Sorry it’s Monday so the week’s news cycle has started up meaning I have to drop in some filler material to make my daily post count goal.
There exists an undefined rule of drama; any community that exists will eventually have to deal with drama. Normally I avoid these episodes of drama llama wrangling because it’s counter-productive and pointless. Yet there are times that the posts lighting off these wrangling events have something I want to talk about buried within and this is one of those case.
There is a post over at The Truth About Guns where Mr. Farago makes a claim that there is apparently some secret gun blogger blacklist which his site is placed upon. I’ve been running this blog for over two years now and I still don’t get invited to the secret cabal meetings between gun bloggers so maybe I’m simply out of the loop, but I’m not aware of any such blacklist. What makes this claim more dubious is the fact that Mr. Farago has provided no actual evidence. He claims that he won’t reveal the evidence because he received his information with a promise of anonymity as the price tag, but that doesn’t mean anonymized data can’t be released. Simply providing some kind of evidence would greatly help Mr. Farago’s claim that such a blacklist exists.
Whatever, that’s not my concern. There are two things I do wish to write about in regards to the linked post. First Mr. Farago mentions the supposed unwritten rule amongst gun bloggers to not link to anti-gun websites. I’m aware of no rule and decided to enact this strategy myself without exterior pressure. Why? Because I don’t want them to get any Google love from me and, more importantly, I don’t want to deal with the drama a pingback on an anti-gun site can often induce. In my defense I don’t throw the link out, I provide a raw link that people can copy and paste in their web browser, I simply refuse to surround the raw link with the required ‘a’ tag.
The next point I wish to discuss requires you to read the comments on the linked post. I have a strict policy of not discussion or mentioning religion on this blog unless it’s absolutely necessary to make a point about something else. There isn’t a post on this site that promotes and detest any religion or lack thereof. Once again there is a reason I have this police, because discussing religion can only lead to a pointless sidetrack debate. The two topics on my blacklist when conversing with people I don’t know are politics and religion. Due to the nature of this blog I discuss politics a lot, which is enough to start a shit storm. As I have enough of a shit storm to deal with the last thing I really want to discuss is religion as it’s just going to create a another shit storm. Ladies and gentlemen this blogger has a strict one shit storm limit! I submit the comments in the linked article as evidence of this claim.
One person was offended that Mr. Farago used the phrase “God given right.” As the offended person made that comment somebody was offended that the commenter was offended and thus a new post was created. What followed was a back and forth discussing religion which had nothing to do with the topic at hand. In addition to sparking an unrelated sidetrack conversation the discussion was also completely pointless. How so? Because religious debate is always pointless. Those who believe in religion will not be swayed and those who don’t believe in religion will not be swayed. Both sides demand proof and provide what they consider to be proof and neither is ever acceptable to the other side. Those who believe in religion have faith (that’s the definition of religion) while those who don’t believe in religion lack such faith. Neither side is going to convince the other that they’re wrong therefore the entire debate is pointless.
If you believe in a religion cool keep doing it. If you don’t believe in religion cool keep doing it. Unless somebody is willing to commit acts of violence in the name of their belief of lack thereof it’s not your concern.
Also I’d appreciate it if somebody would invite me to the secret gun blogger cabal meetings. I promise I won’t tell anybody about them.
See you at SHOT show, then.
Does that mean that your blog hasn’t hit the big time if you don’t get invited to the secret cabal meetings?
My blog is many things, big league is not one of them. 😛
Christopher you are on the black list http://gunblogblacklist.blogspot.com/
Weer’d has provided the background, but the basic story is that some of us got together, compared notes, realized that Farago really was being a dick to more than one person without any real justification for the behavior, decided that we did not need to continue tacitly supporting a wanton dick, and delinked him.
Yeah. Big “conspiracy” and “blacklist” there.
You want links, Robert? Stop being a dick.