had done a
reasonable job of repressing ethnicity for centuries before that) and we
all know what that "diversity" program did to the Soviet Union after
communism, and even to Russia today in places like Chechnaya. Fortunately,
lots of the former Soviet "republics", Kazakhstan, Mongolia (though not
officially a Soviet republic still a vassal state), etc., are pretty
stable. Homogeneous populations, again.

Maybe, at some point, Americans will realize that they're more alike than
they're different -- as anyone who's gone to Europe or Africa will attest
-- this "diversity" stuff will be put aside, and whether they're armed or
not won't really matter. Certainly turn-of-20th-century America was armed
to the teeth, mostly homogeneous, and quite peaceable. The modern Swiss
are, as well.

However, I wonder what modern American "freedom fighters" are going to do
when they have the Talaban-like ability to hold turf at the point of a gun
and try to create the "homogeneity" of their preference, like they did in
Afganistan or Bosnia. May we live in interesting times, indeed.

And, *that's* what I was getting at, with the Bosnia as alternate model,
bit, above. Giving your implicit argument its due, I suppose, even though I
don't think it's going to happen in this country.

I think that communication and computers will eventually create stable, and
probably homogeneous, societies, without the need for nation-states, or
armed political/ethnic enclaves, or whatever. Force, like mass and energy,
will be conserved, but it won't be applied giant industrial glops, like we
do it today. :-).

Now, Tim, is over the top. Whether it's nonsense, of course, I leave for
others to judge.


So, my overall point is, Tim, that you shouldn't try so hard to be a crash
test dummy for the new world order. Throwing rocks at cop cars is great fun
when you're say, 12, but doing it when you're 40 can do bad things to your
permanent physical health in rather short order. Revolution is really a
young man's game. I mean, even the IRA guys want to retire...

Whoops. I used metaphors, with those rocks and crash test dummies. Gotta
watch that, because...

> You want to document a case where I've shoved a Mac-10 up anyone's nose,
> let alone a tree hugger?

The error of my metaphor coupled with your own deliberate literal
interpretation?  I thought so. Red Herring. (Score: 2 ad hominems, 2 red
herrings.) Besides, I sincerely doubt that you even *have* something as
cheezy as a Mac-10. :-).

> Or is talking now the same as shoving a gun in someone's nose? (You'd be
> surprised how many liberals think this is so, even some judges who just
> ruled against Evil Assault Literature.)

Ah. Now you understand the metaphor. I feel better now.

No, Tim, I think that liberals *will* see it as free speech. They just will
decide that some speech, to paraphrase Orwell, should be freer than other
speech. I think that the guys with guns that they hire to enforce their
pseudoscientific views of the world will just shoot you for pissing them,
maybe even their bosses, off.

That would be a drag. Heck, they probably won't be atavistic enough to call
it "treason", or something.

> Bob, get back on your medications.

Another ad hominem. (Score: 3 ad hominems, 2 red herrings)

> >Frankly, I liked Lazarus Long, or even old Farnham himself, a lot better.
> >Hell, even a better, more libertarian (Nazi uniforms? Sheesh^2...), remake
> >of "Starship Troopers" would be preferrable to the scipt you've written
> >yourself.
>
> I don't form or express my opinions to have you like me more than these
> fiction characters you're obsessed with.

Of course you don't.

However, it doesn't keep me from having opinions of my own about you,
either. :-). Or other folks having opinions about you. Including people who
agree with you, except when you insist on standing up to have your head
chopped off for lack of something better to do.

Most of us have seen that movie, and we don't like the ending.


> Get a life, Bob.

(Score: 4 ad hominems, 2 red herrings)

Wait... Is there an *echo* in here?

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
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