I absolutely agree with this, and not just because I worship BRICKER so completely that I have a tasteful shrine to him in my living room.
On this Board, supposedly a haven for rationality, it’s become harder and harder to engage in rational discussion on (a) religion or (b) politics. And those are some fabulous, meaty topics. It also, IMO, is difficult to discuss these hot-button topics because the point at which civil discourse is tossed over the side is IMO appallingly low – Exhibit 1 being the immediacy with which anyone failing to embrace every aspect of every pro-gay subject is called a homophobe. It’s like people either don’t understand what a big deal it is to call someone a homophobe, or they just don’t give a shit – they know they’re insulting and they don’t care.
If BRICKER is getting fed up, you’re only aware of it because he continues to post. Other people who have become temporarily or permanently fed up just wander away. Maybe they come back – I did, SUA did – but maybe they don’t. It’s tough to convince yourself to stick around when people are villifying you and things you believe in, and no one is speaking up to defend you.
The truth is, I have wandered away, wandered back, and wandered away again. I think I’m in the process of wandering away permanently, and “FED UP” would be a pretty succinct explanation of why. I have the greatest respect for some Dopers, and no opinion on the vast majority – but I gotta tell ya, some of us are fruitcakes, some of us are dumb as a sack of hammers, and some of us are just stone assholes. When you get the point that you don’t really like the people you’re talking to, and you don’t like the person you see yourself become in the course of the conversation, you’ve got to ask: What the hell am I doing here? At this point, I’m here for a couple of legal discussions, and Lord knows I ought to be able to get enough of that at work. So I’m edging my way off the dance floor. And while I know I’d be no loss to this Board, I truly believe BRICKER would be, so I ask you: Please help him stay. If you see him unreasonably attacked, defend him. If people are saying dumb-shit things, call them on it. Don’t give them a pass just because they happen to be of your ideology. Conversely, if a person is making decent sense, give them a chance; don’t assume you have to break their kneecaps just because they are not of your ideology. Because if we allow ourselves to be reduced to angels and devils, sanctifying our friends and demonizing our enemies, how will we ever be able to really talk to each other again?
Anyway. Sorry to preach, but I always swore I’d never make some grand “I’m leaving!” speech, and I can’t pass up this opportunity to weasel around that vow. Not that I’m leaving; this place is as addictive as chocolate-covered mint oreos, and I’m too weak to give it up. So far.
… Or they would be, if the Bush supporters on this board were willing to acknowledge their existence.
December was the only Bush supporter on this board who was willing to take on risky subjects for his side, such as Chalabi. I think he deserved to be banned, but I would trade 100 Brickers and their self serving, dishonest dodging of issues for one December, with his frustrating, yet sincere, opinions on all the issues.
My opinion is not improved by his dogged insistence that “liberals” thought Bush would lose, despite overwhelming evidence showing he is wrong.
… Or they would be, if the Bush supporters on this board were willing to acknowledge their existence.
December was the only Bush supporter on this board who was willing to take on risky subjects for his side, such as Chalabi. I think he deserved to be banned, but I would trade 100 Brickers and their self serving, dishonest dodging of issues for one December, with his frustrating, yet sincere, opinions on all the issues.
I consider this a prime example of exactly the type of behavior I find so exasperating. You complain that the “Bush supporters” ignore the meaty topics of religion and politics – oddly, injecting politic specifics into a conversation that neither required nor invited them – and then complain about BRICKER’s “self serving, dishonest dodging of issues.” Gee, it’s hard to see why he wouldn’t want to take up your invitation to civilized debate on issues of the day. :rolleyes:
Speaking only for myself, I rarely debate or discuss anything with people who preemptively label me as “dishonest” or “self serving.” People who reduce every disagreement down to “Bush supporters” and Righteous Defenders of Freedom (a/k/a Democrats) are inevitably tiresome and almost always appear to be unwilling and/or unable to admit two sides to the issue exist (whatever the issue is). But then, I must have missed all of your posts in admiration of DECEMBER prior to his banning, because while people may disagree about whether he deserved it, he certainly got the shit kicked out of a him a few times. And it’s not like you were asking people to back down off of him to keep his “sincere” opinions in play. Though as to that, I personally find sincerity, while admirable, to be a pretty thin defense. Some of our assholes and our whackos are sincere as the day is long; that doesn’t make more pleasant or more sane.
By the way Jodi… do you agree that Bricker should stop pretending as though “liberals” thought Bush would lose, given that the evidence proves him wrong?
I have no opinion on this at all. I haven’t been following along with the 68 ba-zillion pre- para- and post-election threads, and would rather jab hot needles in my eyes than start reviewing them now. Sorry.
