As much as I tried to avoid admitting to having a personal life, much less what things I may be involved in during such, something came up through one of my hobbies recently that left me musing a bit of social commentary. I’m involved in an international role-playing game group, with games in Canada, Brazil, the US, and even Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem game is relatively new to this organization, but shortly after they joined they decided it would be a wonderful idea to try to organize a large event-game to be held in Jerusalem, to include a week long tour of Israel. They set it for two years from their first announcement so that people could have a chance to get ready, and in an effort to keep interest in the event as well as provide a degree of cultural education, the person running the Jerusalem game sends out a monthly email to the various email lists associated with this organization. The topics of these emails vary, covering such things like what the general climate of Israel is, what type of cuisine could be expected, the general styles of dress of your standard Israeli, questions regarding language barriers, and a variety of other topics mostly meant to dispel the myth that these “strange” people on the other side of the world are really all that different than any of the rest of us who are involved in this global gaming group.

This month, she chose to address a subject that was no doubt a concern for those who would choose to travel for this event she’s working so hard to make go well; the issue of security. Given the recent international headlines Israel’s been receiving, she chose to ease her way into the subject with a bit of humor. She linked a YouTube video that she tells us was complied by a group of Israeli news editors in response to the current media coverage of the flotilla fiasco. She followed this by explaining that despite the image the rest of the world has, born entirely of news coverage, with a bit of common sense, it is indeed safe to travel to and in Israel. She cited statistics (without sources) stating that you were more likely to be killed in a Chicago mugging than to be killed in a Hamas rocket attack.

There was immediate backlash to her email, calling the post tasteless and inappropriate. She responded by clarifying that she was trying to advertise her event and alleviate concerns she feels the players may have. This was followed by a long series of response emails telling her that the individual sender was indignant that she would post that video.

I’ll admit, a discussion forum relating to out-of-character discussions surrounding a role-playing game is probably not the best place to post politically-charged material, even if your intention is to provide a bit of satire about a situation. That was only asking for trouble. But really? You have to send in an email response to it to say that you’re offended? What *exactly* does that accomplish? Furthermore, why is that any more offensive than *any* political commentary out there? The content of her clarifying email made it clear that her intention was to illustrate that there are two sides to every story, that you shouldn’t take what you see in the media to heart.

I responded to that email, doing a quick Google news search to illustrate my point. I didn’t read the articles; I’ve read far more than enough about the situation. What I was looking for was headlines. The Google news search page brought up its first ten listings at the time. Nine of them condemned Israel for its actions, one refused to take a side and was simply relaying the statement made by the Israeli Defense Force. I pointed this out in my response to illustrate how the situation is clearly biased and that a video like this is but a response to that overwhelming international bias. I argued that there are at least two sides to any given story, often many more. I argued that the video wasn’t tasteless due to its political nature and thanked the original sender for attempting to provide a sense of levity to a tense subject, for trying to address the elephant in the room that has been security concerns regarding this trip.

For some reason, I expected rational, civil discourse. The response I got was a passive aggressive post that claimed I couldn’t possibly have an intelligent opinion on the subject if I had to Google it before posting, and included this little gem: When you have friends and acquaintances dying or putting themselves in harms way, and someone calls them con-artists in an attempt to “educate” perhaps you’ll get offended, too – maybe not.  *shrug*

I’m still not sure what part of that bothers me more; the absolute disregard for anything approaching audience analysis, the passive-aggressive “name-calling,” or, as xarexerax put it, “the rampant stupidity and deviation from reasoned thought.”

I might not have met the qualifications necessary to complete my term, but I enlisted in the Army a while back. I was sent to the Army Language School to study Korean so I could work in forward radio intercept. I made many friends from every branch of service during my 2 years at the language school… and there’s very few of them I can confirm presently are still alive. I was chaptered out because I wasn’t able to keep myself in good enough shape (for a variety of reasons) and they were almost all sent along to go serve in the Middle East.

I have marched in parades designed to build community relations though crowds of protesters screaming far worse at me than “con-artist.” Read through non-western newspapers sometime and you’ll find the US Military trashed on a plethora of points. I have friends and family who weather this with a smile, who fight and die for a cause they believe in, much how the Palestinian’s being mocked here are fighting and dying for a cause they believe in.

He couldn’t, of course, have known any of that when he passive-aggressively made his comments about whether or not I would care. So he made a blanket assumption about his entire audience, figuring that those who disagree with him on a point must fall into a certain stereotypical block. He disregarded anything relevant to civil discourse or intelligent debate.

I was irritated at this and ranted to a few friends, who while agreeing with me, pointed out “Well, it is the Internet. What do you expect?” That’s true, with the way debate on internet forums has generally developed, there’s a strong stereotype that the only responses you can possibly get are from “trolls” who have no purpose but to aggravate the situation.

Forgive me for holding out the hope that there could be reasonable discussion on a topic through an internet medium. What was I thinking?