Posted by AF [AF] on November 09, 1999 at 10:30:37 {4Hfg918T5gDjRmAxB/kMdaOt1gg/Zk}:
In Reply to: Apology posted by GregStafford on November 08, 1999 at 22:12:06:
I’ll say right off the bat, Greg, that if you’re a married man and you persist in “apologizing” to your wife like this you’re not going to be a married man for long. Your “apology” is quite reminiscent of the way the Society “apologized” for its role in the 1975 fiasco – it admitted some responsibility while putting most of the blame on those who listened to them.
You make it pretty clear that you don’t really think you did anything wrong. So this little farce must be seen for what it is – damage control on behalf of your groupies. It’s pretty effective, I’ll admit, on the naïve and the blind.
Consider what would happen if you did something you knew was wrong, or that you were told was wrong, and you were called before a judicial committee. Do you think for one second that the elders would consider a long diatribe like this an apology suitable for judging that you had repented, where your “apology” is buried inside yet another deluge of self-justification and attacks on others? If so, you’re going to have a rude awakening.
“Not an apology” you say? That’s right. What you wrote may appear to contain an apology, but I think that hardly anyone on the receiving end of such a thing would consider it so. Look at the first thing you said in your post:
: Before I say what I have not said to the satisfaction of many, and probably rightfully so, I would like to highlight some posts in response to my “Enter Reality” message. Please, bear with me.
What you “have not said to the satisfaction of many” is “I am sorry for attempting to deceive people”. I assume that “probably rightfully so” refers to “to the satisfaction of many”, although knowing your weaselly writing style you could be referring to “I have not said”. Assuming the former, when you say “probably” it means that you’re not sure that you screwed up. But the rest of your post really shows that you’re sure you did not screw up, especially the parts where you attack others. If you were smart you’d have just apologized here and left the attacks for another day.
Right away you continue with your silly diatribe against me, which red herring you seem to think will distract your groupies from your own screwups and lack of real apology. I had hoped you’d have enough sense to let this drop, but you seem intent on beating me up over a triviality, but I’ll play along. So let’s analyze your claims:
:: AF
:: Now that the H2O rebuild script has undone the stupidity of the rogue administrator (thank the unknown original programmers!) and put the posts back, I can see why I might not have saved the 2nd TravisJ45 post: it wasn't worth saving because it said nothing of consequence. What it said could be deduced from the first.
: RESPONSE
: There is a clear difference between what I wrote in the first post and what I wrote in the second one. So, please, give me it a rest. You offer no critical analysis of what was said, and how you were able to read the first one but not the second one (since the second one was sent right after the other) prior to your having checked the board after the first one, is quite a mystery. But, your troubles go far beyond that, as my next post (in the morning) to H20 will explain.
My, my. Your ability to fit so many errors of fact and logic into a single paragraph is impressive. For one thing, I never said that I didn’t read your 2nd Travis post; I did say rather clearly that I do not remember reading it. In the paragraph above I implied why I might not have remembered it: it said nothing of consequence. Why would I conclude this? It’s elementary, my dear Stafford! When I begin reading the H2O board I normally begin at the top and scroll down, looking for anything that stands out. Now what stood out near the top of the board when I began looking? Your post “Last Post to H2O”. I recall thinking something like, “Whoa! What’s going on here?” So I scrolled down looking for more information and the next one down with your name on it was “The Decision”. There you said that you had “decided to use another name for a JW participant”. I was a bit confused and so I scrolled down a bit more. I don’t remember if I found your 2nd Travis post first or your “Stafford Wins..Now What?” post first. I still don’t recall reading the 2nd. I remember being confused about the “TravisJ45 [GregStafford]” name coming up, and wondering how someone named Travis had managed to get your name in the real name field. Then I read the sub-threads, and went back and read the sub-threads on your other posts, and then realized what you had done and what was happening with your PO. Somewhere along the line I decided to save the relevant posts, and I barely recall somewhere along the line thinking about your 2nd Travis post, but it’s so fuzzy that I can’t say that it’s a memory. I can only surmise what I might have thought and why I might have dismissed the 2nd post and not saved it. Let’s do a little surmising.
Given the order in which I read the main posts it should be evident that I knew, before reading the Travis45 threads, you had royally screwed up. Your PO was threatening you and it was obvious that you had to do something to save yourself. Any dummy could see that you had attempted to deceive the board and had ineptly failed, and that you were in trouble with the PO. So when in your 2nd post you said, “Events have happened that jeopardize his presence here, but that can be overcome, as you now see”, it’s easy to see that one might think, “Well, that jeopardy is rather obvious. No point in saving this.” So as I said, “What it said could be deduced from the first.”
You still haven’t attempted to explain why you think that my failure to repost your 2nd post did any damage to anyone. That’s why your diatribe is a big old red herring.
:: AF
:: As for the rest of your silly diatribe, you have the nerve to chastise me for not saving your 2nd embarassing post?
: RESPONSE
: Saving it is not the same as reading it, and recognizing its relationship to the first one.
But since the 2nd was inconsequential and could be deduced from the 1st, that’s a moot point.
: Even if you did not see the second one, which you say you did not, I told you about it in an email, and you still acted as if there was only one deleted post in your restoration of the first one.
Remember: I said I do not recall seeing the 2nd one, and I’ve explained why it’s reasonable that I might not.
The last part of your statement is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. If I didn’t recall the existence of a 2nd post, then how can I be expected to act as if there were another? There are very good reasons why I might not have remembered what you said in your email – see below.
: You have no excuse for the way you acted then, or for the way you are acting now.
How am I acting now? I’m defending myself against your inane charges and attempts to divert attention from your royal screwup by focusing on me.
:: AF
:: Where is your own responsibility? I'm not your Mommy and you can't expect me to clean up your messes.
