“Not a Lawyer” has been banned. Don’t reply to any of his comments if he tries to sneak one in.
After arguing relentlessly, snottily and obnoxiously about what is a justified impeachment, this guy revealed in his last post—and by that I do mean last— that he doesn’t even know what an impeachment is, writing that “no Presidents have been impeached.”
Hell, I knew about that common misconception by the historically and constitutionally ignorant when I started giving my U.S. Presidents presentation in Miss Barrett’s fifth grade class at the age of 9. Since the House has impeached Presidents three times since 1996, there is no excuse for a responsible, educated citizen not to know that an impeachment is like an indictment, and no President has been found guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” though Johnson survived by one vote in the Senate, and Nixon would have certainly been convicted. There is even less excuse for someone so uniformed to come here and argue with me about what’s an ethical impeachment. Yeah, I’m ticked off.
Believe it or not, my time is valuable. If you’re going to argue, do your homework, which at a bare minimum means knowing the basics of what you’re arguing about.
***
UPDATE: Not a Lawyer has been reinstated, as you can see in the comments below.
I am taking his explanation as sincere, and since he is Not a Lawyer, I have some confidence that he’s not just skillfully writing what he thinks will be be persuasive. I’ve reversed bans before, but not often, because the vast majority of those exiled react like the recently banned commenter who replied, “Fuck you, you Trump supporting fascist!”” Welcome home, Not a Lawyer. Your slate is clean.
Ethics Alarms 
Damn. I tried offer some helpful advice. But I’m more and more inclined to believe that the lot of these liberal sealions are paid to disrupt blogs that don’t toe the party line.
I want to state this clearly. If you want someone to listen to you, you need to be walking alongside them. You don’t have to agree, but you have to show you give a damn about the person you’re trying to influence. The whole boxer-in-a-ring schtick might win some accolades from the fan base, but it doesn’t change minds or reach hearts.
The breaking point for me with Not-A-Lawyer was his admission he was here to quell a debunked right-wing conspiracy. There’s nothing more to say at that point. The “you’re wrong, I’m right” leaves no room for discussion. At least from my perspective, his objective overrode consideration of what our host’s arguments actually were. So convinced of his righteous crusade, he could not possibly admit that someone, rightly or wrongly, could sincerely hold a different paradigm. The very idea that there might be something to learn from the opposing view was anathema. I would like to believe that I learned a few things from Not A Lawyer. My hat to you, if you are still following the comments, for making me think outside my comfort zone. But your very approach turned me off to anything you had to say. Learn the audience you wish to address. Seek common ground and build from there. Act with humility, and you’ll find your arguments go a hundred times further. The effort of trying to claim our host was acting hypocritically, when his arguments have been made post by post, day by day, for years is sheer arrogance. It reveals you don’t understand at all the paradigm in which our host works.
If you do want to continue to engage, our host does have a process. It requires humility, but that leads back to my ultimate question. What were you hoping to accomplish? If the cause is more important than scoring debate points, you’ll apologize and ask to be reinstated and try to make your case in a way that our host finds engaging. On the other hand, if all you desire is to play the martyr for being banned, I pity you. There’s a lot that can be debated, pondered, and learned here. We need more dialogue.
There’s a script there, Ryan, from which some people simply cannot deviate. They have no other argument and they don’t want to listen to yours, so they keep throwing out the same stuff.
“ he doesn’t even know what an impeachment is, writing that “no Presidents have been impeached.” “
Yeah, I can see how this would be the final straw. I commend you for tolerating the bufoonery all the way to that point. People like that could make even Gandhi want to hit them with a shovel.
Not sure why there’s an entire post dedicated to this but I was following that conversation and I assume that person meant impeached by both the House and Senate and removed from office.
Geez talk about grumpy. Your next post should be about all the accurate things that guy said.
“…I assume that person meant impeached by both the House and Senate…”
Well, there went the last of your credibility.
A very funny response. Thanks, I needed that.
What you REALLY need is a hobby.
Removed from office is what we both meant (yes, impeached by the House, then removed by the Senate)
If semantics is all ya got, ya got nothing.
And before you go off…no, our slip up doesn’t mean anything.
This blog kind of IS our host’s hobby, one I expect you will not be participating in much longer, with that attitude.
