{"id":3150,"date":"2008-08-25T07:00:58","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3150"},"modified":"2008-08-24T12:04:52","modified_gmt":"2008-08-24T17:04:52","slug":"credentials-that-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3150","title":{"rendered":"Credentials That Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I wrote about the left’s rather unimaginative reliance on “Gitmo” metaphors<\/a>; it’s only gotten worse.\u00a0 Last week, I was in the Dunn Brothers on Grand Avenue, across from Macalester College (a local far-lefty hotbed).\u00a0 A rather aromatic twentysomething white boy with dreadlocks and a Che Guevara t-shirt tried to order free-range vegan Guatemalan coffee, but was told that they were out.\u00a0 The barrista asked the lad if he could wait two minutes while another pot brewed.<\/p>\n

“What is this – Guantanamo?” the be-che’d fellow fumed [1]<\/p>\n

At any rate, in a comment to that post<\/font><\/a>, someone said:<\/p>\n

With the frequency of the Gitmo moniker thrown about to mis-label every perceived wrong against liberal causes, someone should coin a \u201cGodwin\u2019s law\u201d-style statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I do appreciate the idea and take the point, adding another law to the books is, as with most things in the civil arena, not really the answer.\u00a0 “Godwin’s Law<\/a>“, [“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”<\/em>] –\u00a0is a bad one to mimic, since it (like the Nazi comparisons themselves) are most often invoked by people with feeble understanding at best of the history or issues involved, and tends to be used to squelch even the (rare) literate, appropriate comparisons.\u00a0\u00a0The lower 80% of Godwin users tend to employ the law as a rhetorical Daisy Cutter, indiscrimimately mowing lines of conversation good and bad.\u00a0 Inappropriate reference to Godwin can cause problems<\/a> in some serious cases.\u00a0 At one point, I even codified a corollary<\/a> to Godwin:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Berg’s Fifth Law of Historical Illiteracy<\/strong> – 99% of the invocations of Godwin’s Law are done by 1% of the online population. Corollary: That 1% understands .000001% of the history required for a literate invocation of Godwin’s Law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I minored in both History and German; hence, I invoke Nazi references both very sparingly and, when I do, with surgical aptness<\/a>.\u00a0 And I get a little peeved when, after coming up\u00a0 with a thorougly impeccable comparison, some commenter bleats “Godwin’s Law!\u00a0 Godwin’s Law!” in a perfect duckspeak accent, not really knowing what they’d doing, but fatally hobbling the conversation anyway.<\/p>\n

What we have, in summation,\u00a0is two conflicting problems:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ill-informed, hamfisted use of inflammatory metaphors (Naziism, Guantanamo)<\/li>\n
  2. Misuse of memes intended to nullify #1.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Being a conservative and free-marketeer (unlike too many Republicans), I believe I have a comprehensive, free-speech-enabled, market-based answer; a certification program that allows internet users to use these memes, while assuring the reader\/consumer that the user is qualified and competent to use them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    I propose the following certifications:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Certified Godwin’s Lawyer (CGL)<\/strong>: Bearer of this certification will have exhibited an ability to discern between apt and inapt Nazi analogies in the application of Godwin’s Law to online dialog.\u00a0 Hopefully, as technology advances, blog posts, comments, podcasts and even Youtube videos written by non-CGL-credentialled users can be automatically filtered out.<\/li>\n
    • Registered Totalitarian Analogist (RTA)<\/strong>: Registered Totalitarian Analogists have the necessary background in history, ethics and logic to appropriately and aptly <\/em>employ Nazi, Communist, Maoist, Khmer Rouge, Klan and Fascism-related metaphors.\u00a0 (NOTE:\u00a0 Having used unironically, even once, the term “Bushitler” is a lifetime disqualification from this credential).<\/li>\n
    • Authorized Guantanamo Referrent (AGR)<\/strong>: These Authorized Referrants will have sufficient background in current events, the law (especially the actual text <\/em>of the Geneva Convention as re: combatants who are not members of a military or indigenous partisan group) to competently use “Guantamo” similes and metaphors.\u00a0 Additionally, AGRs will at least be\u00a0aware <\/em>of the irony behind the term “International Law” when referring to it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      I did note that this was a market solution.\u00a0 I am the market.\u00a0 To get your CGL, RTA or AGR, send $10 to my PayPal account.\u00a0 (Limited time offer<\/em>: <\/strong>all three for $25!).<\/p>\n

      Thank you.\u00a0 That is all.<\/p>\n

      [1] The quote, like the story, is “fake but accurate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Last week, I wrote about the left’s rather unimaginative reliance on “Gitmo” metaphors; it’s only gotten worse.\u00a0 Last week, I was in the Dunn Brothers on Grand Avenue, across from Macalester College (a local far-lefty hotbed).\u00a0 A rather aromatic twentysomething white boy with dreadlocks and a Che Guevara t-shirt tried to order free-range vegan Guatemalan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}