That’s a pretty disgusting statement. That you call Bricker a racist, say the Republican party is racist, and then make a race-based personal attack on Bricker all in the same post shows just how irrational and bile-filled you are.
Which is why I started this thread. I figured if one of the partisan harpies on the board had pitted you, the message would be lost in an avalanche of personal insults. I like to think that I have a bit more credibility with you, so I thought I’d point it out before it became a problem.
I can easily understand, and I’ve probably done it also, to get a bit heated in the midst of a emotional thread. But, what I’ve seen, you’ve taken that animosity beyond a single thread and let it permeate much of your otherwise stellar posts.
The tenor of this board is not going to be raised by lowering yourself to their level. I too am concerned about, as Sua pointed out, the lack of Greatness in many of the “debates”. But if we want this board to stay the great, intelligent, interesting place it is, we have to raise the tenor. It’s not going to be raised by anyone else.
I am saddened that posters who I think add a lot to the board are visiting and posting less and less frequently. Heck, in this thread alone, we’ve heard from Jodi, Sua. Minty, and Scylla, all longtime posters, who have, or are on the brink of, giving up the ghost on this place. I dont’ want to see that happen.
You are entirely welcome.
I believe I tried when you, I, and others were discussing the constitutionality of gay marriage when certain posters were using unsavory tactics, and I will attempt to continue to do so.
Some posters are idiots. Letting them take over this board, or lowering yourself to their level, is not what I want to see.
I think this thread is an excellent microcosm of the board. You have intelligent people offering opinions on relevant topics. You also have shrieking partisans (thanks Demo for adding another desitination on the map) and posters who would rather focus on “the list” because it offers more juicy namecalling. As this board grows, the signal to noise ratio seems to increase. But that doesn’t mean we should add more to the noise.
I know from past experience that it will do not good at all to point out that sarin gas, nuclear centrifuge parts and plans, and other evidence of WMD have been found in Iraq, so I won’t bother with cites. I will point out that there is a Doper who claimed that Saddam Hussein “bent over backwards” to cooperate with the inspection regime. That same Doper claimed vehemently that Saddam was never found to be in “material breach” of the inspection regime. He even emphasized the word never, IIRC.
Pretending? You didn’t read the election prediction threads, then?
A whole slew of “liberals” on the SDMB were pretty convinced that Bush was going to lose. Hentor the Barbarian was one. BobLibDem said it was going to be a walk for Kerry. Left Hand of Dorkness posted that he thought Bush was “toast”. (He changed his prediction later. So, for that matter, did I. The only one who predicted a Bush win and stuck to his guns consistently was, you guessed it, Bricker. And guess who was right?)
You’ve said this a couple of times, in a couple of threads, and I don’t understand it.
I didn’t read the Chalabi threads you mentioned, but you keep citing them as a symptom of what is wrong with conservatives. You seem to be alleging that you and the other liberals were unquestionably, incontrovertibly right in the thread. Let’s assume that you were. What you seem to be complaining about is that conservatives won’t come into the thread and disagree with you so you can show them how right you are.
Why should we?
If you are right, why do you complain when we don’t react with a jerking knee? So you’re right - congratulations. Why do you expect us to argue against you if you are?
As far as I can tell, you are complaining that we are not mindless knee-jerk drones. Sorry to disappoint you, but if you expect posters like Bricker and Sam Stone (and Jodi and Dewey and the rest of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy) to react with the kind of mindless reactionism you want, well, get used to disappointment.
But that is my basic question. If you were right, why does it surprise you that the conservatives don’t automatically disagree?
It would be too bad if you are only looking for a whipping boy among the conservatives. You are missing out on a lot of valuable input from Bricker and the others mentioned.
And yes, I am especially including Jodi in that list.
[pitiful, whining voice]Please don’t leave us![/pitiful, whining voice]
Regards,
Shodan
My diminished presence is due entirely to real life. I’m still here on a regular basis, with no intention of leaving. This place rocks, despite the it all.
