Warhammer is not my game. I prefer a good MMORPG to it, but I'm absolutely fascinated by the strategy.
My friend Ailaros, being a man of firm, steady hands and quick wit, has composed 22 (so far) battle reports of his most recent forays into the world of 40k.
Here's number 22
I am regularly surprised the more I learn about my life and the world I live in. There are many opposing forces that and pushing and pulling at me to get me to think or behave in a certain way.
Take Ann Coulter. I heard about her the first time when a student at St. Olaf. Now, my school isn't exactly liberalism embodied, but the Republican student group's decision to invite her in the spring of 2005 certainly caused quite a stir. Ann had this reputation of being inflammatory and intentionally doing harm to people to press her own agenda. I didn't attend the lecture, but what makes me remember her visit was how the Republicans gloated that they were slowly breaking the liberal bias of the school and that Ann Coulter represented the new way of conducting political business. She gave her speech to a hundred or two students and left.
While I finished school and did a year of corporate work, Ann was busy writing (this, updating this, and writing her columns) and giving innumerable speeches around the country (to students, especially). And I didn't hear about any of that until quite recently, when Ann got into a spat with Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball with Chris Matthews (which I have never watched. Anyone who plays 'hardball' probably isn't going to be someone worth talking to for long, I suspect).
In order to tell you why these are two different ethical codes at war, I will need to abstract them. There are two possible interpretations, I think, which I'll outline here.
One: Ann has been repeatedly harassed for her political views and outspoken nature. Elizabeth's request for defense is another in a series of requests for Ann to go away (as evidenced by the numerous newspapers that have pulled Ann's column, and the advertisers that have pulled adverts from Ann's website). Her only way of resisting such repression is to act even MORE outspoken. The attack on John Edwards is a way for Ann to get her message heard in the face of large obstacles.
Two: Ann while normally debating political views, has gone too far by attacking John Edwards personally, and his wife tries the most direct and civil way to proceed against such an attacker, by asking Ann personally in public (where she couldn't back down). Ann refuses.
In order to see the ethical involved, I will rewrite each interpretation in a more abstract fashion.
One': Person A wants to change society. Part of society doesn't want that change and tries to stop A. In response, A tries louder tactics.
Two': Person B wants someone to stop harming someone she loves. Person B asks the offender to stop . The offender refuses.
In this abstraction it's clear that interpretation One' as a positive feedback loop. As long as the part of society can stop Person A, Person A will get louder, which will make that part of society try harder to stop her, which will make her try to be louder in return. If Person A cannot change society using simple talking, or by insults (louder), the inevitable step is that she will use violence (loudest). This is the logic followed by any group repressed by someone else (the Viet Cong, the insurgents of Iraq, early Americans, early Communists of China, etc.). In cases where words fail, weapons are the next resort of such people, and bloodshed follows.
Now, I don't mean to say that Ann will pick up a rifle any time soon and rid the world of liberals or whatnot. Rather, symbolically, if such attacks intensify, then someone will be hurt beyond repair. Either, she will lose, at which point, she will no longer be a fiery pundit, or she will win, at which point those directly opposing her will suffer. The only way I see of avoiding this is if one or the other group intentionally lets go of the fight, knowing that fighting it out would be worse than having the other person win.
Compounding that though, is that the other people don't see this as an arms race. Interpretation Two' strikes me as rather like what the Bible says about dealing with a problematic church member. It instructs the offended to talk to the person itself, and if they refuse to reconcile to then talk to the church body, and continuing up in levels of magnitude until he has nowhere to go. Then his only chance is to forgive that person, and move on. This kind of attitude is designed not to inflame, but instead to commune. It's the exact opposite of an arms race, and is instead about making a community work. In this regard, Elizabeth's choice to use this tactic against Ann is wise, and thoughtful.
Given these new interpretations of the event, it should be easy to see the pull of these two doctrines on little old me. Ann wants me to rise, armed, to her cause, while Elizabeth wants me to try to resolve our differences. This is what I was always taught is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, and I think this example embodies it here.
I've written a basic unit testing framework, written entirely in AppleScript, in order to test those unit tests I've been generating for Adium. It's so simple that it hardly merits mentioning, but it's just so useful. I'll see if I can figure out a way to put in online so others can dissect it.
