I guess what I meant is that you can only really have control over your own behavior…you can’t control how people react. My issue here isn’t so much with bias, it’s with the sweeping, unsupported generalizations (coming from both sides), which really shouldn’t be tolerated in GD.
Well I doubt that, but thanks for saying so.
You know, I’m not sure now that you mention it. Maybe it’s a bit of burnout on my part.
I went from exasperation at myself for writing such a sucky OP to general embarrassment about the whole thing. But as long as I made it about me, let me ask another question…when I see the words “good and decent,” I don’t think of someone above and beyond normal people, but rather, just regular, every day goodness and decency, as most likely descibes the vast majority of posters here. One of the thing that continues to amaze me about this place is how it seems to describe a much more divided America than I thought there was. I know that they yak on the TV and the radio about the culture wars, but I really don’t see it that much in my everyday life. Living where I do, I’m around people all the time who are very different from me…different races, religions, political stripes, etc. I’m dear, close friends with all kinds of these people. The least you can say about most of them is that they are good and decent. But here, people seem to categorize good and decent based solely on who you vote for, perhaps not even knowing the reason why. Is this really how it works out there, or is it a function of the internet, and people being more blunt than they might be in real life? Of course, I’m pretty moderate, so my viewpoint on this might be a little different on this, but I very rarely come across anyone with views that I find so abhorrent that I wouldn’t be willing to associate with them. (Not that there aren’t views I wouldn’t be able to tolerate, I just don’t run across people who hold them.) Here, I get the impression that people quite deliberately avoid others who hold differing political or religious views. Is this impression accurate, or am I seeing things?
If you can only control your own behavior, then who shouldn’t be tolerating the sweeping, unsupported generalizations in GD?
If modesty doesn’t allow you to accept this, then how about if one or a few other moderate conservatives left here, could that make a difference as to how the conversations here take shape?
A bit of both, I suspect. GD is a place that, by its very nature, is a polarized place. People are debating different sides to an issue. If everyone agreed on everything, there wouldn’t be anything to debate. Some people who are attracted to that, might be attracted for the reason that they hold very strong views that they can’t express in real life.
In real life, do some people consider other people as less good and decent if they don’t hold the same views? Sure. I’ve seen this in some people who hold very rigid religious views. They see me as less good and decent than they are because I don’t hold their views and treat me accordingly.
Conversely, in most areas of my life where I meet with people, our connection comes from something that isn’t so polarized, so our views on most subjects don’t matter. If I join a gardening club, I would spend most of my time talking about gardening and probably wouldn’t discuss my political or religious views. And it would work the same way on a gardening forum, for the most part.
It looks like about two hours elapsed between my post and the above retort. xt, I’m going to be generous and assume you weren’t working to come up with that one for the entire two hours.
On the other hand, given the nature of the message board, there’s no real time limit for replying. Next time, you might want to let your response percolate just a touch more. This one was just a tad weak.
No, probably not. Of course, your own isn’t exactly that sharp either.
Well, that’s really good of you Hentor! I appreciate your generosity. As it happens I am, sadly, unable to sit by the computer waiting breathlessly to reply to every post in every thread that I’m involved in…especially silly one’s like this. I know that is probably confusing to you…but that RL stuff intrudes from time to time.
But I really do appreciate your generosity…I didn’t think you had it in you, old boy!
I will certainly strive to keep that in mind. Thanks for the advice…as always, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you!
I wouldn’t normally do this, but considering my failure to make the point I wanted to in the OP and the fact that it’s just degenerated into an insult war, maybe a mod could close it and put it out of its misery.
Its not about being good and/or decent. You’re nice. I’m betting your husband is nice, too, in a manly sort of way. Kids are probably nice too, though its hard to be sure, I’ve known families of five being three pussycats and two rattlesnakes.
I’m not nice, this is not the way of my people.
Its kind of like tidy people. I go into a tidy persons home, I feel instantly constricted and bound. waltzing drunk in a mine field, I cannot move naturally, but consciously, carefully, I feel like I have to go outside to fart.
We not-nice don’t want to hurt anybody, its just that we cannot be bothered to sand off the edges of our words, its tiresome and cramps our style. We prefer our own, of course, where snide is free and chops are cheerfully busted. And we have a perfectly sensible reason for that: we like it.
If you gave it some thought, you might be able to come up with something I said to you that made you mad, or hurt your feelings. Because you’re nice, and I’m not. But I beg you to consider all the stuff I didn’t say to you. And many others of us in the not-nice tribe have, no doubt, stifled their snark or wait in ambush for a better target.
So there is a quality in you that is being respected, even though it may not be evident.
Surprisingly I did. Not surprisingly I don’t think you got my own humor there. While you seemingly attribute my own supposed denseness to your assessment of my stupidity however, I attribute your own failure to the fact that my sense of humor is often obscure, with myriad inside jokes shared with my small circle of friends on this board and off.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore your post when I asked for the thread to be closed. I’m not sure I understand this question, though. It would seem to me that anyone with a bit of an open mind and who is willing to use logic wouldn’t tolerate it.
I’m not sure…I actually think that most of the moderate conservatives already have made the decision not to post in GD.
I guess you’re right that in general, we don’t necessarily even know what our friends’ political viewpoints are, and clearly GD is an opportunity to express them outright. And this is bound to create clashes of philosophy and outlook. I guess I just don’t understand the black-and-whiteness of the opinions. Maybe my mind just doesn’t work quite that way.
Ha ha. I guess we are nice. My husband definitely not as much as me, and as far as he is, it’s more boyish than manly, but I guess I get your point. My kids we have yet to determine…they are too young to really know for sure. But I come from a family of rattlesnakes, if you can believe it.
Oh, sure, plenty of people here have made me mad. Hurt feelings, maybe not so much, but sure, I have, you know, emotions just like anyone. My point wasn’t that it was about me and my delicate feelings, though. You’re saying here that you can’t sand the edge off your words…to me, what that means is that you’re going to say what you think without worrying about what people think about it. Which I can respect, of course. What that means to me, though, is that when you say that a person isn’t good and decent because of a certain politial opinion, that’s what you really mean. And that’s what I don’t get. I don’t get really believing a person is evil based on their stance on abortion (and, incidentally, that means a pro-lifer believing that YOU are evil, as well as vice-versa). I don’t know if this is due to my “niceness,” but I can’t imagine being that rigid on the subject, at least from a political standpoint.
P.S. I don’t think I’m supposed to say this, but I’m kind of drunk right now, so I hope that made sense!
