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Can an issue ever be discussed here without resorting to “oh, yeah? Well your guy did ____!”?
Whenever anyone makes an argument against an act that a politician, spokesman, figurehead, whatever makes - why does it almost always have get several responses of: “Well, your guy on the (left/right) did this!”?
The blind loyalty and hatred displayed by so many members here towards their own and the main opposition party is disgusting to me. What seem to be bright people seem to have a blind sycophancy with their party and a blind hatred of the other.
Can we have a WMD thread without “well your guy got a blow job and lied under oath!”, or a “well your guy got a blow job and lied under oath!” thread without WMDs? Or how about a thread not directly affiliated with party politics staying that way?
You’d think that the way a sizable minority around here argue that there are only two philosophies on all of SDMB, and half the people are divided into either camp. Apparently, rather than attacking an argument on it’s merits, you can refer to a politician in someone’s favored party doings similar things, and that’s considered a perfectly valid attack. As if it’s acceptable to deflect an attack by attacking a politician that the poster may or may not have anything to do with, because there are only 2 philosophies here. Well, the “your guy” in “your guy did ____” may very well not be “my guy”, nor the guy of at least a sizable minority of posters here.
As a disinterested third party (in that I think both the major parties are out to screw us for their own benefit, and support neither as a whole), this whole thing can drive me nuts.
I wish we could have some threads that deal with politics or political issues without automatically having people wreck any reasonable debate by zealously touting the party line.
I also find it disgusting, but also very interesting from a psychological point of view. Apparantly, there is a very common mental process whereby after one chooses a polital party to be affiliated to, they must justify this choice with the demonization of the opposite party, and canonization of their chosen party.
Perhaps someone with more of a psyche background can even tell us what the name of this mental process is, when applied to general non-political situations.
You are begging the question by assuming that “the party line” is necessarily unreasonable.
The Democrats seem to assume that sexual harassment is a bad thing when Clarence Thomas was accused of it, but a non-issue when Bill Clinton was accused of it. The Republicans seem to assume that deficits are a bad thing if Democrats control Congress, but not if Republicans control Congress.
If either position is hypocritical, it is not unreasonable to point that out.
It is the consistent application of principles that makes a “party line”. If the Democrats are the party of women’s rights, they ought to be just as concerned about the rights of Paula Jones and Juanita Broaderrick as the rights of Anita Hill. If the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, they ought to be just as concerned about spending increases for the military as for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Calling on either side to be consistent is a valid argument. We need more “party lines”, not less.
I’m not from the U.S. either, and I’ve noticed this as well. My personal theory is it has to do with there being only two (viable) parties in the U.S., so politics has only two choices. It follows that to advance “your” side, denigration of anything to do with the “other” side will suffice. (I suppose this is true regardless. I’ll think about that s’more)
Perhaps it’s just me; I don’t have a problem liking none, part of, or a combination of the political parties available to me. (Which usually saves me from voting a full Rhino ballot. ;))
I agree with Shodan’s analysis above. I would add that part of the problem is that we are never debating in a vacuum.
Most Clinton partisans would probably agree that on a number of occasions he acted * at best * like a schmuck and a weasel and with questionable marital ethics but once the debate goes past that to whether or not he was the worlds worst president and/or moral reprobate relative comparisons have to enter.
A problem more specific to the SDMB is that most of the participants are the same again and again and again, so all the same buttons get pushed again and again and again. For example, there are times when a newbie will ask why there is an immediate pile-on when ** December** asks what looks to the newbie to be a reasonable question. To the pilers-on, that thread is in no small part a continuation of every previous December thread and therefore to save everyone’s time just cut to the chase.
Another example would be the alternating pit/GD threads concerning “AHA: WMD’s!”/“So where ARE the WMD’s?” where everyone carries still the baggage from the thread that just rolled off the bottom of the screen when the new one started.