Lately, Dio, I think you do. Well, not on that list actually, but on the list of people that includes Bricker: those who got really overheated during the election and that I hope cool down and resume being their normal selves.
There’s nothing but conservatives in this thread. Their assholes are all sore from getting thoroughly fucked by me in debate threads. 
I don’t belong on that list because I don’t make generalizations about conservatives or Republicans. I just hate Bush.
Oddly, I don’t think Bricker has historically been part of that list either. He seems to be trying to bait liberals more lately which is weird since he won the election. You’d think he’d be more magnanimous.
um. no. or were you generalizing?
I think someone should start a Pit thread titled: “Who belongs on ‘The List’?”
Wouldn’t that be an interesting dicsussion! 
You mean the “Straight to the Wall Come the Revolution!” list? We’ve already got that list. Get your own list.
You gave it an entire 42 minutes, during dinnertime in the East at that, before jumping in with that little piece of snark? Don’t be so eager, pal.
FTR, Dio’s right; Sam’s posts are utterly predictable rehashes of the RW blogs he confines his reading to. His arguments are always focused on supporting whatever the WH Word of the Day is, with only coincidental founding in basic fact. He’s much less than a week away from december. His Swift Boat fantasizing is the best recent evidence of that. Those of you wanting to declaim his intellectual honesty and integrity need just a bit more evidence than his apparent “politeness”. When, by contrast, has Diogenes ever been found to be similarly disconnected from reality on any topic he has argued (leaving his emotions about Bush, shared by half of Americans, out of it)? When has he ever failed to provide factual support when challenged, or even been shown to be consistently filtering out inconvenient facts, in the way that december and Sam have made habitual? Got anything but more snark on that, John? I didn’t think so.
Bricker used to enjoy a reputation at least equal to Dio’s. Now he’s just the Republican reeder, focusing his posting efforts on just twisting a knife instead of trying to fight ignorance. Might I suggest that this trend is from a realization that the party he adores so dearly has brought ruin upon us in many ways, and cannot claim even to itself that it’s anybody else’s fault? Is it simple denial and reversion at play here?
Bricker’s more committed (or perhaps more obstinate) than I am. I’ve given up on political debate here, and as that was my bread-and-butter for several years, I left the boards for a piece. I’m sticking my toe back in a little, but mainly in legal debates - I still avoid political threads like the plague.
A key thing that is overlooked in commiserations about the state of political debate in GD is that it is not only the tone that has changed, but the subjects. These days, the large majority of political threads are about politics - “gotcha” threads about something allegedly nasty or stupid one politico or the other said or did, horserace threads, and the like. There are considerably fewer than there used to be about policy. We really don’t get the knock-down drag-outs we used to get about meaty policy issues we used to. The politics threads may be debates, but they sure aren’t great.
Sua
I don’t know what it used to be like, but you may want to check out BrainGlutton and SentientMeat’s GD threads. Both start non-“This weeks ‘news’ hot potatoe. Discuss.” threads fairly regularly, and those threads often get an interesting conversation going. A nice break from the 6-page GD “This isn’t the pit, so I can’t swear at you, but I can subtly imply that you molest young male goats whilst completely ignoring your argument” type threads (that many of us, myself included, occaisonally slip into…)
(And Cid, I’m flattered. Thanks. :))
Imagine someone posting something snarky in the Pit. The horrors! BTW, it ain’t dinner time even yet on the west coast, which is where I live. But I will check the rules to make sure I didn’t violate the time limit on posting a reply to someone.
:rolleyes:
I think the pure policy threads are starting to come back a little. There’s a pretty good thread going about the Estate Tax which hasn’t yet degenerated into “Bush sucks!” “Does not!”
Political discussion is bound to become more…well…political during a campaign season and a war makes it even more so.
Now that there’s no election on the near horizon and Bush can neither be voted out or in I think people will get more back into actual political philosophy for a while…until the next election cycle anyway.
Well, yeah, until the impeachment debate gets going in earnest…
Shhh…don’t jinx it.
Not to hijack this into an argument about Sam, but this is ridiculous. The problem that the OP was addressing to Bricker was what he perceived as Bricker’s willingness “to engage in partisan sniping, backhanded insulting, and intolerant ranting.” This in no way sounds like Sam.
<snip>
I seriously doubt it. Sounds more like something you wish were the case being projected onto Bricker to me.
Things got really unpleasant for me for a while here, so I took a break though I still lurked.
While lurking I came up with an interesting hypothesis based on observation.
There are some people who use this board primarily to seek out targets to attack. Attacking them through the anonymity of a message board was safe and provided some sort of validation.
There goal was not to debate in good faith, or discuss anything, but simply to attack other people, and thereby make themselves feel good.
