I find this the most revealing comment offered by Mr. Ostler made over Faith-Promoting Rumor:
Let me know who you are so that I can see who I am dealing with you coward.
I pass over the wondrously comical possibilities left open by the lack of a comma in this sentence, because even more ridiculous is the premise: not the words or ideas of the person but the person behind those words is what matters.
The pomposity and mock-heroics that Mr. Ostler displays here are comic in their own way: in another comment at Faith-Promoting Rumor, he imagines himself bravely standing for "personal accountability" in being a complete asshole under his real name, whereas he slanders SmallAxe and Yakov ben Tov as cowards for the spineless act of presenting ideas with a little warranted criticism under names not their own (so we presume).
Would it matter if we knew their names? Of course not. It makes as little difference to me whether anyone at Faith-Promoting Rumor or anyone here is actually William Barr as it would if they were Roseanne Barr. I have formed my view of them and anyone else who posts this way purely from what they say and how they interact. I hope others do the same towards me; it is possible that I have an Ivy League PhD and rest in an ivory tower of great height from which I could piss on the un-doctored likes of Mr. Blake Ostler, were I the Swiftian sort. On the other hand, I might be a former librarian living in Parowan, invited by the market to retire very early from that vocation because my AA degree from (then) Dixie College cannot compete with the MLS graduates from (now) UVU. Would it make my philological investigations and critiques here any more or less valid or accurate for that reason? Of course not. They should be judged on their merits. It is pure peer review, only democratic rather than hierarchical.
When he, like the other FARMS-types, posts under his own name, Mr. Ostler does he so not because it helps him to temper his behavior (obviously!) but because 1) it inflates his credibility as a non-coward in the eyes of his admirers, and 2) his name carries with it a certain reputation that should impose some restraint on his adversaries in dialogue. In short, his name comes with ready-made authority. If it were some pseudonymous guy commenting as Ostler does at Faith-Promoting Rumor, the effect would be quite different and irrelevant.
Authority largely matters to people when they are forced by necessity to appeal to authority—if you need a doctor, say—or when authority imposes itself on them—the police, say—but there are some people whose nature inclines them to find heat and passion in the luster of authority (I believe there is a name for them).
I have been very naïve, perhaps stubbornly so, in holding to the belief that these so-called apologists are merely passionate partisans. I have a hard time seeing Hugh Nibley as a liar all around, though it is clear to those with the skills to detect his deception that he was indeed deceptive in numerous instances. He certainly was no authoritarian. John Gee's use of the evidence in the case of these manuscripts I have chosen to see as incompetence (branding an interpretation or an editorial choice a "mistake" rather than acknowledging a difference of opinion or editorial practice), though in other instances—I'm thinking especially of that Coptic story of Abraham and one of the Shapurs of Persia—it is hard not to see what he does there as total deception, given that he can read the language. Peterson I see as just an impresario who enjoys controlling discussion through snark (he does plagiarize, but on a blog, so it's hard for me to take even that seriously, since we start from a very low base-line with him; if he were a serious scholar with a published record, I'd feel differently). Midgley is grandpa Simpson now, but I hear in his younger days he had more humane approach to people on the opposite side of his beliefs. I am quite sure that if I had a spouse die before me, I would find great balm for my loneliness and longing as I age in being completely vicious to strangers online (the guy takes seriously comments on the Salt Lake Tribune website, which should tell you about how seriously anyone should take him).
I hope Ostler is not representative, though. It is hard to consider such a one as this to be a decent person (but let us emphasize our hope that this is not representative, that it is, rather, an unfortunate but rule-breaking exception):
I desire to know identities because I have a deep seated belief in personal accountability for actions. I want to know who says such nasty things and let others know how loathsome some commenting here.truly are. I have already learned 2 identities. One used a vpn but it was easy to crack because they used the same moniker before the vpn. I was not surprised and I think those who deal with them will be quite interested in their conduct and comments here and elsewhere.
Well, his thuggish and authoritarian tactics are obvious, but do you catch the elision? He slides from an admirably passionate commitment to personal accountability, which is supposed to lull us into a sense of justification and perhaps forgiveness for his reprehensible threats, down to a primitive form of communal justice. He wants a public flogging for his enemies, people whose greatest crime is disagreeing with him in public, which he takes as a sign of disrespect. The first kind cannot be enforced because it is a matter of individual conscience and is guilt-based, the second must be enforced as a matter of honor and operates on public shame. If one really cared about personal accountability, one would not need to know the names and identities of strangers whose words seem hostile, for they have their own conscience to accuse them, don't they? The real accountability he desires here is accountability to
him.
And anyway, his use of his name online doesn't seem to keep him from being a complete prick. The man displays no shame in his comments at Faith-Promoting Rumor. Why does he think it will work for anyone else? Perhaps because it is a rule that should apply to those beneath him in the chain of theological authority: he is a
real philosopher and so can live by a higher moral code than the mere chatterers at Faith-Promoting Rumor (to say nothing of me and my fellow reprobates here).
I had been intending to read his stuff for years until I heard him on a podcast a little over a year ago. The interview included near the beginning an interesting biographical story—interesting, because it's what he wanted to us listeners to know about him: decades afterwards, he was still immensely proud of the fact that he had solved (in his mind) some theological problem or other when he was very young (the the first down of youth had come upon his chin and cheeks but only a few years), and especially that his solution had attracted the attention of Neal Maxwell, who I guess was quite awed by the then boy wonder and future online thug, as he had him in for a private meeting (I think it was Maxwell—in any case, it was not some anonymous authority, and he clearly loved the attention from that great-famed authority). Then followed more airy-fairy theology before an argument of sorts based on the etymology of the Latin verb
commendo (a species of non sequitur that was supposed to tell us what a "commandment" really is....suffice it to say, it did make me think of Mormon commandments about masturbation in a newly ironic light). Despite all his attempts to say something meaningful about Mormonism, the main points I got from the podcast were that 1) Blake Ostler loathes academia (hey, I'm first in line to that show) and 2) he was hugely impressed by his own intelligence. I can't help but think there is a resentful connection between those two items.
A loutish, self-satisfied lawyer who strives with the yearning of a wounded god to punish before the sight of true believers their enemies for the sin of expressing views he doesn't approve of: could there be a finer incarnation of the history of Mormon theology? Richard Bushman blurbed about another LDS theologian, Adam Miller, that he "is the most original and provocative Latter-day Saint theologian practicing today." That is only half-right. He may be original, but for provocation no Latter-day Saint theologian today can match the sparsely punctuated wit of Mr. Blake Ostler.
PS I should be greatly appreciative if anyone can answer my question I asked above in the thread about Dr. Peterson's six published articles referenced at Faith-Promoting Rumor.
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
—B. Redd McConkie
How big is your house of cards, Blake? I feel a mighty wind coming....