You Idiot

LOL … you feel for the honeypot! How did I know you’d fall into abuse once you had a pedantic point to hit me over the head with?

Do you honestly think that I know something of the Bosnian genocide without knowing anything about the break up and Yugoslavian wars? How does that even make sense? It was precisely all of the details about the internal tensions and conflicts in the various wars of independence etc that I was referring to in making my broader point about global geography not being terribly central to the history of the place. Even this topic, of the timeline of Yugoslavia as a kingdom/state is more important than it’s location on a world map.

Moreover … do you have anything to say to my broad point about the relative relevance of geography or simple facts to the history of the genocide?! Would it even be terribly important to know whether Yugoslavia as some form of unified state survived the wars of independence in order to understand the essence of the genocide and what happened and why?! Seriously?!

For me, personally, when I wrote Yugoslavia **is** in europe, I’m the kind of person that happily takes on a time shifting voice. As in, if I were to speak about the history of a place, I’d happily speak about events as though they’re happening now, in order to better situate myself in the context. It’s a little bit of a bad habit that sometimes works but is sometimes confusing. But it’s also a thing … the historical present I think (??). Some historians, of which I’ve read a little and enjoyed, have used it. I noticed I’d done it but left it in thinking it’d be interesting to see if you pick it up.

Whether you “buy” that or not doesn’t really matter though … I know Yugoslavia broke up, as I know about the Bosnian Genocide and the war crimes tribunal (though I could know a lot more, I’m very vague on the details and it’s been a while since I read about … mostly a little about some of the trials going on at the tribunal) … my “idiosyncratic” grammar is really not an issue worth rudely beating someone over the head with unless we’re in a context requiring precise communication (but even then, you could have been more polite and I’d presumed the break up of Yugoslavia to be common knowledge in this conversation).

But beyond all of that … these are simply facts … no one’s going to talk about the Bosnian genocide without knowing them, because they will have learnt them along the way of learning about the Bosnian genocide. The “facts” aren’t the context nor do they demonstrate that one knows anything about the context … they’re just a part of it … and your aggressive insistence on the essential and absolute value of simple facts here is … just poor form honestly and misguided.