I can respect wanting to take the high road, but I can't agree.
Out of everyone causing a ruckus in the bar, he singled Anja out because she's Saturnian. He's an aristocrat, a bully, and a racist. The first two options we could take feel too much like appeasement to me, legitimizing his awfulness by trying to engage with him, and neither of them express any support for Anja. Anja shouldn't be the one made to feel bad just because he has a problem with her existing. Trying to argue for forgiveness based on extenuating circumstances, long flight on the Rose, very stressful, and so on, is just a weaker version of an apology, implicitly saying she was wrong to be loud and crude even though she lost someone important to her. Solidarity with the rest of the crew is the only way out I can really get behind, because it undercuts what he's doing, without pretending that Anja did something shameful worth being contrite over, when half the bar is doing the same.
Barring that, I can live with North making an enemy by blowing up in his face.
Hmm, that's a good point. I guess a strong show of solidarity would be compelling too.
I'll edit my previous
post and switch my vote to "[x] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the
Rose who might be in the room".
My point wasn't simply that it's not outright against the rules. It was that referencing those rules as evidence of this being in bad taste doesn't work, since those rules wouldn't actually apply to this. I also provided further reasoning why this isn't anything.
As for good arguments in favor of the comparison? Yes, and I believe they've been posted but I'll try and recap them for you. That anecdote is, among other things, a good demonstration of the principle of how you shouldn't talk back to your boss's boss, and it involving military personnel suggests it'll be all the more likely that it'll go like that for us as well. If they knew an anecdote that a similar lesson could be taken from that couldn't be taken this way it'd be better to use that, but that's a pretty highly specific thing. You just have to work with what you've got.
As for why I'm having this argument? For starters, I think you were rude to night_stalker. You've misinterpreted what he said, formed an argument against him based on that misinterpretation, been corrected as to what they actually meant, but then still persisted in arguing against the point the point they didn't make regardless. I'd rather this be the sort of behavior one will receive pushback on. Second, I think you're wrong, obviously. Third is... well, look here.
This argument should've began to wrap up at this post. We figured out that we were interpreting the same thing differently, and from there we can reach an understanding and learn a lesson about the subjectivity of language. But no, the anecdote can only have one moral, and night_stalker's point can only be take one way. Which one? The one you read it as, of course.
So, that all makes thing something I want to follow through on.
I brought up the rules because they reflect the principle that attitudes cannot be ignored simply because the targets are fictional, and that doesn't apply only to posts that rise to the level of infraction. Since the question why anyone would care about fictional entities was raised, that seemed relevant to point out.
As for the benefits of the comparison, "don't talk back" just strikes me as a rather banal lesson to take away from the restaurant smoking story. It's not wrong, but it's an observation that involves little of the story's meat. Heck, even on those grounds in the restaurant story you have the waiter (working class) refusing to be intimidated by an entitled brat (and as for the fact that the rules were on the waiter's side, so is Anja in the right), while the jerk who wanted to smoke didn't even know he was talking back to a superior.
The weakness of the conclusion, then, leads me to question whether it's worth the tale. If the argument is just that people should "keep their heads down", the story is hardly needed to make that point. When the unfortunate implications are also factored in, it seems to me the analogy holds zero or even negative persuasive power.
I hold no ill will towards Night_stalker, and criticizing the comparison as a bad analogy doesn't mean I think less of them as a person or anything. This isn't about having room for only one view, or defending Night_stalker's honor. The right to hold a view also gives others the right to hold a different view and critique the original view. If calling the second option telling a "sob story" is valid, as Night_stalker did, so is criticizing the comparison used to support the first option.
I felt the discussion I had with Night_stalker was fairly reasonable, and I understood where they were coming from even as I pointed out what I felt were problems with the comparison. I don't think that criticism was unwarranted, or that the debate was uncivil, so the idea that the present argument is push-back against rudeness towards Night_stalker doesn't make sense from my perspective. If anything, I felt the argument grew heated after Night_stalker had already dropped out of the debate.
If I'm being stubborn, well, it takes two to tangle. I mean, I guess you meant well, but saying "no one was saying they were, but I can understand the confusion" felt kinda patronizing, since as I responded I did see a comparison being made and I disagreed that I was suffering from confusion. If that was supposed to be an invitation to let the debate end, sorry, it didn't come across that way to me.
