I disagree with your main point, but I agree with you here. You explained it much better than I could have hoped to.
I haven’t bothered reading the thread about “being pro-life but not pro-war and not pro-death penalty”.
In Spain, “pro-life” means: anti-abortion-as-an-anti-baby, pacifist, anti-death-penalty even for terrorists. You’re pro-life, you’re pro-all-human-life.
It’s people like Der Trihs who got it all mixed up. And he insults my aunt, who chose to continue her third pregnancy after her breast cancer was detected, against advice from her Opus Dei doctor (in case anybody is still in the moon, Opus makes the Pope sound like a commie; abortion was illegal in Spain at the time). Both the mother and son are fine, more than 25 years later, but it was quite an epic.
You don’t understand. I am not offended because there is a specific POV I hold that he doesn’t agree with. I am offended because he puts all Americans in the same category, regardless of what their personal views are. You could agree with him politically on everything, and he would still put you in the EVIL category just because you are an American. That is simple prejudice.
There is a long debate going on in GD about whether or not Islam is a violent religion. People are outraged at the idea that some would hold the actions of some Muslims against all Muslims. But Der Trihs holds the actions of some Americans against all Americans. What is the difference?
I have a feeling that most pro-choicers on the board would object to your connecting their basic pro-choice POV with this rather disgusting statement that Der Trihs made. It would be similar to me, a pro-life person, saying that pro-choicers want to chain every pregant women to a bed and suck the baby out of her so no babies would ever be born, and laugh at the ones who wanted to keep their babies. The problem with the statement is that it is clearly not so. The only possible reason to make a statement like that is to be inflammatory. Der Trihs is not stupid. He knows these things are not reasonable, and he says them only to be inflammatory. There should be no surprise when people become inflamed.
Which brings me back to the question of whether DT is such a guy as plays beggar-my-neighbour because bridge is over his head. :dubious:
Nicely put.
I don’t think the notion that the unpleasant person who is the subject of this OP gets Pitted because his opinions are unpopular. Ravening hatred of Republicans, of conservative ideas, of religious belief, and of anyone who questions the great Goddess Abortion is neither unpopular nor rare on the SDMB.
I think the issue is as stated - he gives no support for his hatred other than to restate it, and even more because his focus is much more on hatred of private individuals, not merely their ideas.
Certainly foam-flecked hatred of Bush is essentially mainstream opinion hereabouts. But he is more an abstract figure, since he is a politician which none of the fanatics have ever met or even seen except thru a lens of disgust and detestation. When it comes to actual people, the kind one tends to interact with on a daily basis, Dopers tend to be somewhat more circumspect in their condemnations. Yes, some of the bigger fools condemn anyone and everyone who dissent from the latest talking point, but not everyone is that stupid.
Der Trihs is. He goes beyond “your ideas are stupid” to “you are stupid and evil and bad and you hate women and I want to kill anyone who thinks like you do because you hate everyone and you suck and you want to enslave women and rape little boys.”
Need it be said that Lemur866’s idea of projection is very likely on the mark? Someone so consumed with hatred, as is Der Trihs, is all the more likely to see hatred in everyone else. Nothing is more easy than to assume that your motives exist in your opponents.
Regards,
Shodan
If that was a troll reference, then it was an excellent one.
Of course it is. It is a vitriolic and hyperbolic statement that, couched in more “statesmanlike” language, would read something like, “The antiabortion movement won’t rest until it’s impossible for a woman to get an abortion anywhere.” At which point it becomes standard pro-choice boilerplate.
If you want to crucify people for vitriol and hyperbole, why not start with the OP to this thread, for example?
Why thank you! Of course I know we can just come out with the t-word these days, at least in this forum, but circumlocutions are just so much more aesthetically satisfying. 
But this is the forum for vitriol and hyperbole, O pungent one. G’wan. Pit me for Pitting. Don’t hold back, lemme havvit. :dubious:
Sorry, can’t muster the necessary vitriol at the moment. And anyway, I was making a more general point, which is that hyperbole is not unknown as a weapon in the arsenal of contention. Your OP happened to provide a fine example. Der Trihs is more hyperbolic than most, but so what? I’m able to take him as I find him.
Sure, and there’s a place for hyperbole and even screaming. This is the place. If I want to make shit up and spew a different shade of spew with my every post, then within limits (pretty generous ones) the Pit’s the place - and thanks to recent developments, I can be called a troll to my face if I merit it. GD is supposed to be a venue for higher standards, that’s all.
