Due to death threats, I withdraw

[_asbestosman]

Are you someone famous?

No. I'm pretty much a nobody. However, I have discovered more than one in real life connection to people on LDS message boards.

[_honorentheos]

I suppose I never know until I've walked in some's shoes. Joseph may very well deserve our compassion too. It's a bit harder to do when they've attempted to manipulate us via our emotional strings, but perhaps that's all the more reason to pity them. It just makes it harder.

While running a work-related errand today I happened to catch a comment on NPR that struck me as rather profound. It was from a Norwegian politician who, when asked about the response of Norway to the possibility of "cells" that collaborated with the person responsible for the horrendous events on Friday, said something to the effect of, "We respond to terror-attacks on democracy with more democracy." He then had more to say about the importance of maintaining the values that supported their pluralistic society in the face of fear that this pluralism was a threat. I found myself admiring the man who I had never heard of before.

In a sense, I find our little board situation over the last couple of months to be interesting in a manner that is not even in the same ball park, but does reflect some common elements of human nature that lie at our hearts with a knife drawn.

In my mind it isn't about Joseph. It's about principles. Threats of violence towards a person should not be filtered through the lens of, "Do I like this person or not?" Such moral equivocation is...adolescent in my view. I prefer to think of it in terms used by the Dalai Lama - we should be engaged in the work of inner disarmament. Not weakness, but the kind of strength that allows a person to stand by their values regardless of friend or foe's opinion.

In this case, I would be outraged if a friend had been threatened. I feel no less outraged that someone would either do this to Joseph or that Joseph would claim it was done.

I don't care to know the details, but I hope the mods are looking into it and ensuring no actual violence was threatened on anyone's part.

[_Buffalo]

I've always been curious about this. I don't see how anyone could possibly know who someone on the board is in real life.

Exactly! Most on this board probably imagine that my name is "Daniel Peterson"!

Fools.

Incidentally, I made no death threats against the recently departed. Which is really quite astonishing, I think. To paraphrase Amos 3:6 in the manner of Scratch, "Shall there be evil on this message board, and Daniel Peterson hath not done it?"

Everyone knows you're a BKP sock puppet.

[_Simon Belmont]

Are you someone famous?

No. I'm pretty much a nobody. However, I have discovered more than one in real life connection to people on LDS message boards.

The Six Degrees of ABMan?