I don’t have time to delve back into tomndebb’s post right now, but I will say the following:
Away from here I am a reasonable and polite person as well (which is not to say that I’m not reasonable here but I can see how there’s room for disagreement).
Care to take a bet that your definition of irrefutable is different than mine? Being the strict constructionist that I am, I believe that to qualify as ‘irrefutable’, something has to actually be, you know…irrefutable.
So you readily admit that you’re willing to let the behavior of a few negatively influence your view of the majority. Do you feel the same way about Islam because of its extremists? I doubt it. No, I suspect your willingness to dismiss Republicans is because you’re politically predisposed to do so in the first place and now you have what you feel is a good excuse.
As opposed to the literally hundreds of thousands of speeches and rallies over the last forty years in which liberals have done exactly the same thing. IMO, in modern times at least, this tactic was pioneered by liberals.
Okay, now them’s fightin’ words now. I DEFY you to find any post of mine in which I excuse racist behavior!
As opposed to what? Cheering for the team whose philosophy of governance is the exact opposite of mine and whose policies I hold responsible for virtually everything that I regard as having gone wrong in this country?
Yes, Bricker is indeed a gentlemanly poster. Would that I had his patience. But like I said in the OP (which your comments indicate you haven’t read) my posting style reflects the behavior I found when I came here. It’s fighting fire with fire. Plus I’m a prolific poster and it takes a lot of time to post like Bricker and Sam Stone do, and I prefer not to waste time tiptoeing around trying not to offend people who will respond by calling me every vile name they can think of regardless of how delicately I put things.
If you’re talking the relatively rare occasions when I ask for cites, I addressed this already in post 109.
One would expect, therefore, for Bricker not to be the subject of the sort of pile-ons, snarking, and general rudeness as the less gentlemanly Doper Republicans.
No, not really. Anyone who dissents even slightly from the group think hereabouts gets this accusation of being a mindless reactionary. Usually from people who have not had an independently generated position in their lives.
Bricker mentions that he might vote for Obama, and gives his reasons. All is sweetness and harmony. Then he changes his mind, and gives his reasons. Instantly the Usual Suspects switch to attack mode.
For a big chunk of the boards, reasonable vs. unreasonable doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s Left vs. Right, and the Left can do no wrong and the Right can do no right, and anyone who refuses to assent gets Pitted.
Actually, for me the only problem with Bricker’s alleged change of heart was the incredibly bizarre reason he gave for it.
If he had simply come out and said, “You know what? I’ve decided that McCain represents my interests a lot more than Obama does. I’m a conservative, so i’m going to vote for McCain,” there would have been no hassle from me.
In fact, in the thread where Bricker announced that he had changed his mind about voting for Obama, i said very specifically that, if i shared Bricker’s political views, i would probably vote for McCain too.
As i also noted, if all it was ever going to take for him to return to McCain was some unpleasant behavior by some Obama supporters, then it’s hard to believe he was ever really going to vote for Obama anyway.
I have no problem with him (or you, or Starving Artist) voting Republican. It makes perfect sense, given your politics.
So when he gave a reason to vote for Obama that had nothing to do with policy, you believed him implicitly. When he gave a reason not to vote for Obama that had nothing to do with policy, he must have been lying.
Since you’re here, mhendo, I posted information in post 109 that answers a question you asked in your last post to me (and whose tone I did appreciate even if I never got around to responding).
Red-baiting preceded the liberal movement of the 1960s by at least 80 years.
Actually, any claims that one side or another “pioneered” the idea of rallying their side by demonizing the other are just silly.
I never even realized that he had decided to vote for Obama until his thread announcing that he was no longer voting for Obama. If you’ll look for the threads where he initially discusses his decision to vote for Obama, you’ll notice that i wasn’t in them.
This is the sum total of my contribution to the issue of Bricker’s voting intentions, taken from the thread in which he announces that he’s changing his mind, and will no longer vote for Obama:
I’m glad you posted that. I meant to say “hundreds or thousands…”
And, as is somewhat germane to your previous post whose response of mine was eaten by the hamsters, it is almost invariably the case, when I am speaking about demonstrations, protests, rallies, etc., that I am talking about large-scale or relatively large-scale events that become seen by the public at large, whereas with you it seems that small-scale protests, events and so forth carry equal weight.
When I talk about the anti-war protests in the late sixties, for instance, I don’t equate them at all with a few Buddhist monks (protesting what you referred to as our presense in their country but which I remember as protesting the French-installed Diem regime) or a few societal malcontents inspired by folk music.
I don’t think Red-baiting in the 1800s bears much resemblance in terms of its effect that liberal rabble-rousing has since the late sixties, and it has been during this period that the rabid anger to be found in American politics has taken root and grown.
Still, I think that in a big-picture sense that these things do run in cycles.
Dang. See what happens when I take a couple days off? My threads have babies, and they grow up and leave the nest before I can get a word in edgewise.
SA, I haven’t read through both threads in every excruciating detail, so I’m sure I’m repeating something that other posters have said:
Your biggest problem here, IMO, is that you post rumor and conjecture as fact, and roll your eyes when asked to back up your assertions. This makes all this your own fault.
