A word from SA regarding the "Insanity" thread

The BBQ Pit
101

I do not think you treatd me badly, either, but the rest of this statement is horseshit.

We have had this dance at least twice in the last few weeks. There are actually specific events that followed other events in exactly the opposite order than a cause and effect that you have declared.
For example, you asserted that the opposition to the Vietnam War was the direct result Johnson mismanaging that war. I pointed out that the opposition began when Buddhist monks began protesting the Diem regime via self-immolation. Since the Diem brothers were overthrown before Kennedy was assasinated, it is unlikely that the protests were a direct reaction to Johnson’s actions. (Later, Johnson’s action exacerbated the protests, but they did not begin in reaction to his screw-ups.)

You have also claimed that blacks had already accomplished everything they needed to bring about Civil Rights before “liberals” got in and messed it up. You have never bothered to explain what you considered messing up the Civil Rights movement, so it is hard to argue the point. However, I have pointed out that “liberals” were in the van of the movement from the beginning and that the struggle–including violence directed against Civil Rights proponents–continued into the 1970s, making your claim that the issue was all but decided by the 1960s and was only injured by “liberals” pretty clearly nonsense.

You have claimed that it was “liberal” desire to do away with civility that has led to current lapses in that social trait, today. While there is a tiny kernel of accuracy in your claim based on a late 60s movement to condemn many aspects of etiquette, I have noted that that movement was basically a reaction against the vile and open hatred spewed by people upset over long hair and odd clothing and people obscenely and profanely damning as traitorous anyone who favored Civil Rights or an end to warfare.

I have also pointed out that many, if not most, of the terrible things that you attribute to “liberals” in the 60s had their roots firmly planted in the 1950s and even the 40s. It is my contention that they would have erupted at some point in the 60s regardless of any efforts by “liberals” or “the Left” to change society.

It is not so much a matter of demanding citations as it is simply an effort to demonstrate that your odd memories do not conform to facts. When I ask for timelines, I am giving you an opportunity to actually demonstrate why you hold such odd beliefs–regardless whether we agree upon the issues at the end of the discussion. By waving away such calls for citations, you tend to confirm my suspicion that your malleable memory is imposing belief on top of events that never happened in the way you express them.

Your loss, I guess.

102

I’m not sure that this was always true, in any significant way. Years ago there was a pretty good cross section of posters from all sorts of philosophical backgrounds: lefties, righties, independents, socialists, libertarians, liberal Christians, conservative Christians, adherents of new age religions, atheists, and agnostics. There might have been a small left-leaning tilt based on the fact that The Straight Dope (whence the original audience) tended to be published in alternative news weeklies which tend to have a left-leaning readership However, its exposure on AOL brought in a lot more people and a lot of folks who were acquainted with Cecil’s books also added to a more well-rounded population on the board.

There is certainly an unfortunate group dynamic, however, that tends to cause under-represented populations to be piled on. It is not so much a matter of a deliberate and coordinated effort by a majority to stifle a minority. It is much more the fact that on such a board, very large numbers of people feel that they have just the perfect argument that will make make their side’s point, (or the perfect bon mot to display their wit or erudition), and so nearly all of them post. When one side is greatly outnumbered, even a polite exchange can begin to feel like a pile-on. After a while, posters who always feel as though they are a minority stop finding the experience fun and drift away, turning a modest majority into a huge majority.

Then there is the problem of True Believers who have a deep need to believe that anyone who opposes their statements must be basing that opposition on malice or stupidity. They tend to raise the hostility level quite a bit, leaving other posters who would prefer to actually discuss issues with the Hobson’s Choice of ignoring the bile (and being accused of “avoiding” the “truth”), or of simply remaining silent.

We have always harbored a few cranks who could only express their views in the most venomous ways. This was made very clear in the run up to the Iraq invasion and its immediate aftermath with a lot of posters on both sides posting with more anger than facts. As that war wore on and more of the administration’s lies and errors came to light, discussions of the war became more lopsided and the group dynamic I mentioned came into play, leaving fewer posters on the Right to participate, here.

We still have good posters and cranks on both sides of most issues, but the rhetoric is often dominated by the haters.

103

To be fair, I think Shodan was born after the evil liberal cabal destroyed good manners in America, so you can’t really blame the poor bastard.

104

Is ignorance better fought with facts or opinions?

105

Frankly, Zoe…and it makes me a little sad to be saying this to you…but I don’t think it makes one whit of difference. Not around here, anyway.

Still, you fight the good fight and I admire you for that. Would that I had your patience.
(I wish you’d email me; I still have that objet d’art we spoke about which is needlessly gathering dust.)

106

SA:

By providing evidence and logical arguments that support you supposition – in exactly the same way I have, on many, many occasions, provided the evidence and logical arguments which underpin my current belief that he did lie.