Though I will say that if you are importing over into this thread – which BRICKER did not start – some preexisting but totally unrelated political bug-in-yer-butt, I don’t consider that sort of “waiting in the weeds” behavior to be quite cricket, either. Not deserving of a pillioring but just a wee bit . . . small. Not really small, just . . . smallish. YMMV and I assume does.
Far from it. I am responding to Bricker’s own posts in this very thread:
“I was faced, repeatedly, with confident and superior assertions about how evil “Bushco” was, how it was impossible for Bush to win a second term…”
The majority of liberals expected Bush to win.
“What frustrates me more than anything else is that these particular opinions are offered by people whose debating style is not honest. If they lose on a point, they simply shift to another”
As opposed to the honest style of ignoring issues altogether.
“I was faced, repeatedly, with confident and superior assertions about how evil “Bushco” was, how it was impossible for Bush to win a second term…”
does not mean this:
The majority of liberals expected Bush to win.
And this:
“What frustrates me more than anything else is that these particular opinions are offered by people whose debating style is not honest. If they lose on a point, they simply shift to another”
does not imply this:
As opposed to the honest style of ignoring issues altogether.
But then when you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I’m sorry to point out the obvious too, but those lines were my reactions to his posts.
They were not meant to be implications of his posts.
“The majority of liberals expected Bush to win” is a reference to the fact that Bricker continues repeating his line about liberals thinking Bush would lose despite the great majority thinking he would win.
Looks like Bricker only saw what he wanted to. What was that about hammers?
“As opposed to the honest style of ignoring issues altogether” is sarcasm. I am referring to Bricker’s own dodging of issues, and sarcastically saying that he must think that that is honest debating.
Gosh, this whole chat is really restoring my faith in the likelihood of productive exchanges here on these Boards. Allow me to be explicit:
I don’t give a shit what your problem with BRICKER is. Really. I’m not defending anything he might of said or failed to say in any political thread, I’m not saying he’s right and you’re wrong. I don’t know and I really really re-heally don’t care. At all. I do believe you are exhibiting in this thread exactly the sort of behavior he was talking about, and I know you’re exhibiting the kind of behavior I was talking about – one-dimensional and tiresome. Now it’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t know exactly what we’re talking about and frankly I don’t care. So I’m signing off, and if anyone else has any reaction to what I have said, tomorrow will be time enough to find out. Nighty-nite.
I had a valid point, as well as evidence to support it, about the dearth of Bush supporters wading into risky topics for their “side.”
I think that it is a very important point, and I continue to think so.
If I saw a similar epidemic of anti-Bush people refusing to join debates on things risky for their views, I would point that out as well, but as of yet I have not seen that. There don’t seem to be any issues they know they are wrong on and refuse to touch.
Everything I said after that was a response to your own one dimensional posts, and as such I think we have to at least split the responsibility.
What he said. Dio may be a tad forceful on occasion but at least he doesn’t repeat blog points like a parrot or smother his words in a sickly honey coating which like December’s behaviour is nothing more than a cheap ploy to talk offensive crap without getting called by mods IMHO.
December was the most dishonest poster this board has ever seen. Either that or the most stupid. Arguing with him was like trying to juggle eels as he blithely ignored any fact or counter-argument and returned time after time to discredited sources and ‘facts’.
Stone and Sylla are little better and I’ve learned not to bother reading their posts, just the inevitable crushing rebuttals. And Bricker is charging down the same route, which is a shame. I used to take note of his points and arguments even if I disagreed but lately it’s like someone else is using his account.
Well, that’s a bit of an overgeneralization, don’t you think?
Speaking as member of the left, I’ve no problem whatsoever with the fact that people disagree with me. I don’t go to Great Debates looking for agreement; I go specifically looking for the opportunity to exchange ideas and consider intelligent argument from people with opposing points of view. And in fact, as a result of having participated on this board, my view of the world has shifted considerably rightward over the last couple of years.
What I do have a problem with, on the other hand, are people who refuse to see or admit to matters of simple fact. Okay, let us grant that facts aren’t always that simple, but still.
Sam, who has unfortunately degenerated into my piñata boy, provides a good example. The arguments he presents for his views are almost always spurious. That’s bad enough, but in addition the facts upon which he bases those views have been revealed to be false time and again. And yet Sam continues to promote a politics based on these false facts and spurious arguments. As soon as I demonstrate that one of his arguments is flawed, or that one of his sets of facts is false (or misleading), Sam pops up with another flawed argument or set of false facts. This is not intelligent discourse; it’s some kind of insane, rhetorical version of whack-a-mole. And I do not believe that Sam has shifted so much as an inch leftwards since I first met him. He seems totally immune to reasoned discourse, and in my opinion most definitely belongs in the OP’s list. (On the other hand, it is almost an insult to include Stoid or Dio in the same list as Sam. YMMV.)