Nobody does. What some of us do want to happen is to see certain posters who have been especially adamant in holding contrafactual views recognize that and learn and grow from the experience. I am saddened that this basic dishonesty seems to be so much a part of the character of so many posters that they’d rather no longer subject themselves to exposure of it than admit for a moment that they might be wrong. Note that political leanings aren’t a part of that, either - that isn’t a complaint about right- OR left-wingers; the relevant axis in the Fight Against Ignorance is reality vs. fantasy. Some people would rather engage in fantasies, and that’s their right, but they may not have a place on *any * board devoted to the realm of fact.
So I got a proposal completely opposite to Bricker’s request, and I thought I’d run it by y’all.
Instead of having folks loudly decry that assholes on their own side, how about those of us insterested in substantive debates agree to ignore the assholes on both sides? Don’t respond to the attacks against your side; don’t condemn the attacks coming from your side.
I mean, responding to the assholes attacking you: what good does it do? They’re assholes, and they’re not interested in a real conversation. Maybe if you don’t respond, they’ll think they won. So what? Let 'em think it.
And responding to the assholes from your own side doesn’t seem to do much good anyway. Desmostylus, if I tell you to shut the fuck up with your hideous and hateful rhetoric, are you gonna pay any attention to me?
But if we ignore them, then we can get on with a good discussion, and with any luck they’ll go away because nobody’s rising to the fight.
Daniel
I think that’s a fine plan, Daniel.
One of the problems with the “if you were an honest whatever you are, you’d show up in threads and denounce the dishonest members of your coterie” is that I don’t have the time nor the interest to read every thread on the board specifically so that I can intellectually honestly backhand people who are on my side but being assholes. Ignoring them is defacto if I’m not reading the thread, and therefore much easier to do.
It’d help me to see specific examples of what Bricker is calling Groupthink - liberal posters piling on regardless of their honest opinions about a topic.
Or what somebody else said - that the left in GD refused to acknowledge that another point of view exists.
I’m just not seeing it.
(although I fully commit to calling out BS on both sides, and being more vigilant about it - sounds like a good idea, regardless).
Right back atcha, Leftie. It’s not my fault Bricker’s been an asshole lately. If “fed up” excuses any kind of behavior, then I’m just “fed up” with Bricker acting like this. At least I’m only directing my ire at the person responsible for it.
And note that I’ve done my share of calling bullshit on lefties. When rjung blamed the entire decline of civility in politics on Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity, I called him on it. And when Starving Artist blamed it on hippies and the entire left, I called him on it too. I was the only one in both cases. And you can imagine how effective it is to try to argue using reason or even just plain common courtesy with someone like rjung or Starving Artist.
I don’t get it. I could believe that there’s a few more wackjob liberals here, but Diogenese and Aldebaran, at least, are pitted constantly. They are anything but “mainstream” around here. And Diogenes, at least, (unlike Reeder and Lissener), is often capable of something approaching reason.
I’m just a little tired of hearing from the conservatives here (and there’s a number of you, to be sure) that you can’t help but turn into raging assholes because the whole board is so liberal. Most threads don’t welcome politics at all, you know. And I’ve yet to find a political thread that didn’t have both sides’ points put forth thoroughly. It’s not as though there’s just a cabal of two or three of you that is constantly victimized by the Evil Liberal Majority[sup]TM[/sup].
Clearly Bricker has just become a raging asshole of late. If he wants to blame it on us liberals, he can, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s the one being a raging asshole and the rest of us are doing our best to be nice.
If you think the SDMB is in decline, feel free to leave. If you think Aldebaran has become mainstream (do you mean that everyone on the boards acts like him? Does that even make sense to you?) then you can leave. If you just want to whine constantly about how the boards don’t respect you enough as a conservative, well, you should have plenty of company doing it. If you want to be a conservative voice of reason and polite discussion, then I’m sure Sam Stone could use the help.
If Bricker even tried doing that, I’d feel a lot more charitable. But the constant declarations that every liberal on the boards is disgustingly hypocritical because we don’t agree with him are both obnoxious and rather pathetic as a strategy of argument. I assume he must do better than that in his law career.
And there are a few obnoxious ultra-leftists. Reeder, rjung, the now-departed (and with few tears from me) Lissener, sometimes Diogenes, it’s not as though they’re the entirety of the board. I don’t think it’s exactly far or reasonable to blame perhaps five or six posters altogether. If you can’t engage in productive, reasonable debate, it’s not rjung’s fault. It’s yours. Besides, whatever happened to personal responsibility? If you want to talk politics, it’s your job to be reasonable. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility not to provoke you.