If “removed from office” is what he meant, it’s what he should’ve said. Semantics matter when you are trying to be persuasive. Having a more humble attitude also helps. If NaL had that, our host might’ve been a bit more forgiving of that misstatement.
”This blog kind of IS our host’s hobby, one I expect you will not be participating in much longer, with that attitude.”
Gasp!
”Semantics matter when you are trying to be persuasive”
Not when someone takes a semantic mistake and makes an entire post about it. It’s nitpicky, petty, and really…weird to ban someone over that and then to write a post about it.
AOC has spent the better part of her career as a Representative messing up semantics. That, regardless of her intelligence, makes her sound like a buffoon. I single her out because of her expertise in the arena, but she’s certainly not alone. Semantics matter.
A blog host can write about whatever he/she desires. This is not the first time the host here has written a post explaining why a particular commenter has been sent packing. I take those posts as a good reminder that on this blog, much like semantics and content, attitude and behavior matter. If you wish, start your own blog and attract an audience. Then write whatever you want.
Joel
There is a group of people who will take jokes literally and treat semantics they use as words that can morph into whatever benefits them at the time. Ryan made some excellent points about how to positively engage but I don’t think that group wants dialogue they want to tell. I have stopped responding to these people as it is not worth entering into that fray.
Patty. That is NOT a “semantic” mistake. That is a factual mistake, and the comment made it clear that it was well-embedded.
I don’t typically react punitively when someone is factually wrong and is operating under a substantial missimpression, and there are lost of genuine experts on many areas who weigh in here who do make me aware of my own gaps in knowledge and information. However, someone who literalluy issues comment after comment self-righteously bloviating about while accusing me of “double standards,” hypocrisy, flawed analysis, etc on the topic had better have the essentials of that topic locked and loaded himself. This was like having an argument about evolution with someone who after endless back-and-forth with flaming certitude reveals that he is unfamiliar with the concept of natural selection. My time was wasted under false pretenses.
It’s me again, your host! Patty is banned. (You win a few, you lose a few.) Despite a deadline for apologizing for presuming to tell me that I “need a hobby” she instead issued this junk”: “em>That is NOT a “semantic.”
Sure it is.”
My response: From a discussion of “semantics” on the web: “When it is encountered in general use today (among non-specialists) the word is often seen in the phrase just arguing semantics, which appears to indicate that the speaker intends for semantics to signify something unimportant and trivial, or unrelated to the discussion.”
The meaning of the key word in a discussion is not “just semantics.”
You had one assignment: apologize by the end of the day. That offer is now rescinded. You’re an asshole.
Bye. You’re banned, and unlike NAL, there is nothing you can say at this point to be reinstated.
_______________
(Patty isn’t worth a special post. The Stupidity Rule was likely to get her eventually anyway.)
No it isn’t.
http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Series_3/27.htm
Oops, Patty got bumped while I was typing.
any argument about semantics should reference the Argument Clinic, where they end up arguing about what an argument is:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_Clinic
-Jut
See link above at 12:11 😉
Correction. I’m an ethicist, and that’s how I make my living, but it also is my profession, which means that I pursue perfecting the field whether it compensates me or not. So Ethics Alarms is is a professional activity. If I wrote a baseball blog, THAT would be a hobby.
I’m going to be really nice and lenient and let you get away with that, but it will be the last time.
1. Don’t lie here. Whatever you meant, NAL definitely didn’t know what impeachment means, despite arguing endlessly about the legitimately of Trump’s impeachment. The word doesn’t mean “removed from office.” It’s in the Constitution. It’s in the dictionary. It’s in the history books. I can’t have a coherent discussion if you’re using a term repeatedly in that discussion that you think means something other than what it does. That wastes my time.
2. Finally, if you tell me again what I “need,” or something similarly presumptuous and disrespectful, you will find yourself having cocktails with NOT A LAWYER, A FRIEND and others in SPAM Purgatory. You apparently haven’t read my biography, the Comment policies, or enough posts to know who the hell you’re dealing with I probably have more interests, avocations, and hobbies than anyone you know or have ever met, and they turn up here often.
I’ll have an apology here for that, please, a sincere one. You have to the end of the day. If I get it, you have a clean slate. If I don’t, BYE!
Patty wrote, “I assume that person meant impeached by both the House and Senate and removed from office.”