If you have some personal reason for hewing to your mindset, facts be damned, like your mom was dropped on her head by a liberal when she was pregnant with you, then I wish you’d just admit it: you feel more comfortable with the conservative mindset, and you’re not interested in examining or debating that. Fine, your privilege. But you *pretend *to examine, you *pretend *to debate, while doing no such thing.
Just come out of the closet already, and repeat after me: “I’m Starving Artist. I don’t know why I’m a conservative, it just *feels *right. The end.”
The fact that you actually think that Diem was installed by the French (who opposed him) speaks strongly to your failure to grasp actual history. (That you have changed my statement that they were protesting the U.S. supported Diem regime to some strange notion that I claimed they were protesting the U.S. presence demonstrates that you do not even read what is posted, here.) That you think that we should ignore the years 1963 through 1965 and start the clock on the protests only when they did become more hostile indicates that you simply want to establish an ahistorical recounting of the period, (which allows you to act as though every “liberal” action of which you diasapprove originated in a vacuum from the fevered brains of society-devouring “liberals” with no context at all).
The protests by Buddhist monks were individual actions, not rallies of any sort. Their display across TV screens and news magazines across the U.S., however, led to a number of people beginning to question whether our involvement was a good idea. The number of people who considered U.S. involvement a bad idea grew steadily from the summer of 1963 through the spring of 1965. They tended to not be “a few societal malcontents inspired by folk music,” but people who actually paid attention to the actions of the government and our role in the world. (And, again, you get your chronology wrong: the folk music followed the protests, helping to expand them, but hardly initiating the anti-war movement.)
I suppose that this insistence that chronology and sequence do not matter, or even that “(a specific ‘timeline’) . . . can’t be found because it doesn’t exist” is a prerequisite for your views. Only by stating that the “liberals” were behaving badly with no context does your absolute and complete condemnation make sense. Of course, if one recognizes that actual events occurred in specific sequences–a timeline that is easily discovered in the historical record–one might be forced to note that the “liberals” and the “conservatives” each played roles in the various events and that any claim that places all the blame on one side has no basis in reality.
In regards to my red-baiting comment: your denial that earlier speeches raising the blood of people to hate other people for their beliefs is, I’m afraid, one more example of a lack of historical curiosity. Speeches demonizing union organizers and others considered dangerous for their non-capitalist ideas went a long way toward setting the stage to permit the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, the Palmer Raids, several anti-union riots, and numerous other disruptions of civic harmony. I agree that the effect of early red-baiting was different–it had far worse consequences.
Oh, no, I know perfectly well why I’m a conservative – it’s due to that old bugaboo of liberalism, common sense.
Now it’s become more than obvious to me that, after the initial horror people felt around here as a result of being boldly confronted with the ills that liberalism has wrought upon this society, everyone has decided to hang their hat on the allegation that I’m immune to facts and reason…especially facts and reason that attempt to let them off the hook in regard to the damage they’ve done.
I don’t know everything, but what I do know, I know. Unlike a lot of posters around here who have been fed a rose-colored version of what liberalism has accomplished, and an exaggerated version of how bad things were then (which is not to say bad things didn’t exist, just that they were - like I said - exaggerated), I was there and watched these things transpire firsthand.
Which brings us to the next canard used to try to discredit me: the allegations that all my beliefs are based solely on anecdotal evidence. In the first place, everyone’s beliefs are based on anecdotal evidence, even if it involves looking things up or listening to other versions of events.
I was twenty years old when the societal upheaval of the late sixties began. I knew people at that time, and have known people since, from virtually every walk of life you could imagine, both politically and in terms of the country’s geography.
Further, I have had access to information from - and had my beliefs formed by - news and entertainment magazines, newspapers, broadcast and cable television and radio.
The notion that I only believe what I do because it’s what I want to believe or because it’s limited only to personal experience is simply wrong, and that’s all there is to it.
You can trust me when I say there are millions of people in this country who feel just like I do. The fact that people with the opposite view predominate here in no way means that our perceptions are in error.
The fact that you believe that post #109 actually constitutes a substantive and substantial response to the points i was making demonstrates yet again how completely divorced from reality you are.
I’m not going to make any more arguments, because i honestly have no interest in dealing with you any longer. I simply can’t and won’t engage with someone who eschews all logic and reason, who apparently has no idea what the word “probative” means, and who considers any evidence that contradicts his worldview and his personal experience to be obfuscatory.
I withdraw not in acrimony or animosity, but merely out of exhaustion. And i don’t mean this thread alone. I’ve decided that it is literally as if we are speaking different languages; we have no common understanding of what constitutes evidence and fact and reason and debate, so no purpose is served by further communication on issues where those things are important.
Again, do you see that this is a noncommunicative answer? It means exactly the same thing—but exactly—as “because it feels right.”
“Boldly confronted”? With fact-free assertions like “it’s common sense”? Pretty bold, dude.
Again, seriously, in all seriousness, there is not ONE fact in that paragraph.
That’s not what that means.
Again, in all seriousness, zero facts.
