On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 4:29 PM Joseph Armbruster josepharmbruster@gmail.com wrote:
I have seen the absolute worst that humanity has to offer.
Gosh, that is a horrible story and I am so sorry to hear that this happened to you. I also watched my father die, much too young, in front of me. But not from violence. Still, you never really recover.
My personal story of injustice is about being put, without examination, in the "retarded" children's class on my first day in school. I had speech and motor deficits and a 140 IQ at the time. They didn't tell my parents. They did not teach reading. I had no idea, as a first grader, what to expect and my parents did not find out until they realized that my description of my classmates was unusual. I got out eventually, but the injustice and damage continued.
Having been completely failed by the formal educational system, Amateur Radio was an important part in my self-education. It was through self-education that I got to work for Pixar and later was a computer science and public policy researcher and lecturer at three colleges, despite my lack of a degree and without ever having taken the first formal class in those things.
Many people in AMSAT have really changed my life and I know that I am not
the only one that feels this way.
As a result, I take all of this very personally. Maybe this is just my
own experience and maybe i'm the only one... but..
None of these people hired lawyers against me, ever.
People have very definitely hired lawyers for the purpose of suppressing my speech. The fact that I won the case and recovered my defense costs, which were well over my usual year's income, should be sufficient proof that justice was not on their side. So, I hope you can understand that I take that sort of legal attack every bit as personally.
Michelle and Patrick will not have to win any case, but the board's handling of opposition was IMO very ill-conceived. You are attempting to support that with an argument that nobody would accept in a court room, and that is fundamentally ad-hominem. You can expect others to take offense when you use it, and to show it in the light of the worse elements of society that have historically used it. I suggest that you not make a third repetition of this argument if you don't want to hear the rebuttal again.
Thanks
Bruce