Interesting; you assume then you inaccurately state the same nonsense, as if it’s fact, and yet it’s been factually corrected in multiple times in multiple comment threads.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Now for the last time…
NOTE ABOUT THE * I PUT IN #4: It’s my current understanding that the Senate is not actually “required” to remove the convicted from office, if they don’t think the articles of impeachment rise to that level, I think they can censure.
I really don’t give a damn if you’re assuming, the facts remain the same. You and others repetitively spewing the same inaccurate nonsense doesn’t make it fact, it just makes you look like a trolling imbeciles.
You’re either stupid (as in can’t learn) or a troll, you choose.
Get the FACTS correct and stop misrepresenting the impeachment process.
Patty says: “Geez talk about grumpy. Your next post should be about all the accurate things that guy said.”
Obviously you have some “accurate things” in mind Patty. Do tell, and then explain why those “things” are accurate.
Thanks in advance and have a nice day…🤠
well, I foresee interesting times….blogs are absolutely a free speech zone for the owner. Us visitors are guests and should act accordingly.
My husband is a huge history buff (and blogs about US history, among other things), so he has me thoroughly trained on “first X is impeached in the House, then X is convicted in the Senate.” And we both made sure that our kids were historically literate, whether they had a natural “history buff” inclination (like our son) or not (like our daughter).
EA has been plagued of late with a veritable locust-like outbreak of what I assume are paid disrupters. They must have been sent here by the DNC as part of the late stages of the Biden campaign as the election approaches. The key word, which Jack used above, is “relentless.” The EA commentariat is uniformly amateur. People who are accomplished in other things but have an interest in sharing thoughts on the ethical aspects of current affairs with other similarly inclined people. The give and take is, above all, civil and collegial. I’ve likened it to a discussion session of an undergraduate course with Jack acting as the professor.
People like Not a Lawyer and Chris and JDKazoo and AFriend come into these discussions as if they are cruise missiles. They are loaded with talking points and are relentless. They give no quarter. They are as convinced of their position as any MSNBC commenter or member of The Squad or Bernie Sanders. All of which is a very pernicious pose. I can only conclude they are paid disrupters doing their job because they are inhumanly relentless and never, ever concede a single point. They are the kind of people readers and commenters come here to get away from. If they were normal amateurs, they’d simply absent themselves like Sparty has. But they are here to cause trouble and only to cause trouble. They are here to keep undecided voters who might stumble upon EA from hearing what Jack and other have to say. It might cause them to not vote for Biden.
As with Chris, my rule of thumb is simply, “Do not engage.” These people (I think some may in fact by AI generated) are here to gum up the works by wasting commenters and Jack’s time and shutting down collegial discourse.
My response henceforth to these people will be a terse, “Go away, and Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
And “Patty” is clearly a paid disrupter.
Well, we know Jerry is a real person, and I feel there’s a huge difference between what he comments here and what Bob Ghery, Not a Lawyer, Patty, et al do. Jerry engages, allowing for give and take, and he really backs up what he says with details. He shifts his arguments to accommodate nuance, and he actually will concede points. He also knows when a thread has been beat to death. The others seem far more interested in keeping an argument going, shifting the goalposts, making personal attacks, but never offering anything truly substantive themselves. The strategy is constantly to shift the burden of proof off themselves to their interlocuters. It is as though the entire point is to catch up Jack especially in wasting all his time trying to rebut those arguments so he has no time remaining to make new posts or examine new ethical issues. Maybe I’m wrong about them being paid disrupters, but the playbook seems identical in every case, and the arguments essentially boil down to shouting endless, “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, don’t you know you’re wrong, aren’t you ready to admit you’re wrong, you can see you’re wrong now, can’t you?”
I don’t know about “paid disrupter”, but the recent appearance of new, similarly argumentative, types seems suspicious. I wouldn’t discount the possibility of some previously disgruntled participant seeding some rabid leftist sites with comments and links back to this blog.
I doubt they are paid disruptors. They are people who feel passionately about the subject but just don’t have the tools to debate honestly and intelligently about the subject (except for Jerry. As much as I disagree with him, I believe he is sincere and he is intelligent).
So, sure, NAL might have meant both impeachment and removal, but it’s not what he wrote. In this type of forum, words matter. Statements should be carefully phrased to ensure that they are interpreted the way they are intended. The word “impeachment” does not mean “and removed from office”.
