Against my better judgment, I still read what you write sometimes. Sometimes you write on my blog comment section, sometimes you write on the VisLupes comment section, sometimes you write on the Sagebrush. You know all this. You have a lot to comment on. A lot to say, really — important stuff, you think, stuff that needs to be said, why else would you say it? I make this tacit assumption each time I read your stuff, in fact I make it anytime I read anything: you feel you have something that the world needs to know. And so I read your stuff, knowing there’s a chase, wondering how I can cut to it.

Just a little bit ago you posted what you hoped would be your “last comment on any of these blogs” in response to one of the VislOops filing some judicial thingy, claiming that though you often agree in principle with what critics of ASUN have to say, you absolutely oppose them in practice. This is a shame because as you have spilled thousands and thousands of words onto the internet at folks like me and have had tens of thousands of words thrown right back at you (also by folks like me), it seems that you managed to not have taken anything away with you.

I guess this’ll have to be my last shot to convince you why much of what you believe is misguided — if not downright incorrect much of the time — and hopefully, hopefully, save you from having to get another one of these furious letters. Let’s not waste anymore time being cordial and get right down to the problem with your worldview.

To best understand the whole situation it is perhaps worthwhile to stress exactly what is going wrong with your thoughts. As I’ve commented on in the past, it is that you manage to always go tangent to the point being made, you have a terrible tendency to not address the subject at hand. I would like to be clear here: the problem — the reason for this letter — is that it is evident that you do not care even a little bit about how people espouse opinions. The problem is that you think it is okay to believe something in the face of evidence to the contrary. You ascribe, whether you think you do or not, to a form of confirmation bias wherein you do not take differing opinions seriously, to the point of being deaf to them entirely. Now, should you feel so inclined to respond to this letter, I urge you to respond to that thesis statement, as all that follows is simply evidence in favor of that proposition.

For instance, here, in beautiful, unadorned language is your obliviousness distilled into a single sentence, the context of which is you commenting upon the actions of people like UNR SFL and the VisLupes: “if you’re ultimate goal was to prove that the advisors are not doing their job and ensuring that ASUN is responsible and accountable for their actions, which I’ve sensed is your goal, then I couldn’t agree more.” If you don’t see anything wrong with this at all then perhaps this will help. Follow the logic.

1.) “If you’re ultimate goal was to prove that”

Improper contraction use aside, why would you assume this is our ultimate goal? Have I not made it abundantly clear that the abolishment of ASUN is my goal, that returning the mandatory fees to students the step after that? What makes you think that even that piddly goal is what could even come close to being an “ultimate” goal? How about abolish the real government? How about instituting free and open markets? Heck, getting Taco Bell ranks higher on my List of Ultimate Goals than does getting rid of your sad, sorry institution. You have to realize, dear Gracie, that the world doesn’t care about the ASUN. In fact, it appears that only about, what, 15% of the students of this university even mildly care. Due to the high proportion of those that don’t care about the ASUN (consider that Kenyans, the French, the Dallas Cowboys, etc, do not give one single damn about it), it is safe to say that NO ONE CARES about the ASUN. Not even me, dear reader.

2.) “the advisors are not doing their job”

No, Gracie. No no no no. You poor girl. We aren’t mad at “advisors.” We aren’t up in arms about bureaucrats when we’re insulting you. We are insulting YOU, Gracie. YOU and the SENATE. The advisors are bureaucratic hacks who follow bureaucratic principles. Yes, this is bad. Yes, they have no incentive to better the institution around them. Yes, they are partly responsible for what goes on in ASUN. BUT NO, NO, NO, Gracie, we are mad at YOU. You, as a person who claims to represent student interests. You, as the leader of the the student senate. You, as a person who received 7,000 unjustified clams of student funds. You, as a person who supports ASUN’s fees and programs and ideas and principles. You, Gracie, are what we are mad at. You who would pretend that it is not YOUR job to ensure ASUN is responsible, who would pretend it is not YOUR job to ensure ASUN is accountable, who would pretend that the ASUN can be anything but an inherently flawed system that only benefits and whose only input is to and from a small minority of students.

