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The Importance of Playing by the Rules
May. 13th, 2022 12:31 pmThe discussion between Tom Whitmore, Linda Deneroff, and me about how formal meeting procedure works within the context of WSFS (and Westercon), hosted by B-Cubed Press, eventually did post to YouTube. If you'd like to watch the discussion (which lasted about a hour), here's the video:
I enjoyed this discussion. I know that a lot of people think that trying to discuss things by any sort of formal procedure is terrible, and we should just let everyone talk for as long and as many times as they want, and that nothing should ever be done unless everyone agrees completely, or at least until a Strong Leader has browbeat everyone else into submission, but I'm not one of those people. I try to play by the rules, despite what some people have accused me of doing. By the way, this is why I get really annoyed when people causally dismiss all forms of government with versions of "Oh, they're all just as bad/corrupt/evil," because this is a way of burning down a civil society. People who say that, even if they don't mean to do so, are encouraging the destruction of our government and replacing it with a Strong Man dictatorship.
There's a small-scale version of this that applies to WSFS: those people who don't think the members should have any say in how things are run, and just want a Strong Leader to make decisions regardless of what the written rules are. We saw that in 2015, when people were demanding that the Puppies be disqualified out of hand, and then later than year when the Puppies started screaming when their nominees all lost under the exact same rules by which they got them onto the ballot. Both sides wanted to throw away the rules because they did not get what they wanted.
I enjoyed this discussion. I know that a lot of people think that trying to discuss things by any sort of formal procedure is terrible, and we should just let everyone talk for as long and as many times as they want, and that nothing should ever be done unless everyone agrees completely, or at least until a Strong Leader has browbeat everyone else into submission, but I'm not one of those people. I try to play by the rules, despite what some people have accused me of doing. By the way, this is why I get really annoyed when people causally dismiss all forms of government with versions of "Oh, they're all just as bad/corrupt/evil," because this is a way of burning down a civil society. People who say that, even if they don't mean to do so, are encouraging the destruction of our government and replacing it with a Strong Man dictatorship.
There's a small-scale version of this that applies to WSFS: those people who don't think the members should have any say in how things are run, and just want a Strong Leader to make decisions regardless of what the written rules are. We saw that in 2015, when people were demanding that the Puppies be disqualified out of hand, and then later than year when the Puppies started screaming when their nominees all lost under the exact same rules by which they got them onto the ballot. Both sides wanted to throw away the rules because they did not get what they wanted.
