Certainly you should seriously consider the very real possibility. Another real possibility is a failure to communicate your position adequately. BUT you also have to consider who are talking to you, what they are saying, their obtuseness, their bias, their investment in either you being wrong, or them not being wrong, or both. So if the audience of 900 is, say, one ElvisL1ves and 899 identically biased sycophants, then maybe after seriously considering the possibility that you’re wrong, or that you are an inadequate communicator, you decide to just let others read your words and make up their own minds.
Nonsense. At some point you’ve done everything you can to “fight ignorance,” said all you can say, make all the arguments you can. You can’t fight the ignorance of those who are too stupid or too stubborn to listen. Even if that isn’t so, there actually really are issues – politics chief among them – on which people of intelligence and good will disagree, and after 10 pages of posts and talk, will still disagree. At some point it’s not fighting ignorance, it’s mental masturbation.
This is not my take-away from your posts in the area of politics. Your mileage obviously varies.
As I re-read my post, let me quickly clarify that I am not calling ElvisL1ves a biased syncophant (though I do think he’s biased) but rather hypothetically referencing him and 899 others who are syncophantic to him, of the “brilliant post, ElvisL1ves” variety. The former would be a gratuitious shot out of nowhere, which was no intended and my post shouldn’t be read that way.
Well, its hard to deny that Elvish’s entourage of syncophants can get on your nerves, what with all the applause, offers of money and sex, and all. Tiresome, to be sure, especially when posters of rare perception and scintillating wit go unremarked. Yes, I quite take your point on that one.
Jesus, if this isn’t proof of my inability to communicate, I don’t know what is. I don’t think ElvisL1ves has his own army of sycophants. I think that if a poster – any particular poster – is hammering on a position that a bunch of other posters happen to agree with, there is a tendency to stand around and applaud, or to pile on, one of the two. I think that when a Board leans as far to the left as this one does, that happens a lot in political threads. (Think the two Guinness TV ads that play in the U.S.: “Brilliant!” “Brilliant!”) So for those of us who don’t think the sun shines out of the Democratic party’s collective ass, and are facing a seeming army for whom it apparently does, you do have to decide when you’ve made your point as best you can and need to move on. Some people will construe that to mean you’ve “lost”. But so what? I don’t know any other way to post here and find it an enjoyable experience and not an endless chore (“As I said on pages 1, 2, and 3, and paraprasing again . . . .”). You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t make people agree with you.
I think this is true, but if you’re saying that it’s true because of the board’s leftward lean, I’m not sure I agree. I don’t ever have a conversation with the board; I have a conversation with individual posters. And if I find that a conversation is unproductive with a particular poster, it doesn’t matter whether their opinion is a majority or minority opinion; it’s just as unproductive to continue that discussion.
Of course, I can see how, as someone with a minority opinion, you’d encounter that more often.
Oh, luci got your point, all right. He’s just teasing his fellow leftist with pseudo-repinings for the imaginary perks of imaginary sycophantian retinues.
Or, to be rather more precise, in my own rambling and verbose way:
But the Board is of course nothing more than a collective of individuals, In political threads, IME, you are almost always going to be talking to a collective of individuals the vast majority of whom lean to the left politically. If you are the only person arguing the other position, it can quickly become time-intensive and frustrating to try to address all the posters who are participating – especially if they aren’t really interested in what you’re saying, but only waiting their turn to argue. I don’t think you have to determine that discussion with some particular poster is unproductive before you can conclude that the discussion is unproductive, period. This is especially true when it appears people are not even actually listening to you anyway. This happens most frequently in political and religious threads, IME, because of the philosophical makeup of the vocal majority of the Board.
“This” meaning discussions becoming one-sided and unproductive, not “this” meaning people not listening. I think I’m de-evolving as I type. Time go bed. Try write keyboard tomorrow.
Jodi, your posts are so on the money, I wish I had written them…but I doubt I could have phrased it as well. The hardest thing in the world to do is take a position in opposition to the vast majority, if for no other reason than having others on your side has a tendency to make people believe their POV is more fact than opinion. It also is difficult to be completely on your own in trying to defend your POV…if you don’t have the ability, for whatever reason, to effectively refute every single point all by yourself, it has the effect of making the opposition believe that your overall position is weak…when they are forgetting that you are holding up 10 different arguments with 10 different people, whereas they only have to handle one at a time.
Considering that the bottom line in so many of these threads is that there is no right position, but merely many equally valid opinions, it does become pointless to go over and over the same things with no other resolution in sight. Sometimes you just have to say it isn’t worth it.
