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| Methods for expelling mucus (Wiki commons) |
You know how a person will pick his or her nose while driving a car, convinced that it is private space and no one can see the disgusting habit that entices all of us from time to time?
Just so on the Internet; people who are bone-deep cads seem to think that behaving in caddish ways on the Internet is fine. Cad is defined as, "An ill-bred man, especially one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women" by Dictionary.com.
It is an archaic British word, but one I think needs to be resurrected and also expanded to apply to women who act in equally dishonourable and boorish ways toward others. (I think boor works, also: "A person with rude, clumsy manners and little refinement: a peasant." But cad includes the dishonourable part, and so is preferred.) Yesterday, I mentioned in response to a call for comments about the travesty of the conduct of the Zimmerman case that the Florida jurors were ignorant. OF COURSE they were ignorant, based on several cogent probabilities.
Support for calling Zimmerman jurors ignorant
First, they were in Florida, a state with a racial problem second to none. Oh, sure, it hides it well under the patina of opening its arms to Cuban refugees (with the exception of Elian Gonzales, but of course Bush's gormless Feds had something to do with that disaster), and under the fact that much of south Florida was built by New Yorkers, Ohioans and Canadians as a place to retire their snow-brittled bones. Having a visible population of northerners gives Florida a soupcon of race relation respectability, except, of course, not every northerner is free of racial prejudice, not by a long shot.
Second, it pays to recall that of all the states involved in the Supreme Court's ultimate selection of George W. Bush to be the first moron president of the United States, Florida led the pack, captained by Katharine Harris who was subsequently handsomely rewarded for her misconduct, and from which the state's current governor learned how to manipulate the vote without the public drama. He simply purged the voter rolls of every voter who could possibly have been black. No hanging chads; hell, Florida has just about got over hanging Chads...and Willies*. (My apologies to at least two very intelligent and decent Floridians, but they already know I'm not talking about them, but rather about the lowest common denominators of that state's population.)
Third, Florida rants in the low average column for education in half a dozen surveys I've seen.
Fourth, the defense in this case--knowing it had a vicious reprobate as a client--would have dismissed any juror showing the least glimmer of intellect or decency. It appears the defense, taking a page from the OJ Simpson Book of Courtroom Idiocy, did not reject those rejects.
Fifth, the prosecution was as dim-witted as Marcia Clark and Chris Darden. As they failed to easily refute the bloody glove defense in the OJ case (duh...people...leather shrinks after being soaked in liquid. Blood is a liquid), so the prosecution in this case failed to shrink-wrap the defense notion of a bit of pavement being a weapon for Trayvon Martin. No, Martin had not picked up a chunk of it to USE as a weapon; he was holding Zimmerman down on a long stretch of pavement. Was he hitting Zimmerman's head against it? Who knows? We were not there. Zimmerman was, but he has had so many untoward incidents in his past, it would hardly be prudent to take his testimony without a grain of salt. I doubt he much feared a perjury charge.
Can we teach everyone the basics of intellectual argument, PLEASE?
OK. Now back to my cad experience.
So, after my opinion that the Florida jury was ignorant, The Cad--rather than supplying facts to cause me to rethink my contention--simply implied that I was a profound idiot...which in itself is idiocy because, if I were, I could hardly have managed a relatively lengthy post on Facebook. Later, he claimed he hadn't called me an idiot, he had merely said what I wrote was idiocy. It is impossible to sever writer from writing (no, I do not produce this stuff by automatic writing delivered gratis from the spirit world). Had he wished to do anything other than call me names, he might have written, "I find your contention regarding Florida jurors to be without merit because....XYZ."
Worse, The Cad claims to have taught at-risk Florida students. Oh, boy. I guess he didn't instruct them in avoiding ad hominem attacks and in how to construc logical arguments. But then, to teach it, you first have to know it.
Nor did he back off when I verbally slapped his face, and told him that I would have done so in the flesh and not in words if he had attacked me that way in person. He STILL didn't back off, so, a second time, I told him his face needed a good slapping. I broke off contact as it was apparent that he is incapable of realizing that part of being a fully functioning adult human being includes logical discourse, not playground rank-outs. Maybe he's been with the kids too long. But I suspect he thinks he is safe on the Internet, and possibly he is. I am not going to post his name here; I don't relish as bogus lawsuit from him. So yes, he is safe as far as that goes. He can pick his mental nose until the cows come home, but he can't pick mine.
But The Cad is also unethical, unconscionable, ill-bred, uneducated and vicious as ascertained by a look at his actions. Precisely as, I expect, Zimmerman might turn out to be if he were to attempt a debate on an issue. He couldn't subdue Trayvon Martin without killing him, if the young man even needed subduing which it appears he didn't, or at least hadn't until Zimmerman baselessly stalked him. Just so, The Cad would probably not be able to endure a 'back off' order like the one Zimmerman received regarding Martin, and would doubtless attempt to subdue this uppity woman with some sort of nuclear flyswatter or other.
I hasten to add, I have been called names by women for my opinions on Facebook, as well, especially when my opinion included my displeasure in the currently popular methods of displaying one's cool, an opinion I'm certainly entitled to hold and express, considering that the current display of "cool" is in itself a personal expression. I guess I was the lobster trying to climb out of the boiling water, and lord knows American society can't tolerate THAT. I mean, look at how many people want Snowden lynched. Still, I wonder if it is simply coincidence that the worst offender among my experience of female cads also lives in Florida. Apparently, Floridians are all vigilantes now, since the Stand Your Ground law went into effect, and they have clearly established the Sunshine State Thought Police as well as Bozos Against Black Folk.
God help us.
* A very, very probably innocent black man hanged in Florida in the late 1980s, while I lived there. It was almost physically impossible--not just improbable--that he had killed a man, all known at the time of his execution. It was a horrific time to be in Florida...and even more horrific to be Willie Darden and his family.