Most of my OP was just a quoting of Der Trihs, with a small amount of highly inadequate comment by me. Pitting is a gift, and I find it too hard labour to bother with 999 times out of a thousand - I think this is about the second Pit thread I’ve ever started. But Der Trihs goes so far beyond hyperbolic that a Lucasian Professor of Conic Section wouldn’t know what to make of him.
And the pantywaist wusses out of turning up and taking his lumps, too. :rolleyes:
Thanks. I thought after typing it out that it really was kind of incomprehensible, but I’m glad it wasn’t.
Do you not believe that there are certain acts which, regardless of your other actions, put you in the ‘evil’ bin? You probably think in general anybody who gleefully rapes babies is pretty much evil, right? I’d agree. Therefore, understand this: if Der Trihs is saying that choosing to remain an American is one of those actions that inherently taints the actor with evil, it’s the same as using any other litmus test. I’m certainly not asking you to agree with his assessment (I know I don’t), and the claim itself can certainly be debated, but I hope you’ll see that it can’t be shot down simply by virtue of painting broad strokes.
I don’t think it’s a matter of holding the actions of some against the many, I think it’s a matter of choicefully buying into something that is allegedly inherently evil. The claim could be made against Americans, or Muslims, or people who buy peanut butter. Again, the person can be throroughly, thoroughly wrong-- but it means that their judgement on that specific target is unjustified, not that that line of thinking is inherently wrong.
My point was that they’re different views. I said they were “connected” only for the general reason that they’re both at heart pro-choice in stance.
Well, the repetition is beginning to wear on him, I imagine.
Yes, but being a citizen of a particular country isn’t one of them.
No, it isn’t. Raping babies is an evil act. Being a citizen of the country you happened to be born in is not. Is it reasonable for me to hate all Iraqis because they didn’t leave Iraq when Saddam was in charge?
OK, but what I am saying is that we all have the right to judge Der Trihs based on these opinions. Personally,I choose to shun people I know who believe people to be inherently evil on based on nonexistant grounds. If a friend of mine came over and said that my neighbor on one side of me must be a thief and a gang member because he is black, and my neighbor on the other side of me is evil because he is gay, then I would have no respect for that person’s opinions and the friendship would be over. I choose to reject people who hold unsubstantiated prejudices. Therefore, I choose to reject Der Trihs. I have discussed him in this thread, but when he appears in a forum, I choose not to engage with him, because I don’t respect him or his way of thinking. He has the right to say what he wants to say, but I also have the right to judge him based on his opinions.
I get that. Still, I think that your average pro-lifer would not want to be “connected” in any way to a statement like that.
Yes, I imagine so.
I knew a man once who complained that everyone looked at him as though his face was dirty. It wore on him. Then one day he looked in a mirror and guess what? He’d been dirty all the time.
Okay. I can get on board with that. I was just making sure that the problem lay in disagreeing with the point itself, not in deeming the basic logical mechanism fallacious.
My main beef about Der Trihs is that he’s so predictable, so prolific, and so good at highjacking potentially interesting threads into flame-fests. If he could restrict himself to just posting a link to whichever of his standard rent-a-rants was apposite to the thread in question, he’d save himself a lot of typing, and everyone else a lot of scrolling. It’s not as if there’s anything startlingly original in any of his diatribes.
No, I think his logic in a certain sense is spot on…“All Americans are evil…you are an American…therefore, you are evil.” But if you start with a false premise, then the logic really doesn’t mean much, does it?
Right, but if it’s wrong, it’s made wrong by disproving the statement “All Americans are evil”, not because the structure of the argument is flawed. What I’m saying is, if it is true that being an American is an evil deed, than “being an American is evil --> anyone who has not rescinded their American-ness is evil --> YOU are evil” is a perfectly fair line of reasoning; however, “You are evil because I’m older than you and I know that all Americans are evil” can never be a fair line of reasoning-- it’s inherently fallacious.
Right. That’s what I just said. The problem with Der Trihs is that you could give a million examples & reasons why the first premise (“All Americans are evil”) is not a valid premise, and he won’t let go of it. In this way, he is not logical. In order to make reasonable arguments, you have to have reasonable premises. And I don’t mean “premises everyone in the discussion must agree with,” I mean “premises that a reasonable person would agree were reasonable.”
And surely he has the right to judge you based on your opinions as well? And to judge Americans based on their opinions? To judge religious people? To judge?
If you’re going to step into abortion debates or anything controversial, you’re going to be judged. Boo hoo.