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Aug. 24, 2006 Tom Pain, also know as Ron Lewis and Zappa U. Frankly, if not by other pseudonyms as well, has posted a great many articles in the last two years, dealing mostly with political issues. The form an article by him often takes amounts to a vicious attack on some other contributor to the website who has voiced an opinion contrary to the one Tom Pain entertains. I have no quarrel with someone’s vehement defense of his own views, but constant recourse to obnoxious vulgarities and preposterous stylistic extravagances does not persuade anyone of the correctitude of Pain’s point of view. Rather, it cheapens Pain’s currency and offends many people. This defect in Pain’s articles is accompanied by the paucity of checkable facts and the almost complete absence of statistics. Anyone familiar with the statistical method realizes that this is perhaps one of the most reliable approaches to answering questions. Pain challenges polls, which are only a small part of statistics, and he may be justified in thinking that polls are manipulated, but his mere assertion, without some kind of evidence beyond calling it “liberal BS” is meaningless. But I don’t think Pain understands that. In reading one of Pain’s articles, one gets the picture of a man sitting in front of his television set several hours a day and then sounding off without doing any real research. In a typical article, Pain carries on, “Imagine how united this country would be if our youth did not waste 10 – 20 years on the idealistic liberal BS forced down their throats most of their early life?...AP that is deciding what news is fit to print and dictating the slant of that news, and they are spewing liberal dogma to the Great Unwashed. (sic)…The apathetic slurp Hollywood’s drool like a wino hitting his MadDog 2020.” The ‘sic’ refers to the fact that the sequence of words is not a sentence. http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/06jan/article042.html These disgusting rhetorical flourishes, like “liberal BS forced down their throats”, “the Great Unwashed” and a “wino hitting his MadDog” do not constitute argumentation. They don’t document or prove anything. Unfounded personal attacks are Pain’s favourite form of addressing issues. For example, in one article he boasts, “And even if we acknowledge that "righties" do RESPOND to those irrational, hate-filled tirades from the left, very few of those responses come in the form of ‘anger.’” Later though he shows himself a liar by saying, “Stan, you’re insane. Get treatment. While there have certainly been more evil distorters on U-K, and certainly more intelligent distorters (Oh, Michele..), I don’t recall any more blatant attempt – blatant not only in its intent, but in how easy it is to see through it.” This statement certainly is redolent of anger, and includes an entirely needless slur on another contributor. http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/06mar/article057.html Pain often takes an overweening tone, as if he were the sole source of enlightenment, and all the other contributors were idiots. For examples, he says, “No one debates anything here, all y’all do is repeat your same tired arguments over and over, with one side ignoring the other’s logic and vice versa…This isn’t intelligent conversation; these aren’t debates. This is nothing but stubborn idiocy. If the site were seeing a few new idiots, I might be hopeful of stumbling upon an open mind, but it’s just the same tired authors day after day.” http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/06may/article038.html If Pain thinks he’s so smart, let him critique my recent article called “Improving the Metric System.” By ‘critique’, I mean thoughtful commentary; I don’t mean calling it ‘BS’ or telling me I’m ‘insane’. I haven’t seen anyone else offering this debate at UK. In another article, Pain, with loathsome figures of speech, says, “But, I do have a particular gift for discerning crap,…First, just hearing the document’s title is going to make any Republican blow snot from laughing so hard….The heretofore sweet aroma of thoughtful political analysis devolves into the stench of partisan hysterics faster than the hysterical blond girl in a slasher movie screams, "Nooooo!". http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/06apr/article023.html Pain belabours his animosity towards Ken Hughes endlessly, going way beyond the bounds of rational argument, while giving himself another pat on the back, “He embellishes to make me look bad. This is definite psychosis, folks. I think he mistakes me for some childhood enemy in his dementia dreams. It’s very common among Alzheimer’s patients….But who, except an Alzheimer’s addled invalid would make such a statement when I just posted an article the day before (one of my better ones I thought) that was critical of no one. It was exactly the kind of article he claims I don't post. I’ve always assumed Ken could see, is he going blind as well as insane? (This could be advanced diabetes!)” http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/may/article387.html Again Pain blusters superciliously, “Finally, I can now join the religious dialogue that drones on this site with the certainty of tomorrow’s sunrise. And just as certainly, my hopes to enlighten the rabble herein with my morning light will rise with each written word before being doused by the sunset of this site’s collective wisdom.” http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/may/article333.html Pain seems to be overdoing it when he speaks of Newsweek’s Qur’an article, “I said the reporter had only two reasons for the article, one of which was to sell more magazines. I can handle the other reason, undermining President Bush, as par for the political ugliness course, but killing people to sell magazines is criminal. Inciting our enemies to murderous rioting and endangering our troops is treason. I am completely serious when I say this reporter should be tried for treason. And the families of every American soldier stationed outside the U.S. should petition for class action status and sue Newsweek for endangering their loved one.” http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/may/article232.html 18USC2381, the federal statute on treason, says, “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” At least, I don’t think prosecution for treason was ever instituted. Maybe Ashcroft should have talked to Pain. