Since I just got a "fuck off" in response to my PM, that's not going to run.
Compared even to my notorious meltdown before Christmas, you really have gone off the deep end. I don't know whether you've been working too hard, burning the candle at both ends, or what is behind this temporary insanity, but you need to get a grip and calm down. I know how much you value your privacy, how much you hate anything that smacks to you of "snitching", but just piling on lie after lie after lie to get at me, to make me out to be some sort of crazy depraved monster that I'm not, is surely worse than anything I may ever have done.
Now I'm going to do something which I know is wrong, something I never do, because it is fundamental to
my moral code: I'm going to break my word to you. I will also be revealing something you said in private, so it's breaking confidentiality as well. I don't want to do it, but you've pushed me too far. Still, I accept responsibility for it; I
could still keep quiet but I've made a conscious decision not to. In the face of your constant lying about me, the way you have taken advantage of my discretion until now to spin this whole fantastical edifice of hatred and revenge, the way you've escalated the whole thing way beyond the bounds of reason, I think it's now moot whether I should honour what I told you earlier, that I wouldn't say what you did that started this whole nonsense, that effectively I would cover up for you. I've thought and thought, I've deliberated all the options, I've treated it as a moral dilemma, weighing up the conflicting moral considerations, and I've come to the conclusion, finally and very reluctantly, that the obligation to truth trumps the others. (And as our old friend the dutiful German said, we have an obligation to ourselves as well as everyone else.)
Of course I realise that there is no way back from doing this. But any hope I had of being able to resolve this, of being able to resume something approaching a friendly relationship, however hard I try, has long gone anyway.
What it all boils down to is that in a thread where Jaeger had come on in his usual heavy way against me, just before I posted my response to his latest attack, he wrote this to me in a PM:
Again, you're taking things way too personally. Can you try to tone it back down for me please.
Because he asked me nicely, I first told him I would consider it and then complied. I junked what I had written, and substituted a conciliatory reply. This is it:
viewtopic.php?p=490170#p490170I also told him, in a PM, that I'd toned it down, at his request. He completely disregarded this, which would, in anyone who approaches dialogue and debate honestly and fairly, and if he had any decency, respect or sense of reciprocity, have prompted a softer reply. Instead, with his next post he came right back at me, metaphorically hitting me again and harder. He cheated. He relied on my not mentioning it on the board, because his request to me to tone it down was in our private correspondence, which made his harsh response a shocking betrayal of trust, taking advantage of my honesty and decency. This is the low down dirty trick I referred to much later.
For the next 6 hours we argued about it in PMs, he claiming his request had been general, not referring to the specific post, me pointing out that I had read it as applying to the post, and that he knew that, that was no excuse, because I had told him clearly that I would consider toning down my post before I posted, and that I
had toned it down
at his request when I did post it. I tried to persuade him to accept responsibility for his own actions, to acknowledge that he had behaved badly, in private only if need be, if he couldn't bring himself to make any sort of amends publicly, because he never admits any fault on the board. (Bear in mind that our correspondence focuses on moral philosophy and ethics, so these things were fundamental to our friendship.) He flatly refused to accept that he had done anything wrong at all, or even that I had any reason to feel aggrieved. He actually had the gall to repeat a number of "threats" he had made to me earlier in our PM exchanges about the thread, how he'd warned me that "anything short of a concession and you're going to regret it" and more in that vein.
Six hours and 40 PMs back and forth later, I gave up and posted this:
viewtopic.php?p=490232#p490232It originally had one more sentence, in which I wrote that he had asked me privately to tone down my response and that his response was an abuse of the constraints of privacy. I don't remember the exact wording. It was only ever going to be temporary, a last resort to try to get J to realise how seriously I took his cheating, and it was up for perhaps 10 minutes. J went ballistic, demanded I delete it, and of course I did. (It was a post, not an email, on 24th not 25th June, but that is what he is referring to.)
So that was my great crime. That is what he has turned into me making threats against him and his family, threatening his livelihood, threatening to splash his personal details all over the internet, being depraved, sick, twisted, psycho, dishonest, a psychopath, weirdo - and so on.
To my way of thinking, expecting me to maintain my cover up of his behaviour, to protect
his reputation (especially while he does his utmost to trash what is left of mine), is worse than his original betrayal and my brief revelation of it - both of which were horrible, but could have been overcome with empathy, honesty, consideration and contrition on both sides. He thinks using (abusing) the respect for privacy as he did is acceptable, and "snitching", in any circumstances, is the ultimate crime. So it is the epitome of hypocrisy for him to say, as he did in his last post, when I suggested we go back to arguing it out in private:
You just want everything to be private and back in the shadows for the sake of your precious "board image" and so you can go back to your same sick shenanigans. Now you're trying to cover it by "sparing everyone else".
I don't give a fuck about my "board image" - but I do care when people lie about me.
This extreme sensitivity to anything he considers "snitching" has come up before, and J claims I have been "continuously breaching confidentiality and private correspondence". There have been two recent examples that I can think of. In the first, we had a moral disagreement on whether testifying as a witness to a violent racial attack in a court of law was "snitching", as he thought, or a moral obligation and public-spirited, as I thought. As we had reached an impasse, I summarised the case in question and the arguments, and posed the question on a website where professional philosophers tackle questions from the public. As it happens, all of the responses supported my position, not J's, though that wasn't the issue. J was furious that I had taken the discussion public (and simplified his argument), though of course I had given no clues as to whom I'd been discussing it with, merely describing him as "a philosopher friend".
When we were discussing this, and he accused me of being untrustworthy and unable to keep private things private, I told him - in the interests of total honesty between us - about the only other time I could think of where I'd spoken to anyone else about what he'd said to me. This was to another flagger we both correspond with, who is well aware of how he and I get heated in our arguments, because we've joked about it when we're all in chat together. I had mentioned in passing to this person that J had threatened, again, that he was really going to go for me on the board next time I wrote something stupid or illogical and that this time I was going to try to ignore him and not respond at all. Not exactly earth-shattering between friends who all "know" each other, but again, J was incensed.
I gather there was one earlier example, whose details I have forgotten, and which he brings up as justification for his accusations that I continuously breach confidentiality, but won't elucidate further, so I expect it was no more serious than those two. Hardly what I would call "snitching" on even the most generous definition, let alone evidence of depravity or psychosis on my part.
Everybody I know here also knows that whatever else I may be, I'm a straight shooter and an honest SOB.
Everyone may think that, and I used to too: harsh sometimes, rude, but basically honest. No longer. Smearing opponents may well, unfortunately, be a useful skill in politics, which has its own restricted moral framework, but using downright lies to blacken the name of a real person, someone with whom you were friends, for your own purposes, is not a morally acceptable way of conducting yourself in ordinary life. It's a lesson you need to learn, J. You've taught me a lot: that is the one lesson I would like you to take from me.
They also know that you are a demented weirdo who has done similar shit here before and they can weigh that up in deciding what your denials are worth.
Some (maybe many) people probably
believe that, with more than a little help from you. Some others don't, but I expect even they are beginning to have their doubts. But however hard you've tried to convince yourself to the contrary, you know, as I know, that it's not true.
I too "understand things like loyalty and obligation". Better, perhaps, than you. Which is why I hoped it would never come to this and tried so hard (as I think anyone with an open mind who now reads through these last few threads will understand),
without revealing the real story, to get you to stop this horrible and shockingly dishonest demolition job on me. Still: now it's done.
Shes never interfered with me. I have no complaints about her.
Same here.
Mega ditto.
I met her once and I found her to be a nice lady. Not kookey in any way.
Penta has always been gracious, kind and very sane in all my interactions with her.