Which makes me wonder what their reaction would be if Donald Trump – who also has a problem being precise in his wording when it is essential that he do so – had claimed that no President had ever been impeached.
Of course, I’m more a cynic than AM or Ryan are. Anyone who has as much research and links ready at the tip of their typing fingers as Kazoo does has been fed talking points. Why would any amateur lefty want to waste their time here?
The tell was Kazoo saying, essentially, “in a better world, we wouldn’t be wasting our time on social media, we’d be making the world a better place.” To which I say, “Oh bullshit. Don’t tell me how to spend a little of my time.” If he wants to make the world a better place, that’s fine. Go, and sin no more. But don’t denigrate a bunch of people engaged in the eternal human behavior of simply hanging around the water cooler and chewing the fat (at a fairly high level). That comment is indicative of someone intent on shutting down EA because, if we know what’s good for us, we’re all supposed to shut up, defer to our betters and do as we are told.
A bit unfair, Bill. Jerry is a scholar, an academic, and knows his stuff, though, of course, he is wrong on several critical topics, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Yeah, he’s gotten caught up in hyperbole here and there, but if all the progressives who come here could debate with his style, respect and erudition, this would be a better blog.
Of course, he might snap like dry twig one of these days, like the esteemed Charles Green, or Chris, or Ampersand…or suddenly go AWOL like the legendary atheist, libertarian warrior tgt. But so far JD has been a valuable addition to the colloquy.
I’m not sure “academic” has quite the cachet it once might have had.
This is not a Monty python sketch. None of us paid to have an argument. The senseless repitition and scolding tone is not well received by the general commentariat and the host. Your mileage may vary, no warranty is offered or implied.
Am I allowed to contest my banning on the grounds that I did in fact mean “impeached and convicted?”
The evidence for this is that we were talking about one of Trump’s impeachments at the time–of course I know it wasn’t true that “zero presidents had been impeached.” How could I think that while at the same time defending the validity of Trump’s impeachment? And everyone knows Clinton was impeached as well–I meant to say he should have been convicted on impeachment and removed (which a dyed-in-the-wool partisan would not say). There’d be no need to reference him if I genuinely didn’t know that he had been impeached (but not convicted). It was sloppy–and a result of, admittedly, writing a lot, perhaps too much, about a lot of complicated issues. My point was that it’s a shame none of the presidents who’ve been impeached have been convicted, and I’m sorry that point got lost in my rhetorical sloppiness.
I won’t write another comment until I receive an answer to my request, and I’ll respect a “no”–if I get a “yes,” I won’t even return to this subject, which you are clearly tired of. All I do request is that if you don’t post this comment, you do inform your readers that it was a sloppy mistake rather than genuine ignorance on my part. It is rather embarrassing to have people think I believed no president had been impeached, while at the same time defending Trump’s impeachment–I may be capable of some cognitive dissonance like all people, but I’d hate for people to think I’m capable of that much.
Yes, you’re allowed. This is a fair explanation, all is forgiven, and I’m reinstating you. Excellent response, and one that past and future banned commenters should look to for guidance.
Not a Lawyer is reinstated with full commenting privileges, and his record is expunged. I will not refer to this episode going forward.
Much appreciated.
Ditto.
Jack,
Their Pee Wee Herman debate style detracts from your excellent blog and forum.
As I have mentioned in the past, you have tolerated many individuals longer than I would before banning them.
Generally, I make it a habit not to argue with geniuses, idiots, or zealots. We don’t understand each other or with the latter they don’t want to reach a common ground. Which, is which, is not always self-evident. So, I employ the three-strike rule. If we fail to work toward a modicum of common ground, after three attempts, I terminate the debate.
Additionally, in points of disagreement, I think carefully if the debate involves a principal worthy of “a hill I am willing to die on”. If it does, I don’t necessarily abandon my three-strikes rule. I may, however, alter the intensity of my rebuttal and terminate the debate early.
For example, about 35 years ago my former wife and I were in a nasty divorce and my former father-in-law decided to insert himself into the fray. I had moved out of the marital home and the idiot left a threatening message on my answering machine. His harassment ended after he was arrested, and his name was published in the local paper for all to see. I believe handcuffs were also involved.
Keep up the good work Jack. We don’t always agree but you are a thoughtful and kind gentleman. The world is a better place with you in it. And that is all that any of us can hope for.