Well, I figured if I skipped Jerky’s posts, which seemed to me to have negative value, anything worth reading in them would show up quoted by someone else. This has come to pass, though only insofar as I see that negative value can be a value in itself. As I said earlier, I am learning a great deal, via this case, by seeing
the ways in which denial works.First off, everything I’m going to write here does not depend on the Hampstead case turning out to be real and not a hoax. This is something we can’t know and I suppose we won’t ever know with 100% certainty. What I’m looking at here is how logic is applied, misapplied, or abandoned completely when addressing what we do know about the case and extrapolating opinions, beliefs, and arguments from it.
In my opinion, what Jerky is doing at this thread is not argumentation, not even in the lowest sense of the word. It is closer to browbeating, defamation, and bullying. I will admit to having a strong personal aversion to the particular combination of arrogance and ignorance which Jerky seems intent on personifying at this thread; it pushes my buttons because of my own past experience with a similar sort of energy. But I also think this is larger than my own patterns, hence I am willing to address it and call “foul.”
Jerky is intent on reminding us, at every possible opportunity, how “vile, reprehensible” and just plain “EVIL” Ella Draper is. This is pretty much the extent of his “argument,” as to why the claims of the children are not to be believed. The claims of her and the children are lurid and impossible to believe, he says, therefore she is lying, therefore she is evil, therefore of
course she made up the claims and any idiot can see that just by looking at her, and so on, round and round he drags us on a merry-go-round of vitriolic “logic.” If nothing else, most people will end up wanting to back away from the whole dizzying mess, and think/post about something else.
This isn’t meant as an attack on Jerky and in fact I am grateful for the opportunity which his methods have provided for me, personally, to see something that’s vitally helpful to understanding these sorts of cases more clearly. Because, if this is really the extent of the arguments against the Hampstead case being real (i.e., based in anything besides the malicious and demented lies of a vile, reprehensible woman), then I can only infer from this that such arguments—and the overall consensus that the case is a hoax—do not stem from anything like evidence
or logic, but only from the
a priori conviction that nothing like this could happen, so anyone who says it does must be a liar, insane, or both.
Simply put, if we allow, just for the sake of argument, that Ellen Draper is
not lying, then all of Jerky’s arguments not only fall down but begin to look like malicious character assassination, based either on unknown and dubious intent or on such a strong emotional reaction that all his thinking capacity has gone out the window. I’ll give Jerky the benefit of the doubt here, and allow that he has been triggered by the immense unpleasantness of the material being discussed, so, naturally, he is unable to think clearly. It’s unfortunate, however, that, instead of going into those feelings and sorting them out before reacting to them, he has chosen to attack the most immediate source of his discomfort, and hang the messenger.
Getting to specifics.
Jerky wrote:It can be seen here, in all its hideous glory. Anyone who watches this and comes away believing this woman is anything but evil... I just can't understand.
I watched the video. Not only do I not think that Ellen Draper seems evil, I did not come away with the impression that she was lying, deluded, or insane. She certainly seemed disturbed, but that's hardly evidence that her story is false under the circumstances—on the contrary.
So in the above statement, Jerky is really just wielding his own (quite violent) opinion as a club and a threat against anyone who questions it. It’s nothing more, but also nothing less, than bullying.
Jerky wrote:After listing all the people she claims were involved in the cannibalistic pedophiliac murderous shenanigans - a non-stop rattling off of names that takes up literally SIX FUCKING MINUTES of the video's runtime - she begins to robotically and dispassionately describe some of the horrors to which she claims her children were exposed.
Now Jerky is angry with the woman for taking up six minutes of his time to name the people she claims abused her children. Ignoring the fact that, if she truly believes such a thing (never mind if it were true), the desire to name the names would not only be perfectly understandable but also justifiable, even right. Jerky’s impatient and contemptuous reaction, on the other hand, is something else entirely.
His next expression of wrathful spite is apparently caused by Draper’s “robotic and dispassionate” description of the horrors. Presumably, Jerky thinks if she were weeping for the camera, like the actor-father Ricky Dearman did, on a mainstream News channel no less—she would be both more believable and more sympathetic. If so, Jerky might want to look more into the effects of being traumatized, which generally lead to a robotic and dispassionate state, and not a weepy, sentimental one.
(Jerky’s “arguments” here—based almost wholly on emotional reactions—remind me of how people are supposedly convicted most frequently by juries for being unlikable, and how often the guilty go free if only they can make the jury
like them.)