3.) “and ensuring that ASUN is responsible and accountable for their actions,”

Your ability to pass The Buck and Spread the Blame is astounding. Having followed what you’ve had to say for these past years, it never ceases to amaze me how you can think of yourself as so very innocent and free of sin. I believe I once remarked that “you play yourself as an unknowing victim.” It boggles my mind — being a believer in personal responsibility as I am — that you can think you are blameless. Utterly and entirely blameless. You may be the only person I know who manages to overwhelm with your declarations of underachievement. But, Gracie, when you convey a point in an open area of discourse, there are those that will disagree with you. This applies to the actions of which you partake as well: by participating in and supporting the functions of the ASUN, you are declaring a position which many, including myself, find wrong. The ASUN is a sorry excuse for an institution, especially one that claims to be the voice of students and to be doing so much good for them. Now, I’ve made the case elsewhere that this is wrong. Since it is wrong, you are wrong to support it. You can’t just take praise for the good stuff and say the bad stuff is due to Not-Me-A, Not-Me-B, and so forth. Hence, when I say something like “Gracie is wrong,” it isn’t a personal attack, it’s a claim about the world, namely that, You support a system which should not be supported.

4. “which I’ve sensed is your goal, then I couldn’t agree more.”

This conclusion falls so short of the truth that it is practically not worth bothering with. If A, B, C, then I couldn’t agree more. But no one posited A, B, or C. If unicorns are hollow, and if hollow things are filled with helium, and if things with helium float, then I agree that unicorns can float. But, sorry to break it to you, unicorns can’t float. Gracie, your internal logic may be consistent, maybe even tip-top, but how it applies to the external world is anyone’s guess. I hope you’ve gotten the point of all of this: what you believe must correspond to the reality of the world around us. Since what you believe currently does not do this, you are wrong on many many important accounts.

And that’s just the first sentence!

Now, I could bog you down with refuting the silly assertion that you believe how something is said makes any difference as to the truth or falsity of a position, but I think that maybe I would be making a straw-woman of you. Your only critique of the UNR Students for Liberty is that when we say something, we tend to yell it, and no one likes yelling, and no one wants to work with someone who is yelling, and aren’t they all just a bunch of meany-heads? Your critique of our position is that we are “assholes” and your biggest complaint about our methods is that they aren’t “diplomatic.” But this is just pathetic nonsense. Who cares about any of that stuff, indeed as I asked of you last time, qui gives a shit?

I don’t think you actually care about how mean we are as much as you feign to. No. I give you more credit than that. What I think you have a problem with is that you sense, however dimly, that we are right. That these assholes, these jerks, these douchebags may have something behind them in the way of reasoning and evidence and that maybe, just maybe, they are right when they criticize your opinion. After all, what exactly is incorrect about believing that people shouldn’t be forced to do things they don’t want to do? What is incorrect about believing that people shouldn’t be governed by those in an institution that is unsupported by the vast majority? What is incorrect in thinking that political opinions to the contrary are wrong?

Gracie, the UNR Students for Liberty are a silly bunch. They couch cogent philosophical points within immature Dear Gracie posts, they make political economy points by renting ponies! You can dismiss us as children, but it’s akin to being the Santa at Macy’s getting mad at the child who pulls off his beard and says “Look, he’s not Santa!” You were the Santa of the ASUN and we childishly ripped off your beard. But in getting mad at us you’re forgetting one important fact [Spoiler warning]: THERE IS NO SANTA.

Your frustration with us stems from the fact that you keep missing the point, Gracie. It’s not that we want to show that you, personally, are not Santa, but rather to show that there is no Santa, that the ASUN is not the North Pole and that it never can be. There is nothing wrong with there being no Santa, no North Pole. What is wrong is to continue to pretend that there is even in the face of evidence to the contrary. What is wrong is thinking that it is okay to believe something on insufficient evidence.

Love always,
Barry

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 24 comments

Diagnosis Part I. The Problem.

What is that thing called where one points out one’s faults in another person? It’s taught in Psych 101 classes. Oh what’s it called? From Wikipedia: Psychological projection [...] is the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have the same feelings or motives, rather than what they really think. Yeah, that’s what you’ve got. Not being a psychologist (and the first to admit it!), I would say my diagnosis of you is rudimentary at best, but one does not need to be an otorhinolaryngologist to see the nose right in front of you.

Diagnosis Part II. The Signs.

1. You posted a 450+ word response less than one hour after the original 1000+ word letter was written. I guess my suggestion to “Please spend more time thinking about your responses than typing them. Gut reactions are not befitting you.” was taken with the seriousness I expected it to be.

2. You either knowingly misrepresented my position or failed to grasp it to begin with. I didn’t say there is “only” right and wrong in the world. Rather I said that right and wrong exist (knowing full-well that there are innumerable issues which do not fall into this dichotomy: there exists, after all, shades of grey)…which is a rather innocuous statement of reality if you think about it. (For instance, there either is a moon or there isn’t one.)