Such people need a target. For a while, December was the target. December deserved to be banned, IMO, and he was often an embarassment to my viewpoint. I don’t think that he deserved the hate that was thrown his way.
I have been that target. Sam Stone has been that target and Bricker has been that target.
There’s an old joke I like:
A young kid signs up at a lumberjack camp. After two weeks in the deep woods he begins to hurt from the lack of womefolk. He’s getting mean and ugly. He goes to the foreman and explains the problem.
The foreman pats the young man on the back and says that he understands. “There’s a barrel over there, my boy. The barrel has a knothole worn smooth. That’s what we use around here, since there’s no women.”
The young man thanks the foreman and that evening he goes over to the barrel, eyes the knothole and gets to know the knothole in a biblical sense.
The next day he tells the foreman “Man, that was incredible. I feel so much better! Thank you. I have to tell you, I don’t think it’s just the pentup lack of women that made that so great. That barrel was incredible.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, son” replies the foreman. “Because tonight’s your turn in the barrel.”
There are many, many posters on the left who debate in good faith, and with courtesy. You need to know how frustrating it is to try to engage you while the nutjobs are hurling their crap.
You may think you’re simply ignoring them, and not a part of it, but consider how it looks and feels from the other side. To a frustrated and angry man in the barrel your silence appears to be condoning their behavior.
They won’t listen to us. They’re doing it to get a rise out of us. If they get their asses kicked by the people on their own side, I think they’ll stop doing it, because they won’t be getting the validation they seek anymore.
Consider that sometimes these people are like catalysts. They get a rise out of a Bricker after working on him and attacking him and calling him a bigot for days or weeks on end. Then Bricker gets fed up and says something unfortunate or uncalled for, and then HE gets pitted. Maybe his comment earns him your enmity.
I’ve had it happen once or twice when after several pages of being attacked, I finally fire back and then some reasonable guy or gal from the left will show up and tell me how disapointed they were that I would say such a thing. Where were they for the last four pages?
I had this very thing happen to me in a discussion with Mr. Svinlesha he was being perfectly polite and courteous. He wasn’t doing anything about the five or six other posters on his side that were being perfect assholes. Eventually, I took my frustration out on him, and later felt bad about it. I was still pissed off though. How could he ignore this shit?
The fault there was mine, and I owe Svin an apology. The point is you can’t have it both ways. Not that it’s your responsibility, or that it’s your fault, but if you want a message board where you can have strong political debate you have to be ruthless in attacking the assholes on your own side.
The assholes will drive away the good debate, and it will sink to the lowest common denominator.
If you don’t want that, you have to do something about it.
I believe that since the people who are doing it, do it for validation, they will cease and desist and the level of discussion will rise if they are smartly slapped for their behavior.
Their are great posters on the left. I have had incredibly heated discussions with Wring and for the most part enjoyed them immensely. Even if my mind wasn’t changed and I left feeling the same way, I was improved by my discussion, because it forced me to define my arguments and temper them in the forge of her rebuttals. She has always been quick to attack the assholes on her side when they intruded on a discussion of quality, and has given me cause to think of her as a good friend and a person to be admired.
Uccch. Still a windbag.
Good thing you bolded.
Yes and no, Sua. I totally agree about the proliferation of “gotcha” threads, such as the one Bricker uncahracteristically started about the Pat Oliphant/Condi Rice cartoon. Although most are easily ignored, some inevitably turn into major issues/smackdowns just due to the zeitgeist such as the Swift Boat nonsense from last summer/fall or the post-2000 election threads. Either way, it’s a hell of a lot of piddly debates and comparatively fewer Great Debates.
On the other hand, let’s not lose track of the fact that we live in (to borrow the proverb) interesting times, in which the stakes are high and the issues are life and death. That fact is magnified greatly around election time. Heck, you and I both were here four years ago (well, four years ago next week for me, anyway), and you surely remember what that was like in GD and the Pit. Sure, there were all those amusingly insane circumcision threads, but there were also a lot of posters rending their garments and berating each other over the issues of the day. It’s a bigger board now, and that effect is certainly magnified by that growth, in addition to the growth in importance of the issues.
So I guess my advice would be to get back into the water, but don’t dive into the worst of the muck unless you know how deep it is.
Bricker actually makes me remember December fondly.
Say what you will about December, but he was willing to engage in debates on risky subjects for his side. When I looked back at all the Chalabi threads, I was astonished to find that of all the conservatives on the board, only two had responded, and only one had actually debated the subject: December.
I may have disagreed with most of what December said, but I think the current situation (as pointed out by SuaSponte) in which debate on the issues doesn’t happen at all is much worse.
Jealous much? Or is the pinnacle of your eloquence, “Uccch”?
Just because you’re a sycophant to a windbag doesn’t mean I have to be jealous. Whoever you are.