Nice insult directed at Sam Stone. Just so you know, you’re one of liberals here that I’m thoroughly ashamed of.
Christ, will you guys please drop that pathetic argument? Do you expect that to sway anyone? Do you really think only Conservatives are smart enough to figure their views out for themselves? That’s one of the big problems with political debate on these boards - being on the unpopular side gives you that marvelous argument: “You’re all just engaged in groupthink!” If you can’t come up with anything better than that, then leave. Because that’s not debate. That’s throwing shit at your opponents.
There’s so many leftists everywhere, EVERYWHERE, and they’re all exactly the same! Jesus, is this the best the conservatives can do?
I don’t want to defend these folks, but there’s plenty of people who reduce every disagreement to “us poor, attacked Bush supporters” and “the great hoard of liberal groupthinkers”.
No, you’ve hijacked this thread to make some sort of non-point. You’re not doing yourself or your cause any favors if you continue.
I think we can all agree that Demostylus is not the sort of poster we need more of.
Go away, dear. Come back when you’re willing to not embarrass those of us on your own side.
I don’t think this will work.
Even if you think posters X, Y, and Z are braindead partisan assholes, you don’t know that the person you’re debating agrees with you–even if you suspect so, it’s still awfully intimidating to be going up against several people at once, especially because even the assholes occaisonally make good points. Mutually ignoring them would only work if there was some kind of agreed upon asshole list, which would in itself create a new load of problems.
I think the ideal solution would be for the moderators (perhaps with additional help) to hold GD to higher standards (perhaps suspending offenders from GD instead of banning them from the Dope), but given that the time of moderators is finite and voluntarily donated I don’t see this happening. 
Aww, god dammit. That first post above with all the quoting and stuff - I meant to preview it - that was not meant to be posted. I’m sorry I sound like such an asshole there. Please ignore it.
But the second one that applies to Demostylus - I meant that with every fiber of my being.
And your vitriol means, well, what? Anything more than Shodan’s “regards”? No. As **Left Hand ** so eloquently told you already, fuck off. If you can support any of the contentions you’ve made against *anyone * in that pissy little vent job, go right ahead. If not, then consider yourself on The List.
Not a bad idea, and I am already doing this with a number of Dopers.
The drawback is, it enables something that Bricker has, in my view justifiably, objected to in the past. Which is, if all of us generally sensible Dopers are ignoring the assholes, and it is a pile-on of six or eight assholes against one reasoned and sensible poster like Bricker, this means the assholes can continue the pile-on and drive the reasoned poster away. The left-wing assholes outnumber the right-wing assholes by four or five to one. If all the reasonable ones are ignoring the crap from recta like Demostyles and his ilk, you leave the thread open to the kind of tag-team sniping that ruins many otherwise worthwhile threads.
And I am as guilty of this as anyone else. While I am learning everything that I have from a decent poster like Bricker (or wring, or the other rational lefties as well - I don’t want to confine this to only reasonable right-wingers like Mr. Moto and the rest), the one doing the reasonable and learned educating is being abandoned to the continual attacks and sniping and general assholery. I am getting all the benefit, the reasonable poster gets all the nasties. I frankly have very little to add to the legal discussions Bricker adds so much to, as IANAL, and it is a major effort to filter out the ad hominems and personal attacks on Sam Stone in the Swift Boat thread and try to learn anything there either. All I generally have to add is attaboys, and often I run out of patience with a thread before I can post even that.
I was hoping the tone of GD at least would improve after the election. Hoping against hope, it would seem.
Regards,
Shodan
This thread makes me chuckle. I think you guys have all been spoiled rotten by the high standards of discourse maintained here. Spend a couple of hours wading through the digital muckhouses that comprise 95% of Usenet and then take a fresh look at GD. I guarantee it’ll look a much more inviting place 
So nice of you to drop in here and set us all straight. You certainly have my vote for Emperor of The Boards.
However, I’m afraid I must quibble with a couple of your assertions. If you can show where I ever blamed the decline of civility in politics on hippies, I would certainly like to see it.