Not that I matter here (since I try to stay away from political threads here-not good for my RL; I am amazed and envious at how much time folks can devote to debate), but Jodi’s point is an excellent one and applies to both sides of the aisle. There comes a time when you say to yourself–I have said my piece and explained as best I can. If the message isn’t clear or agreed with-so be it. I find it hard to respond to pile ons (not that I have experienced many, thank god) because the tone of the thread can become separate from individual posts within that thread. Defenses go up and productive discussion pretty much ends. It’s too easy to go for the sneer, the jibe, the snark–I am as guilty of it as the next member here. And sometimes, the result is funny as hell, so the temptation is large.
Just my two cents. I’ve never had a problem with a mod (that I know of) since my initial post which sharply reprimanded me for something that turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Now that I’ve said that, I have cursed myself to a warning for sure…
About that “vast majority”. Why is that, do you think? Do you believe that the SDMB is somehow “lefter” than the American population? Wouldn’t recent political events give you pause? I’ve asked this question more than once of persons who express the same view you have, that the SDMB is distinctly left, but I have yet to hear a plausible mechanism offered, as to how this came to be.
Conspiracy, by chance? Lefties flit about in their trucks hurtling through the internet tubes, looking for centrist, wholesome sites to overwhelm by sheer number? Or was the site centrist and wholesome but moved by the brilliance of our arguments and the clarity of our positions? (I lean towards that one).
An effect must pretty much have a cause, yes?
(PS: ETF has it exactly right, you were only the straight person in my ragging on friend Elvish. Your communication skills are, in my estimation, entirely adequate.)
On a more serious note, I find it personally more challenging and fulfilling to post concerning my politics on a strong left leaning message board where I’ll encounter a lot of resistance and criticism both well and ill-founded.
When I took a hiatus I spent some time on the Freeper board where I found myself in a strong solid majority(and rapidly became King, but that’s another story.) The liberals that would argue there were pretty much doomed and outnumbered and shouted down regardless of the merits of their arguments.
It seemed to me that most vociferous posters on that board who waited gleefully to attack any liberal, dismiss valid arguments, engage in ad hominem characterizations, attack personalites, and declare victory under the smallest pretext were inevitably the stupidest, most knee jerk and rationally ill-equipped posters on the board. They need the safe haven of a large majority to attack from safety because, quite frankly, they couldn’t cut it on a level playing field, and would get slaughtered if they came here.
I find the exact same thing to be true on this board, except fromt the other perspective.
So, for those that lament the fact that there aren’t a lot of conservatives here to argue with, or good conservatives on which to test your arguments, I suggest you are making the same argument as the man standing in front of Baskin Robbins claiming there’s no place in the world to get a good ice cream.
If you wish for good arguments against a multitude of conservatives there’s plenty of places to find them within a few clicks. Or, you could just sit around here and congratulate each other on how smart you are and how there’s no conservatives to argue against.
No, not automatically. It should, however, make one pause to consider.
A lot more depends on *what * they’re shouting. If it’s on the order of “But Clinton got a blowjob!”, you’re right, that’s actually an affirmation of sorts.
And at that point it’s time to take stock, and the answer may well be that the people telling you that you’re wrong, and more importantly how, are right. You shouldn’t instead retreat behind a list of which people you “respect” and which you don’t as a filter, if that respect is merely derived from the frequency with which they agree with you.
Any time, any time at all, you find me making a significant error of fact or reasoning, I welcome your explaining it. You wouldn’t be the first to call me a nonthinking partisan kneejerker or somesuch, but you’d be the first to show where (Right, LHOD? Still looking for an example yourself? :rolleyes: ) But mere juvenile sniping like that last bit of yours does not contribute anything useful at all.
Or maybe you two just wish you had your own sycophants?
Probably for the same reasons as were displayed the last 400 times you asked this question.
I’m sure it has something to do with the same reason the Freeper board leans to the right, unless you beleive the Chi-reader to be some sort of offshoot of Townhall.
That’s only because you failed to read out loud what was posted the many occasions before when you asked this very same question only to ignore the substance of the response.
I imagine it happened probably the same way the Freeper board came to lean right, or, the way cartalk.com tends to have a lot of motorheads. Does the mechanism of the congregation of the like-minded really contain such mysteries to you?
Well, I was here when it happened. The board was pretty much leftist but wasn’t aggressively so during the Clinton years. The bulk of debates had to do with Creationism and science and what have you. As the Presidential debate heated up for the 2000 vote political debates became preeminent, more polarized, and, more personal. The tipping point was the “Why I don’t trust Conservatives/Republicans” thread in GD which was really the start of knee jerk partisanship and the first success of openly partisan bashing. As things heated up and people began to get away with right-bashing there was a general exodus of the board of Republicans and Conservatives.