3. You kept harping on a point that is pointless to this discussion: it doesn’t matter if the VisLupiKids got their racial facts wrong about the U Commy. I. Do. Not. Care. I am not defending the VisLupes, nor their position, that has nothing to do with my letter. In it I claimed that you constantly dodge issues (“How To Miss The Point”) which your response is yet another example of and that your position with respect to “diversity” is misguided.

4. You constructed me as a straw man and said I am “not open to new ideas and dialogue.” And what evidence do you have to support this opinion? If you were too busy lacing your good points (cultural diversity brings about a greater understanding of humanity in general) with meandering B.S. (seriously a whole paragraph, rehashing what your original comment said?) then it’d be much easier to engage in important issues seriously with you. But instead watch how easy it is to make your claim: You, Gracie, are not open to new ideas and dialogue, and that offends me.

5. You claim that you ‘don’t close [your] mind and think [you're] the “right” and everything else is the “wrong” ‘. Well no one but a fool would agree with that statement. You do, in fact, think you are right. Everyone does. Anyone who doesn’t think their opinion is right and act on that assumption simply doesn’t. And no one thinks “everything else is wrong in society.” That’s just asinine.

6. You then say that I am doing the same offensive thing as you are. Though apparently my way of “classifying” doesn’t seem to rely on the bigoted notion of skin color and instead relies on the merit of opinions and ideas… Even if this were true, you’re just making me sound better here, and you sound worse. Though now that you mention it, what exactly is wrong on judging people’s opinions based on the merit of their propositions?

7. You end by brushing over your errors and “admitting” to them while simultaneously insinuating that I cannot. Having obviously never attended a SFL meeting where I often discover my position to be wrong, I’d say you’re just swatting at a straw man again. But whatever, get your rocks off in the comment section of UNR-based websites you callow little thing.

The Diagnosis Part III. The Symptoms.

You are a bad defender of your poor positions. You lack any insight into anything that I would be interested in. You make meaningless claims on meaningless subjects. You have a knack for hollowing words of their significances and leaving them as so much dead pixels splayed across a screen. When you do manage to infuse some kind of point into your speeches, it is rarely a point you would be proud to make (such as being seen as racist, when, in all likelihood, you are not). You project all of your own arguments’ flaws onto your opponent. You defend positions no one criticizes and completely glean over those which others have problems with. You are good at what you do, problem is that what you do is bad.

The Diagnosis Part IV. The Solution?

Once again, I’m not a doctor. I have no valid medical opinion. I have very few valid opinions. In fact, all of the evidence I have presented is open to interpretation. But as I see it, you have no idea what I am driving at nor any idea how you should feel about it. Rather than careful consideration to pertinent arguments, you’d rather spam the internet with your dribble babble NonSpeak like an internet troll gone bureacratically berserk with power.

To remedy this I suggest you either a) pull your head out of your ass in order to better see, hear, and understand the world or b) leave issues you know little about alone, perhaps to revisit at another time when you are more knowledgeable about the topic.

As a side note, if you’re “actually really interested in” my opinion about race, think briefly about how ass-backward the statement “Some people are proud of their heritage” really is… Don’t see anything wrong with it? Well, consider that “Some people” doesn’t just mean Mexicans at a fiesta or Japanese people drinking tea on their floors or Indians doing a rain dance, it also means neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, and Muslim terrorists. There is nothing to be “proud” of based on your skin color or your religion or your gender or your social, political, or economic upbringing. It’s luck of the draw: just because someone thinks they were born with a royal flush doesn’t mean they aren’t just a royal pain in the ass.

Finally, consider the simple example my dad related to me: what about a blind man who can’t see any of this “diversity.” What then? There are no “black” or “brown” or “white” people to him. Is he supposed to feel for the crosses and stars of David and ankh’s on people’s necklaces to determine their religion? Must he grope for breasts to determine gender?

Put yourself in his place for a day, Gracie. Try to feel how much better the world is when you stop trying to categorize others and realize we’re all just hurtling around this big ol’ universe on a tiny rock. We’re not men, we’re not women, we’re not white nor black nor brown, we’re not Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, we’re not vegetarians and meat-eaters, not gay or straight, not the differences that divide us. We’re just people.

We’re 99+% of the same genetic stuff. It’s time we start acting that way.

I mean it this time,
Barry Belmont

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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I read what you write sometimes. Whether it’s on the Sagebrush website or your failed Senate blog or (more recently) on the VisLupiGang’s blog, I read your stuff. I read your stuff and I am appalled. Appalled sometimes at the grammar and syntactical structure. Appalled sometimes at the use of overly passive aggressive langauge. Appalled at all those idiosyncratic personality quibbles that make you and I unrelatable to one another — I seek to destroy that which you seek to maintain. But lately I am appalled at the utter pointlessness of your remarks.