A postmodernist perspective turns reasoned discourse into an exercise in futility. We assume the existence of real world outside of ourselves, which makes us ”realists.” We further assume that is possible to construct linguistic representations of that world, such that facts can be expressed symbolically in language, and that statements can be made that correspond with relative accuracy to the world around us.
In other words, the absence of ”WMDs” in Iraq is a fact, not the opinion of a bunch of loony left-wingers. Yet there are respected members of the right on this board (yes, I’m looking at you, Shodan, among many others) who refuse to admit this fact. For these people, facts are constructed out of opinions: opinions come first, and facts admitted or excluded on the basis of these opinions.
(For what it’s worth, Scylla is one of the few Bush supporters on this board who’s actually bitten that maggot-ridden apple and conceded that yes, indeed, it appears as if Bush lied us into a war.)
The Bush administration, Fox News, and the right in general seek to ”muddy the waters.” They want to reduce some facts to the status of opinion, and elevate some opinions to the status of fact. Left and Right are reduced to squabbling over the question of whether or not fact A really is a fact, or just an opinion. If you believe in fact A, the right will tell you, that’s just because you’re an anti-American leftist. ”Things don’t seem to be going too well in Iraq,” you say. ”Why do you hate America so much?” they reply. The political discourse collapses in on itself, because (following this line of reasoning) reality becomes a function of one’s ideological predisposition. Sam sincerely believed that my views regarding the function of the ”aluminium tubes” was predicated on my politics, rather than on my careful review of the evidence and the conclusions I drew from it. I argued until my fingers bled, to no avail.
Bricker:
Yeah, right.
Like the members of the right don’t regularly engage in these tactics?
But okay, help a brother out. Can you point me to a few examples?
Sua:
Amen to that. Although there was one interesting discussion recently, involving Mr. Moto and BobLiberalDem.
Scylla:
I can’t really police the boards and I don’t really feel responsible for what others post here. Nor have I ever felt that I needed you (or anyone else) to protect me from attacks from the right. I try to respond to posters whom I find reasonable and forget the rest. I mean, seriously, people like New Iskander aren’t worth the trouble or effort. The rest washes off me like water off a duck’s back.
You don’t owe me an apology, since I have taken no offence. I still enjoy our discussions, and fully expect that we might get a bit hot around the collar during them, but I think I can deal with that. But I also must point out, in all honesty, that I cannot remember a single example in which you took someone to task for agreeing with you, or ruthlessly attacked an asshole on your side. Nor do I think such an act would be productive, since I suspect that, on top of the ongoing debate, you would simply find yourself caught up in a pissing match with one of your fellows.
Typical lefty disinformation! Maggots do not infest apples, they reside in rotting flesh. I demand a quivering and abjectly humble apology.
One hastens to note, as well, that the magnanimous Scylla managed to find a way to overlook this boyish misdemeanor and support the Shining One regardless.
In general I’ve enjoyed reading Bricker’s posts, the few occasions of partisan sniping notwithstanding. Comparisons with december are IMO way out of line; I apologize in advance for speaking ill of the banned but december was an intellectually dishonest, willfully ignorant, and genuinely hateful individual who dressed up raw partisan bile as polite debate. After the umpteenth GD thread suggesting that I and others like me were cowardly traitors in the pay of Saddam Hussein, I was not sorry to see him go.
Not to comment specifically on the list but Dio, old bean, you have of late had a tendency to cross the line into overexcited frothingdom on occasion. It’s like having Michael Moore online; even when I do agree with your point, your insistence on going that little bit too far can be embarrassing. Relax. Breathe. Err on the side of courtesy.
With all due respect, I have been that target too. As have many on the “Left” (pardon the capital letter). It’s not an exclusively left-targetting-right kind of thing. When it comes to petty little vicious types, we are an Equal Opportunity Asshole Employer.
You get called for dishonest tactics. What’s your response? To whine about how fucking unfair it is, and to try to impugn the character of those calling you dishonest.
I said that you openly support racism, racists, and a racist party. What was your response? You didn’t deny the racism, you whined, and continue to whine, about how unfair it was to cast a racist slur upon you personally.
Like I said in the “uncle tom” thread:
You proved in the “I told you so” thread that you are willing to lie about the only thing that gave you credibility on this board. US Law.
You haven’t refuted my “liar” charge, your response was to run away from that thread, followed by more whining in other threads. That was Scylla’s response to my charges of lying and bigotry as well. Funny that.
Guess the Pubbies ain’t gonna call you “token” no more. Just satisfy one last curiosity: how did the Kool Aid taste? And do they let you wear a pointy white hat now?
Go back and read the Swift Boat threads and reconsider that position. FYI, don’t be too sure that “the list” of those who contribute mostly heat, not light, doesn’t include your own reflexively-loyalist self.
