Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Here.

hear, here, Here and HERE.
ER — (archived)

I'm glad you brought this up on Flame, where it can be given the attention it truly deserves.

The first horseman is, of course, TB. The quintessential high school master debater, always there, always right, always prepared, always around, always talking to himself. He prowls through the boards like a patrolling reef shark, a belligerent barracuda, constantly on the lookout for any deviation from orthodoxy, always ready to crush any dissent, demolish any deviation from political correctness, expose any weakness or devour any apostasy, either perceived, defined or imagined. And when no prey is evident, he deliberately flushes it out by systematically muddying the waters and stirring up the bottom. His primary weapons of rhetorical terrorim are the articulate ambush, the unexpected hijack, and the meticulously documented irrelevancy.

Then there is gbaike, that rolling, rambling, rucksack of non-sequiturs, the Berra of the boards, leaving a trail of puzzled and baffled opponents behind him, wondering "What the Hell was he talking about?" I know absolutely nothing of the man, personally, but from his fractured English and reactionary politics I have developed a preliminary working profile (for Habzone Security purposes only, I assure you). Either he, or his family, have suffered in some Eastern European Gulag somewhere, and he is getting his revenge now by plaguing everyone he perceives as a reincarnation of his former tormentors. Any attempt to dissuade him by protesting innocence of these crimes and sympathy for their victims he immediately seizes on as evidence of our obvious complicity and treachery. Fortunately, he posts frequently and ineptly on scientific subjects, which allows the rest of us to properly evaluate him and characterize him as the Johannes Lite he actually is.

As for Lee, it is best not to talk too much about him, it only encourages him. His foul stench is even rejected by those horsemen he wishes to follow, who embarassed, make every attempt to avoid him. For the partisans among us, he is a godsend, because he immediately discredits whichever side he picks, and invariably he always picks the Right side.

And then there's the Trickster, the SDAI Techie tag-teamer himself. Rarely attacking directly, he is nevertheless always nearby, ready to jump in and rescue a comrade in a jam. Don't let the goofy science-fiction, reincarnation, time-travel, many-worlds vortex games fool you. Under all that vibrating quantum foam is the same old soap salesman: our very own Spiro Agnew. Actually, that's unfair to Spiro. He, at least, was a decorated infantryman. Under SDAI's NeoVictorian facade lies all the hypocrisy and maliciousness of that era, down to the Francophobe Aryanophile clichés and Kiplingesque imperialist apologia. Don't let the smiley face and the jocularity fool you, for all the light-hearted misdirection, there is a solid core of fascism, racism, psychosis and misogyny here which will not be denied, and which occasionally erupts into a display of good old-fashioned hatred. Then, invariably he has the audacity to talk to us about how our mirrors are only reflecting our own shortcomings, not his own irreparable failure of character and humanity.

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