Sir Blob (get a life)

william wrote:

> So if I'm an "idiot" for responding to the troll, is the person who
> responded to me more or less of an idiot? Does the idiocy grow or
> diminish as the thread continues?

It's like the provenance of stolen nazi art; you have more rights to it
the more hands have fenced it from Goering to you. We don't make the rules.

Take land grabs. It's bad. Israel took some country due to wars, and the
EU and us too say they have to give it back sometime. Well, okay, they
say, but only if. But they don't say, we stole it fair and square.
That's because it's only been forty years or so since they stole it.
It's still hot. Refugees from the land say they have a Right of Return,
and some say, you bet.

Take California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas. There was even less
justification for stealing that land, because the unprovoked war was
only for langrabbing. Now who says give it back? Nobody. In fact, those
refugees who expect the Right of Return and act on it become political
footballs and are jailed and deported when they're found. What's the
difference? Well, time. It's been over a hundred and sixty years since
that grab. Finders keepers, after that long. Plus it was us doing the
stealing, which makes it different. We're still able to deplore all them
banana republics that torture prisoners without rights and spy on their
citizens and wage unprovoked wars and jail political opponents; that's
how different we are.

Moral: Any execrable act will be ratified by time and dirty hands,
especially if it's our hands. That's an original saying of mine.



--
'... my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends
have always called me.' - Odyssey; Book IX

>> I can think of a few groups that have died, outright died, because of
>> the actions of a single troll. rec.sports.baseball is in its dying
>> throes right now because of a troll.
>
> Groups die off, but you may be overstating this: what groups have
> outright died as the results of a single troll?

Go to rec.sports.baseball and you can witness it in real time. The troll
is named Maynard, who posts under about five or six different pseudonyms.
He currently makes up about 85% of the posts on the group. Most people
have fled to web forums or the individual team newsgroups.