This is kind of silly, isn’t it? You don’t need to waste your time with people who hold such extreme beliefs. (But you do need to answer some serious questions about your morality.) Anyway, you may note the majority of people who have participated in these threads and who find you so boorish are not the sort of people who believe all conservatives are evil. This has been made apparent to you as well in post after post: it’s not your conservatism per se that is at issue; it’s your complete inability to make, or respond to, logical arguments and matters of fact.

To take an example: we possess much more solid evidence that George Bush and other members of his administration lied about Iraq prior to the invasion, than we ever possessed of Iraq’s WMD programs in the first place. I know my phrasing is clumsy here, but what I’m trying to get at is this:

  1. In the face of very slender evidence of Iraq’s possession of WMDs, the right went apeshit, accused the left of being unAmerican, and demanded we go to war; but

  2. in the face of very strong evidence of mendacity on the part of the Bush administration, the right goes apeshit, accuses the left of being unAmerican, and does everything in its power to hinder an investigation into the administration’s wrong-doing.

This is inherently unreasonable.

See above.

Sam and I have a long history. There was a time when I even harbored a grudging respect for him. I’ve defended him from personal attacks myself, back when I was more naive. That things are the way they are between us now is really nobody else’s business.

Yes, and I for one would like to thank you for this blindingly obvious public service.

I don’t care how you put your point; curse like a fuckin sailor if that’s what pushes your buttons and turns your crank. Our objection to your style, for the one-millionth time, is your utter immunity to logical argument and matters of fact.

Now, I’m under no illusions here; I know you will respond to this post with more non-sequiturs and hand-waving. These appear to be the only tools in your (apparently) very limited intellectual toolbox. I’ll just conclude by saying that, in my own experience on these boards, I’ve encounter many people such as yourself; there are a very few on the left, but they constitute a large community on your side of the aisle. They’ve had their chance to shine in the sun over the last eight years, and they’ve nearly brought the US to ruin. The mystery to me has always been “why?”: why are so many members of the political right in the US constituted in the manner of SA and Shodan? And, as noted before, I found at least a partial answer in Altemeyer’s work on authoritarian followers. So here we have fairly robust scientific evidence that dovetails quite well with my own personal experience, which makes it (at least to me) rather convincing.

107

Almost two pages have gone by, are you going to respond to this?

108

Precisely. If you had proof, it wouldn’t be merely belief. So again, it’s all just verbiage and proves nothing.

Oh, but it is. Conservatism is met with nothing but derision around here no matter who the poster is.

It’s not inability; it’s a choice. I won’t explain that choice again as I have several times already.

I agree that accusations of unAmericanism were unreasonable. This is why I, as well as the overwhelming majority of the millions of conservatives in this country never made such accuasions.

As for attempts to block investigations, every administration has enemies who, agenda in hand, seek to make investigations into wrong-doing on the part of whatever adminstration is in office, and those administrations seek to hinder those agenda-driven investigations. The left has been against Bush since the runup to the war. I am far from being convinced of any skullduggery by Bush, and so I am far from supportive of witch hunts seeking to prove him guilty.

However, neither activity, whether the first in which I did not participate, nor the second in which I am unsympathetic to your point of view, makes me nor any who agree with me evil.

Evil has become the latest buzzword in the left’s arsenal of intimidation and character assassination and I’ve never seen it applied accurately.

I think you’re taking things a little too personally. I was speaking of board behavior in general. I wasn’t speaking of you nor did I even have you in mind when I made that comment.

Not a bit of it. It was easy.

I’m beginning to think you have serious problems with reading comprehension. Cursing isn’t what I was talking about.

I’m afraid you’re mixing two different things into the same equation here. You may feel that Republican politicians have nearly brought the country to ruin, but that neither makes it so in point of fact, nor does it mean that whatever has happened was caused by the conservative posters to this board no more than the actions of the Democrats in Congress are representative of liberal posters to this board. Some of the things the administration does are met with approval by conservatives here and some are not; just like some of the things the Democrats in Congress do are approved by some liberal posters here and some are not.

And in closing, if you really want to know why so many American citizens are constituted like I am, refer back to my comments in the other thread about the consequences of liberalism in this country over the last forty years and know that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

109

Sure, be happy to. I’ve hardly been avoiding it, and as a matter of fact was going to address the same question in regard to mhendo’s surprisingly reasonable post to me a page or two back. It’s just that it’s hard to keep up when I have to keep explaining what I’ve already said over…and over…and…well, never mind.

If you either think about it or want to take the trouble to rummage around in posts where I ask for cites, it’s virtually always to challenge a statement that has a definite, probative answer. In other words, the cite requested would prove the poster’s point once and for all. Also, in the overwhelming number of cases where I ask for or demand cites, I think you will find it’s where someone has claimed I said something that I know perfectly well I never said.