For some reason, Jerky finds Draper’s point that her children were Vegans (if that’s her point, it’s not clear) to be especially offensive, as not only irrelevant but somehow in bad taste. When I first watched the video, I assumed she was referring to the alleged baby-eaters, pointing out the sick irony of it and, more importantly, the huge discrepancy between their public personas and their private activities, which of course would be a key point if Draper’s story has any validity to it at all. On second viewing, I can see that she
may be referring to her children, in which case, it is a rather odd thing to say in the overall context, I’d agree. But it is hardly proof of evil intent, even if it is pretty much the head cornerstone of Jerky’s latest “case” against Draper. I did a search for “Ellen Draper” and “vegan” and got zero results, by the way, so I’d like to know where Jerky gets his other point that Draper wants
Jerky wrote:To inform us that her lousy, stinking ex doesn't respect her decision to raise her kids as vegans (itself a form of child abuse IMO), THAT'S when she gets emotional
In reference to the Vegan comment, Jerky writes:
Jerky wrote:At this point, she pauses for dramatic effect before adding, her lips snarled into a petulant display of moral disapproval
This is misrepresentation, plain and simple. Either it’s due to Jerky’s own triggered state, in which he is seeing demons where he has convinced himself they are lurking (in the dark and shadowy heart of Ellen Draper), or he is simply lying for effect, in order to sway people reading this forum who can’t be bothered to watch the full video.
To see for yourself, go to minute mark 9:25 and tell me if you see a dramatic pause followed by a snarl.
BUT, even if she DID snarl her lips in a petulant display of moral disapproval—so fucking what? She is after all talking about people she believes abused her children, eating babies, so, a morally disapproving snarl wouldn’t really be THAT amiss, I guess. . .?
Earth to Jerky….
Jerky’s final “point” is
Jerky wrote:This woman is an insane and dangerous narcissist, a threat to herself and others, and probably untreatable. They need to find her and lock her up for the good of society.
Is that a cogent argument? Is it a helpful observation? Or is it an expression of hateful intolerance based on nothing besides Jerky’s own prejudices—and/or his ulterior motivations at this thread? Who’s the dangerous narcissistic here who needs to be locked up for the good of society?
Lastly, to bring the focus away from Jerky (who really only represents a particular TYPE, a water-muddying, well-poisoning type, the type who, for whatever motivation, serves the function of trolling an otherwise potentially exploratory debate and consistently dragging it down to the lowest levels of anger, hatred, and condemnation), let’s think about Ellen Draper herself.
IF she were lying about this, IF her children had been abused by her and/or her husband, and IF she wanted to concoct a story to cover up their own actions and, into the bargain let’s say, smear some people in her community she disliked, why come up with such a vast and elaborate story that included such a wide array of characters that it would take her six minutes to list them all—when all of them were innocent and could presumably prove it?
Who does such a thing? Where is the logic in it?
From what I can see, Draper’s claims are being refuted for two main reasons: 1) they are lurid and improbable; 2) no actual evidence has been put forward to substantiate them. That’s it, besides Jerky and his ilk who would have us allow a third batch of “evidence,” that she is an evil liar and anyone who watches the videos can see that.
The stories are certainly lurid. But ARE they really improbable in the light of what’s come out in the past few years in the UK and that continues to come out? Not really. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that Draper’s charges relate to CURRENT activities, and not to past ones.
As for the second point, that no real evidence has been put forward, this doesn’t really prove anything except that no evidence has been put forward. Considering that we know there was MASSES of evidence around Savile’s crimes, for decades, and that none of it was put forward, it’s really not all that persuasive as proof of a hoax.
So far, I have not heard one convincing argument that Draper’s and her children’s claims are false. What I have heard mostly are violent exhortations of belief, angry or incredulous/mocking insistences that the claims are false, mocking attacks on Draper as a depraved liar, and equally mocking, and sometimes quite vicious, attacks on anyone who believes these stories—or in fact, anyone who even questions the overriding consensus that this is a hoax.
Hmmm… Let’s just think about that for a minute.
In the end, much more than the testimonies of parents, children, or police, or any supposed evidence of the many overlooked connections between the people named by Draper and the children, it is this rabid wall of denial that has more or less convinced me that something is being covered up. It’s a rich irony, because I wind up, as I said, being grateful for the Jerkys of the world who are helping me to see how denial and cover-ups work, and how
they don’t necessarily even require paid operatives to do so. Once you get people riled up enough, the more naturally reactive, bullying types being triggered will step up and perform the sabotage, all under the guise of being good citizens ~ or of “journalistic integrity”!
While I find it profoundly sickening to see, it’s also weirdly enlightening.
It is a lot easier to fool people than show them how they have been fooled.
