Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
It may be more productive to ask me direct.
Though it would probably save time if you wrote what you meant in the first place. Not a knock just a suggestion for your consideration. When you read something here that arouses you a bit, you tend to come across as aggressive -- not passive aggressive, just aggressive. That's okay in person but in this medium it can lead to misperceptions -- as you and I have already noted.

Good example is the JMM interchange. You suggest killing all poisonous snake and he -- reasonably, I thought, mentioned there were other options. You took it as Lawyerlike twisting of words, to me they were fair questions. Nor do I see the relationship between your Sergeant and his weasel wording with Mike asking about alternatives to your suggestion. For all Mike knew, you may have considered those things and just not mentioned them. Similarly, for all I knew initially, when you wrote "...you don't see the evil that is there, unless you are a police officer or in a similar line of work" you may have disagreed with the statement but ordinarily most of us will figure that's your position. IOW, I didn't ask if you really believed what you wrote, I took it at face value. You later clarified and refined it to this:"I didn't say anything at all about cops feeling superior to other citizens. I said that police officers and people in similar lines of work see evil face to face whereas other most other citizens don't. which is a bit different and with which I agree.

This is indeed not a rhetoric class nor is anyone passing out homework that I can see. It's okay to disagree with people but one doesn't have to be disagreeable in the process.

When all's said and done, it appears that this:
That being said, boy are you wrong. There are a lot of evil people in the world, all around you.
rather condescending comment got thrown right back at you and our real disagreement in this case seems to merely be over what percentage of people constitute "a lot."

All that said I agree with you about all three G.MacD F. books in that trilogy. All three are great. If you haven't, you should also read his "Quartered Safe Out Here." IMO it's one of the best war memoirs I've read if not the best.