On the ViLuEsGre blog, in the comments, you said something to the chagrin of:

In talking about diversity, you only talked about race and gender, not other things like socioeconomic status or sexual orientation.

Implying that “diversity” is  not “only” made up of “race and gender” but also “socioeconomic status” and “sexual orientation.” A perfectly reasonable position. When people talk about the concept of “diversity” in regards to “diversity initiatives” in colleges and workplaces they generally mean to include such things as race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, etc… Nothing wrong with that definition. You then went on to state:

You also didn’t even analyze the races close to what they would have classified themselves [...] Furthermore, you have not listed or analyzed the entire Unity Commission, as three (to my knowledge) are not listed– which consist of two males and a female, all of different ethnicities.

Regarding the “races” of the Unity Commission’s members. And while it’s a mangling of phrasing, your meaning is fairly intuitive: the article you’re commenting on misrepresented the amount of “diversity” (in this case, in the form of “racial diversity”) in the U Commy, a fact that can easily be born out by the the evidence. You hold that there is a fair amount of racial diversity in the U Commy and this is a good thing. You then go on to say something about Republicans and end by saying:

you should probably do a bit more research, before trying to label somebody a specific race–you should probably also take other diversity classifications into account, and then, maybe, you could have an argument.

Now, I don’t see the big, important, F-ing deal with the determination of specific “races” because as a biology major (and born after 1967) I know the term “race” has no real meaning except as a way to put people into arbitrarily different groups, but hey, to each their own. Let those who want to call this person White and this one Black and this one Brown have their way and say so to their hearts’ content.

After you, an anonymous poster, Not Gracie, had this to say to you in response:

In other words, “See, there are brown colored people in the commission. And poor people. And men. And probably some gays, too!”

Honestly, do you realize how incredibly offensive you sound Gracie?

I don’t see myself disagreeing with Not Gracie. I mean, granted Not Gracie put it a little more blatantly than you, but ultimately you were claiming that there were enough shades of skin color on the U Com to be of a satisfactory diversification. Some people might take offense to these kinds of claims, I  mean, after all, why is racial diversity important? Isn’t it just sort of a new form of segregation? Separate but equal? Equal and separate? It is just a way to say You are DIFFERENT from Me in a SIGNIFICANT way.

But ever the responder to That Which It Is Better To Not Respond To, you, Gracie, retorted to Not Gracie with:

Offensive? [...] I’m not taking a stance on whether race, gender, etc define diversity, as I’m fully aware that’s what the Unity Commission is trying to combat. Labels (like sexual orientation, race, gender, etc.) don’t soley [sic] make a person/group “diverse,” by any means.

I urge you to go back and read your words as this is precisely what you did (the first quote, and the bold portion of the third). But as if this wasn’t enough you made the statement regarding the raging debates about “diversity” that prompted this letter to you:

I’m not agreeing with any argument.

You might as well say “Chicken tastes good and I like to eat it because of it” while discussing what color to paint your house. Every statement must be for or against some position if it is to be of any use at all. You either have something of merit to bring to the conversation in which case your opinion will be critiqued or you have nothing to add to an argument and you just shut the hell up. Either you think diversity involves all the things you claim it does or it doesn’t. There is only one right answer on that matter.

So, Gracie, I leave you with three things to think about:

1. Your remarks were offensive as they uphold the notion that there is such a thing as race. The entire notion of racial identity is sickening and antiquated. It promotes bigotry and elitism in equal amounts. It makes of people both criminals and victims. Racism can only exist when there are “races” upon which people can misplace their frustrations and hatred.

2. There exists right and wrong in this world. You and I hold mutually exclusive positions on a great many things. For each of these positions only one of us is right, the other is wrong. I think “diversity” as a concept is pointless and hurtful. If you think anything other than that, then only one of us will be right on this issue. I am not so presumptuous to assume it’s me, but I am aware it is not both of us.

3. Please spend more time thinking about your responses than typing them. Gut reactions are not befitting you. You make careless mistakes, you play yourself as an unknowing victim, you often only respond by saying Well, if you come meet with me or come to the senate meetings (as if many of us gave enough rats’ asses to waste our time with such trivialities), and rather than let any criticism soak in and take to heart, you immediately dismiss it and let it glide off you like rain from a duck’s behind.

Let this mix and marinate with your brain juices for awhile.

Rather insincerely,
Barry Belmont

P.S. Thanks VisLupiGang for the recent kinda-nice post about us.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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