: RESPONSE
: Did I say anything about that?
You pretty well implied it by chastising me for not reposting all of you deleted posts.
You have yet to explain why you never posted the gist of your 2nd Travis post. Since you didn’t, expecting me to have reposted the original is hypocritical to say the least.
: I am, again, referring to your irresponsible behavior in light of what I told you and several others in an email.
You seem to think that I ought to hang on your every word, just as your groupies do. It so happens that I have many other things to do and people to communicate with. In looking over my emails from Wednesday, Nov. 3, I see that I received 12 by the end of the day, and began reading them around midnight. I responded to all of them, some of which required much time. The very last email I responded to was yours, just after 4:00 a.m., which you may verify. In the next-to-last email, sent just before 4:00 a.m., I said to my correspondent, “I may respond a bit more tomorrow; it's almost 4 a.m. as I type and I'm about dead. I have one email from Greg (through BarJonah) to respond to and then I'm off to bed.” Therefore I think I may be forgiven if I didn’t pick up on everything you wrote.
What did you write about having two posts? I won’t post the entire email without your permission (you are certainly free to post your own email) but here is what you said: “I posted the two posts under the TRJ45 name so that the board would KNOW that I was, from here on, to be known as TRJ45.” Well big deal! You said there were two posts. So what? Even if I had picked up on the significance of “two posts” (which is obvious only with hindsight), the posts had already disappeared from the board, so there would have been no point trying to figure out what you meant.
By the evening of your fateful day I had even forgotten that I had saved any of your posts. I know this because when Jim Penton and I sat down at the computer around 10:00 p.m. so that he could read some of the posts, we discovered that your embarassing ones were missing. I had no idea what had happened, and I certainly didn’t recall having saved your posts or I would have mentioned it to him. It was not until the next day that my fuzzy brain kicked in and I remembered having saved at least something. I didn’t remember what it was until I poked around in the directory. I was pleased at having accidentally been so smart.
By the next day it was obvious, in reading over the board, that no one had reposted your Travis posts, but I finally remembered that I had saved several posts. I saw what I had saved and realized that I had your 1st Travis post (not realizing at that point that there was a 2nd) and decided to repost it, given what ForumDirector1 had said. Since I had gotten perhaps 3 hours sleep, and had been up till the wee hours of the morning many nights previous, and was doing this H2O related activity in dead time slots at my regular job, it’s not surprising that I didn’t remember your inconsequential post or your offhand reference in your email to two Travis posts. Once again, I don’t hang on your every word, surprising as that may seem.
: You are the one who created a bigger mess by reposting only one post, when you KNEW there was another, as I told you all about it. So I am asking you to please clean up your own mess, or try to be more careful in the future, so that others are not created. How you took this in relation to what **I** did is another mystery.
There was absolutely no mess whatsoever created by my reposting your first post without the 2nd, and you have yet to explain what you think the “mess” is. So many people had commented in various threads about the whole mess you had created that no one could fail to see that events happened that jeopardized your presence on this board. As for the rest of your 2nd Travis post, lack of knowledge of its content did nothing to ameliorate the effects of your 1st. If you disagree, then by all means expound to your heart’s content. As for telling me “all about it”, that’s a bit inflated given your offhand mention of two posts without mentioning the contents of the posts.
:: AF
:: What a sad commentary on the mentality and integrity of JW defenders. Do you know what "hoist by your own petard" means?
: RESPONSE
: Yes, it means you have run out of arguments and have only personal attacks left in the bag.
I’ve made no personal attacks. I and others have merely pointed out the folly of your trying to deceive the board about your identity, and your amusing attempts at damage control after you were discovered.
: You know, I have not been giving myself enough credit lately, AF.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
: I have finally decided that I am more impressed with my patience with you than with my ability to argue.
No doubt.
: After all, anyone can argue against misquotes and false analogies.
Indeed. But since I have not done what you claim, what’s your point?
: All you have to do is point them out.
Done.
: But I am sure you have an explanation forthcoming, in your eventual reply. Still, it takes a real fraud like myself to spend time going back and forth with you over issues that are quite easy to document and to understand. Yes, clearly, only a true fraud with my patience would examine the issues to this extent, with you.
Actually it only takes someone with a big ego, who loves to argue with opposers because he finds members of his own religion so deadly boring.
: See my next post for more on your act.
I can’t wait.
: I suggest you follow my lead (see below), and offer a complete apology for those falsehoods you have spread on this board, about me.
I’ve presented no falsehoods that I’m aware of, and no one has made me aware of any. Certainly you’ve disgorged a number of blanket denials, but as I’ve explained these are worth nothing. Only specific denials to specific questions will work, given your demonstrated slipperiness. As for your implication that you offered a complete apology, we’ll let readers decide.
Now let me make a few general remarks, having got through the entertaining business of posturing and crowing. I believe that you believe that you’re sincere in trying to defend the Witnesses. You should equally well believe that I believe that your attempts are quite misguided. Many people have tried to defend the Watchtower religion, but have found out the hard way that there are too many things that an honest person cannot defend. Very few who started out as defenders remain JWs. I think that you’re going to be among them, although I know that my saying this is liable to harden your resolve. That’s ok because when the fall comes you’ll learn some humility.
In the coming years there will be published much astounding new information about the history and inner workings of the Society. Due largely to the Internet, information is spilling out into the consciousness of a number of former JWs who are intimately familiar with the inner workings of Bethel. Gradually these people are “coming out” and connecting with other ex-JWs, and comparing information. Eventually these folks will publicize what they know, including plenty of dirt, because they’re angry. If you’re interested meeting some of these newcomers, plan on attending Richard Rawe’s upcoming “conference” in St. Augustine, Florida, the 2nd weekend in December. It’s going to be extremely interesting.
AF