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002381----000-.html Pain repeats his self-aggrandizing disparagements of other UK contributors and his distasteful metaphors in another article, when he says, “Useless-Knowledge offered the opportunity to receive feedback for my new writing interest, but more importantly, it provided a wealth of anonymous idiots I could abuse while maintaining an outwardly peaceful, loving, respectful demeanor to my family and the outside world. I had a lot of fun – for awhile….For Heaven’s sake, man, turn off your TV. Put down that NYTimes, LATimes, Washington Post, Newsweek, or whatever other liberal snotrag is pulling your strings.” http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/may/article352.html You’d think that a few succinct factual articles about Ken Hughes, who was a poor writer and thinker by any yardstick, would be enough however. But again the foul-mouthed vainglorious Pain fails to know when to stop, “Ken hangs on to my @ass like a hemorrhoid, unpredictably irritating me with his swollen, dialated (sic) ego and accusing me of various misdeeds although I’ve left him alone….The first insulting post since his return was so illogical in its accusations that I was (am) seriously concerned for his mental health – so I posted the article about him having Alzheimer’s to express those thoughts and pointed out, with very specific examples, how his criticism was literally insane in its disconnect from reality. Again, nary a word in defense of my proof from him – because, as usual, I was right.” Well, how about that! Pain is right again, to hear him tell it! http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article467.html Pain drones on, “Ah, the life of the debunker. A thankless job but I do it and the UK readership is better for it whether Ms. Malsbury, Mr. McCrae, or Mr. Hughes think so or not.” We’re so lucky to have such an illustrious debunker! http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article447.html His vulgarity and fatuousness exceed all bounds in another article, when he says, “Liars, Liars, Liars. I feel so sorry for poor ignorant Ms. Malsbury who has some misguided notion that politicians always tell the truth and Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration should be impeached for not doing so. She probably thinks Hollywood actors don’t have blemishes, Tide detergent really is “New and Improved,” and her BF is every bit the 8-incher he claims. It almost seems a shame to burst her bubble of naiveté – kinda like Margaret Mead intruding on some prehistoric tribe isolated in a Borneo backwood with a TV/VCR and Jerry Springer tapes.” In the same article, Pain pretends to read Cheney’s mind, “Not a lot of confusion on this one. Cheney obviously meant: ‘You stupid @ss, you absolutely know that I cannot answer that question – not only would I be fired by my boss, I may well subject myself to charges of treason! Let’s turn the tables….I ask you, “Do you still beat your wife - yes or no? You’re such a loser, don’t you realize the American People have already decided this issue – the Democrats made it the point of the last Presidential race and we kicked your @ss! Get lost, go crawl back under whatever rock your producers found you under. Sigh, when do I get to do O’Reilley again? – I need fair and balanced.”’” He continues by contrasting his own approach with Michelle’s, “Ms. Malsbuy’s article offers no intellectual analysis. It’s just a hodgepodge of disconnected and unrelated quotations inserted haphazardly into her totally subjective and undocumented opinions on the Iraq War.” We really need the objectivity, impartiality and documentation that Pain provides! http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article406.html Pain often talks down to younger people, but this is not valid argumentation. He should answer the allegations and forget the age, remembering that there are people who were his age 20 years ago and could say the same to him. He says, “But, being just an intellectual babe in the woods at 28, any idea that was repeated within your hearing in the last couple of years seems 'new', you simply bought into the latest liberal media marketing spin - 'these aren't the same Conservatives that have kicked our @ss over and over, don't be afraid, these are "neo-cons."' It's called being ignorant - but it's OK, we all are on some topics, you just more than me.” Note the dangling participle in his first sentence, as if an idea had been a babe in the woods. http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article369.html Pain repeats himself, “BTW, at 28, there's still hope for you. Most people, if retrospective in the late years of their life, will openly confess to being fairly ignorant at age 28. I already admit it now, at age 48 (of course, I'd never, and have never, claimed otherwise).” I hope there’s hope for Pain at 48. http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article333.html If Pain replies to this article, I won’t read his reply. Nothing he can say now will unsay what he said in the past. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. 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