Or, perhaps, was I speaking in response to an OP bemoaning the lack of politeness in society in general and tracing its beginnings to the dawning of the hippie era and liberal activism, which, in its zeal to cast off what they perceived as conformist ways, cast aside politeness as well, viewing it as another affectation of the uptight conservative class? There is no question that society as a whole is much less mannered and polite than it was in prior to that time. This has not been the result of conservative influence.
And secondly, with regard to the ineffectiveness of using reason or courtesy with me, I call pretty strong bullshit on that…unless of course you intend “ineffectiveness” to mean your failure to convince me of your point of view. It is very much my nature to give what I get. If you are reasonable and polite with me, I will be reasonable and polite with you. If you are insulting and aggressive with me, I will be the same with you. I’m not one to keep turning the other cheek while verbal bullies insult me and misstate things I’ve said. However, I believe that EddieTeddyFreddy and Miller, and perhaps Zoe and yosemite, to name a few, will readily attest to the fact that I can not only be reasoned with, but on ocassion even brought to admit that I’m in error in my thinking on some subject or other, and that I usually only resort to being ugly when someone is ugly to me first.
This is generally my attitude. I am not my brother’s keeper. I don’t give a shit if someone who happens to share some political views, although often for very different reasons, acts like an asshole. I am responsible for myself and my own behavior. I will call someone on the carpet or ignore them at my own whim and for my own reasons. I feel absolutely no sense of responsibility for the offensive drivel coming out of Diogenes’s mouth even though we have some similar views of Bush. I am not responsible for Bricker’s offensive drivel even though we have some similar views of abortion issues. I’m not here to play burly protector or stern schoolmarm to anyone.
Enjoy,
Steven
I think this is spot-on. Hamlet’s signal-to-noise-ratio way of looking at it essestially concedes that the cause is lost and that we should just hang on until the whole thing fades out. That seems awfully defeatist to me.
I don’t think there’s any doubt the way things trend left to themselves; the question is what we can do about it.
Rather nice of ol’ Desmo to so neatly summarize his posting history for us.
YAY! I made the list!
Will there be a party?
And Mr. Svinlesha, you just put your finger on something else that I find particularly infuriating: The one-sided decision that something has been ‘debunked’, and then dismissing all further attempts to debate said issue as an example of idiocy, partisan behaviour, or bull-headedness. The Swift Boat thing is a perfect example. There was a legitimate debate there. YOU decided that it was thoroughly debunked, and the amen chorus of other liberals agreed, and so to you it was a closed issue, and anyone who continued to make points you considered ‘debunked’ was nothing more to you than the subject of derision and scorn. But guess what? You don’t get to unilaterally decide when an issue is closed. If you don’t want to debate it anymore, fine. Just say, “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” and change the subject. But continuing the debate just so you can sneer at the person who hasn’t reached the same conclusion as you is just a waste of bandwidth and lowers the tone of this board.
As for December, I think this place ruined him. I have never, ever seen someone put up with as much abuse as he consistently got on this board. Go back and read his threads from a few years ago. He’s much more reasonable, funny, and he was an asset to this place. But he declined as the attacks against him grew. I think ‘fed up’ is the right adjective. He got into a mode that Bricker may be temporarily in, and just started baiting the opposition. In the end, I suppose he deserved to get banned, but only because he got pushed into a corner by people who deserved to get banned long before he did, and yet are still with us. That’s the real tragedy of what happened to him.
WARNING! BROAD BRUSH ALERT! IF THE FOLLOWING DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU, I DON"T WANT TO HEAR IT.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the difference between many conservatives and liberals, not just on this board, but in general. And I think I’ve discovered one difference: Conservatives understand the liberal viewpoint. We really do. We’re bombarded by it daily. Our professors tried to stuff it down our throats. The media is full of it. Hollywood beats the drum steadily. The popular culture champions it. I know exactly what a typical liberal believes, and why.
But I don’t think you liberals understand conservatives. Unless you go out of your way to read conservative literature with an open mind, we’re basically another species. So we get caricatured. We’re homophobes, religous nuts, backwards thinking, NASCAR loving, NRA supporting pickup truck drivers. We’re your mental inferiors, or if not we are simply ignorant. You can’t comprehend the conservative mindset, so you can’t accept that we have come to believe the things we do for reasons every bit as valid as yours.