The Standard: "There's no such thing as 'rational' debate!"

For those of you not familiar with the website, The Standard is a blog hosting various lefties, environmentalists and socialists. I had never previously commented there but had read their stories from time to time. In an effort to pimp my own blog I signed up and began discussing the Crafar Farms deal. But I found myself rubbing a moderator the wrong way. Was it my language? Was I asking for trouble? You decide!

It began with my discussing the Crafar deal - outlining it as I have done here – and a user wondered about how Allan Crafar himself fared as farm owner and manager:

I commented that Allan Crafar himself was looking to offload the whole damned farm himself which caught the eye of the kind and friendly moderator, 1prent, who responded in bold:

I wasn't particularly perturbed but felt he was being rather rude so I provided a source and suggested he might want to apologise. This obviously flew in the face of 1prent's hallowed beliefs so it must be wrong and I must be a gullible fool for swallowing such a ridiculous story. Hence I mustn't be able to read let alone understand what I was reading:

I was feeling a little bewildered by this point. I couldn't understand why this user was getting so upset by what I had presented. Undeterred I provided some more information. Perhaps, if I explained myself better, we could be friends. 

Ahhhh but it was not to be...

Now I was highly amused. Obviously this was a guy not used to being wrong. Not only wrong, but wrong on his own goddamn territory!
"Oh no! I'm losing! Quick, pile on the denigrating comments!"

The most amusing remark was that I was trying to swing my e-dick around. The accusation coming from a guy who was telling me,
"I'm a moderator round these parts and I can block you whenever I damned well please, hur hur hur".

Well, I couldn't leave this just hanging out there so I made, once again, a disarmingly polite yet direct comment (at this stage 1prent had logged in instead of merely moderating):

Wait what?
"I don't think that anyone didn't know that"?
Hang on buddy...weren't you the guy who said,
"I have never seen anything that said the Crafar's were trying to sell the 16 farms"

I didn't have time to reply as something interesting was happening further down the page. 

You'll notice I say,

"...I find it ironic you are berating me for not providing links yet lower down in the page you are berating me for asking others for links"

Let's have a look at that bit now. This gentleman named "vto" was complaining that no one could explain to him how foreign ownership was better than NZ ownership. I had called him up a few times on this blatant Strawman argument because no one, anywhere, had said foreign ownership was better. I explained this once again and got the following response:

  

John Key and all his government has claimed foreign ownership is better? Really? I would like to see a source for that claim.

I wasn't quite sure what 1prent was going on about and before I could query him a second moderator jumped in:

Nice save RedLogix! The strawman just wasn't enough so Redlogix decided to spice things up with a Burden of Proof fallacy. That'll surely confuse him now!

Ahhh but I am cleverer than that:

1prent again jumps in to save the day! 

"We aren't interested in formal rules"

Whoa whoa, back the fuck up buddy. Aren't you you the guy who said,
"Stating something as fact generally requires that you link to it to substantiate it..."

"There is no such thing as 'rational' debate"

What the fuck, dude?

After I try to explain myself 1prent closes up the debate with some awful gibberish and then put me on the moderation list which means any comments will be vetted first and my foolish insistence on discussing things logically will no longer infect everyone.

Ho ho ho! What fun to be had!