No, and no one says it does. No one has suggested that the fact that “that people with the opposite view predominate here” means you’re in error. NO ONE. They are, rather, respecting your intelligence by responding with facts and information. You continue to insult everyone else’s intelligence by refusing to do the same. Or rather, by simply refusing to admit that you’re refusing to do the same. Again, I don’t really care that *you *don’t really care why you’re a conservative. But to offer only personal opinion and anecdotal experience—i.e., common sense—as your ONLY “cite,” but claim that your impressions are facts, is why you get in trouble here. No one has a problem with personal opinion; only with personal opinion put forth as fact.
*"Kennedy enacted policies providing political, economic, and military support for the unstable French-installed South Vietnamese government, which included sending 16,000 military advisors and U.S. Special Forces to the area. Kennedy also agreed to the use of free-fire zones, napalm, defoliants and jet planes. U.S. involvement in the area continually escalated until regular U.S. forces were directly fighting the Vietnam War in the next administration. The Kennedy Administration increased military support, but the South Vietnamese military was unable to make headway against the pro-independence Viet-Minh and Viet Cong forces. By July 1963, Kennedy faced a crisis in Vietnam. The Administration’s response was to assist in the coup d’état of the Roman Catholic President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem.[24] In 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government, arresting Diem and later killing him (though the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear)[25] Kennedy sanctioned Diem’s overthrow. One reason for the support was a fear that Diem might negotiate a neutralist coalition government which included Communists, as had occurred in Laos in 1962. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, remarked “This kind of neutralism…is tantamount to surrender.”
Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military in Vietnam from 800 to 16,300. It remains a point of controversy among historians whether or not Vietnam would have escalated to the point it did had Kennedy served out his full term and possibly been re-elected in 1964.[26] Fueling this speculation are statements made by Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. In the film “The Fog of War”, not only does McNamara say this, but a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson confirms that Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, a position Johnson states he disapproved of.[27] Additional evidence is Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on October 11, 1963 that gave the order for withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. Nevertheless, given the stated reason for the overthrow of the Diem government, such action would have been a dramatic policy reversal, but Kennedy was generally moving in a less hawkish direction in the Cold War since his acclaimed speech about World Peace at American University the previous June 10, 1963.
After Kennedy’s assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor’s order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM #273 on November 26, 1963."*
You may note also that Kennedy appeared to be ready to wind down U.S. involvement in Vietnam whereas it was escalated by Johnson, thus supporting my contention that had Kennedy not been killed, the huge anti-war movement would most likely never have happened at all, dirty hippies (hi, **luci **;)) or no.
It was late and I was admittedly skimming. My apologies.
I never said (I think when it comes to you I’m just gonna keep that phrase in my clipboard; had I actually been able to post my response to your post last night the reason would be immediately obvious) that we should ignore those years. In fact, they fit right in with my contention that the so-called British invasion that began in 1963 played a large role in setting the nation’s youth of the time against the rest of society, the Vietnam war included.
It’s just that nothing significant in terms of screwing up the country was going on at that time. This is why I said that had Kennedy not been killed, and the Beatles, et. al, not happened, it would all have died on the vine just like the beatniks did.
Exactly. Isn’t that pretty much what I said?
Again, just like I said. The movement was taking root at that time, but it easily could have died out had Kennedy not died and had not the baby-boom generation not become alienated from the rest of society as a result of Beatlemania morphing into the long-haired, dope-smoking anti-establishment hippie movement.
Yeah, well…one man’s attentive world monitor is another man’s societal malcontent.
Where did I say folk music ‘initiated’ the anti-war movement? Nowhere, that’s where (and it’s beginning to come back to me now why I came to stop answering your posts to begin with; they almost never reflect what I actually said. If you keep this up I’m afraid I’m gonna have to resume that practice.)
Folk music was a relatively small element among the forces that eventually led to the huge anti-war movement of the late sixties, but it was hardly a major one, and again, it would likely have died on the vine in terms of societal impact had not the Beatles, hippiedom and anti-establishmentarianism ensued.
Or one might not. My contention is that the society that existed at that time was one that functioned very well, all things considered, but it was one in which certain bad things did indeed exist (just like certain bad things exist now in this liberal-influenced society which liberals discount just as readily as you might accuse me of doing about society then).
But all this is really just smoke and mirrors. The crux of the problem, and the catalyst for it, was the way the nation’s youth - the babyboom generation, a huge number of people - adopted wildly radical ways of dressing and behaving and found themselves at odds with the rest of society. The Vietnam war then provided them with a rallying point from which to rebel and coalesce into a cohesive movement in mindless opposition to the status quo.
Liberalism ensued, and the problems I’ve been describing the last few days are the very predictable result.
Sigh I didn’t say that.
And I disagree. You should as well, unless you think that type of behavior went on for forty years and served to separate the two political parties and ideologies into the intransigent and hate-filled entities they are today.
The 1800s notwithstanding, relations between the two political parties and ideologies was much more civil and far less hate-filled than it has been since the advent of “racist”, “sexist,” “capitalist pig”, “selfish”, “uncaring”, “greedy”, “evil”, etc. began to define the standards of political discourse in this country starting in the late sixties.