The cites I refuse to post (or even bother to search for) are cites that, even if found and posted, prove nothing and serve only to obfuscate things.

110

Isn’t it about time you started another thread about this one?

111

I recognize that this was in response to a specific statement; however, given that there are at least three cites in this thread of instances in which liberals have been brought around to the conservative’s viewpoint, clearly the label “reasonable conservative” isn’t merely a codeword for “crypto-liberals”. Rather, it indicates someone who is willing to discuss an issue and put forward the merits of their side rather than simply declare that they are right and everyone else is wrong and stupid.

But we’ve told you this already, and you say (IIRC) that you don’t want a debate, you want an argument. After multiple threads like this, however, I wonder whether what you really want is “being hit over the head” lessons. :stuck_out_tongue:

112

SA:

In the same way I believe in the general accuracy of, say, a scientific theory. I’m Popperian, or, more accurately, Humian. I find Hume’s critique of inductive reasoning compelling. This critique implies one can never use inductive logic to prove a thesis – any thesis. Popper solved this dilemma by noting one can falsify theories reached by inductive methods, thus saving science from a long-standing philosophical conundrum (as I see it, anyway).

I believe in the theory of evolution. Why? Logical arguments and evidence. Still, I know this theory is induced on the basis of the evidence, and could turn out to be wrong. Scientific knowledge is fallible.

So is my own knowledge of the actual events within the Bush administration prior to the invasion of Iraq. I do know of one clear and undeniable lie made by Bush; but the rest is my supposition, based on mounds of evidence and logical inference. Still, I could be wrong.

Matters of truth are seldom drawn in black and white, in my experience. Instead, truth is almost always a judgment – a best guess, or a conjecture (to borrow from Popper again). I lay all the arguments and evidence for Theory A on one side of scale, and all the arguments and evidence for Theory B on the other, and then judge which side of scale weighs the most.

At this point, in all the arguments in which I’ve seen you engage, your side of the scale has always weighed zero. You never fill your side of the scale with logical argument or evidence. Rather, you eschew them. In addition, you like to pretend that all the evidence weighing down the other side of the scale – STD rates from the 1950s, for example, as compared to those today – aren’t evidence. You would have me simply get rid of the scale altogether and just take your word for it.

Sorry, but I don’t work that way. Neither do most of the other folks who participate on these boards. Many of us are sick to death of being hounded and told to throw out the evidence of our own senses just on the say-so of some obtuse, right-wing asshole. And as I pointed out in my previous response, the obtuse right-wing assholes of the US have gotten a chance to show their quality over the past few years; the very lowest, I must say.

113

Have you any idea, percentagewise, how miniscule are the cases where someone changes his POV around here?

Which, of course, I’ve never done.

I don’t actually want one either. But to the extent that someone wants to argue with me, I will, like I said, indulge them and be content to let whoever reads them make of them what they will. Debates, however, at least when it comes to subjective issues like the ones I go after, are invariably inconclusive and obfuscatory and are largely a waste of time.

114

I’m fairly certain that Shodan wasn’t born at all, but emerged fully grown from the head of Rupert Murdoch.

115

I cannot fucking believe it! I just spent an hour composing a detailed post in response to all this and when I clicked to preview it, I got returned to the log-in page and then got a time out page after log-in where everything was lost.

Anyway, you’re not ignored but I’m gonna have to call it a night. Maybe I can reconstruct it all tomorrow if I can find the time.

116

Been there, done that, feel your pain. :frowning:

117

Oh sure, throw Clinton quotes at him. Ill-mannered liberal.

:wink:

118

Heh. But it was sincerely meant.

119

Thanks Tom (hi Deb - whoever you are)

120

You have changed my POV. Sad that you’re proud that even in the face of irrefutable evidence you never change your point of view.

I have friends who are Republicans and they’re reasonable and polite people.

You, and others here, as well as major Republican spokespeople have pretty much changed my assessment of the majority of Republicans. I now believe that my friends are the exceptions. I don’t like most Republicans any more.

I read articles about the Obama Foodstamps and the Waterboarding bumper stickers. I watch speakers at a Republican event speak using words designed to turn an angry crown rabid. I read posts by you and others excusing racist behavior and equating such with normal campaigning.

I don’t know most of the Republican or Conservative posters here but I remember Bricker. I consider him a gentleman and another exception to the rule.

I look at people like you and Shodan like immature cheerleaders - you root for the team no matter what.

I’m always willing to learn from someone else and despite my liberal leanings, I have enjoyed political discussions with those who disagree with me. I like reading **Bricker’s **posts. He reasons - he makes his point and he’ll cite his sources. I notice that the rules you set for others don’t seem to apply to you.