Stupid liberals could post whatever they want, and would rarely be challenged, and if they were, they were attacking from a crowd. Things generally settle to the lowest common denominator, and like bad money driving out good: spurious, partisan, let’s-give-each-other-high-fives-and-call-Bush-names crowd found a place to have their little party.
I refer to this as the “Stoidization” of The SDMB which occured in 2000.
In other words, the partisanship was always there, it never became an issue while the Democrats were in control.
My subjective observation is that now, while the Democrats are suddenly back in power, there has been a relative drop-off in the amount of bush/righty bashing by the left.
Classic Scylla, definitely a candidate for the Greatest Hits. A masterpiece of unsubstantiated insinuation!
For instance,
Good stuff, that! You manage to imply that the political stances of the SDMB and the Freeper are mirror images, thus suggesting that the SDMB is as extremely left as the foam-flecked semi-rabid Freepers is right. Which is the utterest rot, you do know that, right?
And then, with the slyest of segues, we are advised to cease our public lamenetations of woe for the lack of conservatives to argue with. To witless:
Who, exactly, was doing this? Was this the OP’s contention, that he was tired of hearing liberals piss and moan…excuse, whine…about the dearth of conservatives? I rather had the impression it was quite the opposite. Yes, come to think on it, I’m quite sure of that.
If your insinuation that the SDMB is as far left as Freeper is right is truly your opinion, rather than merely a bit of rhetorical humbug, then who the fuck is centrist? Little Green Footballs?
I implied nothing. I stated it outright. I have hung out at both.
I suppose that if you are a “foam-flecked semi-rapid leftie” it must seem to you that the Freepers are crazed right-wing nutjobs who have lost touch with reality, and the SDMB community is reasonable, balanced, normal, and represents roughly the same mix as America at large. Such loss of perspective is the price of blind partisanship, so cast first the mote from thine own eye and realize that over in the freeper board is your doppleganger, complete with goatee, just like in that Star Trek episode.
:: Shrug :: I don’t know. I do think it has something to do with the Board being an offshoot of an “independent” newspaper. I also think it probably has something to do with the message board as a medium for communication and entertainment – not a place where a lot of Republicans hang out. I also think it has to do with the relative youth of the Board members. Those are WAGs, though; I don’t really know.
Oh, hell yeah. The Board is also more “rightier” than IRL, and more “atheister” and more “religious.” The truth is that we spend a lot of time discussing, often repeatedly, often in agonizingly minute detail, issues that IRL get way less time as people go about the business of doing their jobs, raising their families, having lives. I think most people on this Board who know of me probably know I am a Methodist and relatively conservative; few people at my workplace – people who actually do know me IRL – would be able to tell you that.
I’m not sure which events you mean, or “give me pause” in relation to what.
I don’t think I need to defend this view as anything more than my perception. Even were I to offer speculation as to reasons, I’m not likely to care whether you find them plausible or not.
Nah. Rather the inherent nature of both the site and the medium, I would think.
Sure. You take stock, and you decide if they’re right or not. I agree.
Obviously so. The people I respect on the Boards – no need for quotes around respect – I do not respect based on the frequency of agreement with me. Nor do I necessarily disrespect people who disagree with me. Do I give more weight to the opinions of people I respect? Yes, of course I do.
It is my experience in both observing your political posts and occasionally sparring with you in that subject area that you are not likely to agree that you have made a significant error of reasoning even if that is my opinion, nor are you likely to consider yourself as partisan as you certainly appear to be to me. This is presupposing I had any interest in making such an effort, which I assure you I don’t: It would require the sort of waiting-in-the-weeds, following-someone-around, searching-old-threads-for-evidence behavior that when I see it, makes me think, “Sweet fancy Moses, get a life!” It is also a good example of the type of post that is completely non-productive, since third parties reading it don’t think, “My God! She’s right!” they think, “She’s a no-life-havin’ stalker.” I’m crazy enough at it is.
Agreed. Scylla’s last post, and in particular the latter part of it, describes the process of the right wing leaving this board, but doesn’t actually give any reason why. It cannot be a co-incidence that the exodus co-incided with it becoming difficult to defend the nominally right wing current US administration. Many right wingers left when their nominal leadership became indefensible, meaning that many right wing posters could no longer “do okay”.
I don’t agree that this board leans left in quite the blanket way you suggest. On a left-right issue that does not have anything to do with Bushco, there is plenty of support both ways. Or at the least, to the extent that there is a lack of input from the right, it’s because the rightwing numbers are depleted because they overlap with Bush supporters. Bush supporters are in short supply because they get slaughtered in debate around here because Bush is a doofus. Easily enough righties consider him to be a doofus for that to be considered a pretty non-partisan description these days.
