The Yellow Face! It burns, it burrnnnnnssss ussss!
It depends on how he phrases it. If he says that he wants to keep weapons out of the hands of “terrorists”, and that he is counting on the noble “citizen’s militias” to “help protect protect our lives and freedoms,” he might pull it off. Most people are more concerned about their own freedom that that of others.
It helps if you realize, as I did long ago, that Der Trihs is living the World as Comic Book. No shades of grey, only the unassailable hero and the legions of shrieking, hand-wringing, black-hearted grotesques that comprise his foes. The superhero, arbiter of all that is good, knows that his monstrous enemies cannot be reasoned with; their total annihilation is the only recourse.
But, tragic irony: the hero is stripped of all his powers and misunderstood by the innocents he is charged to protect! Impuissant and sedentary before his keyboard, he can only snarl and flail his fists wildly, never making contact. “There must be Kryptonite about,” he booms—but search after frantic search turns up nothing but candy wrappers, and a few dog-eared issues of bleach-dotted hentai, lurking beneath his unmade bed.
But he’s not a troll - he really means it.
Plus he’s useful. He says what some are thinking but who are too housebroken to say themselves. Some people (on both sides) really do found their political and religious thinking on hate. He smokes them out.
I wish he would quit posting his recovered memories in GD, though.
Regards,
Shodan
So, Der Trihs and Dubya have a sort of Batman/Joker warped-mirror-image thing going on?
That is beautiful! 
I applaud you!
Having participated in more than a few pro-gay and pro-atheist threads on some pretty extreme gun boards, I gotta say that it’s apparent some people really are as clueless about gun owners as they are about guns around here.
Doesn’t surprise me from Der, it’s a sad world he lives in.
ETA - I missed Vinyl Turnip’s response, the “no shades of gray” is well put.
Down at the range, we actually have the membership divided into four different groups. Each week we rotate so that one group shoots blacks, the next athiests, the next gays, and the following week we take abortion doctors.
I think we will have to double up on the blacks, though. They are getting a bit uppity.
Somehow I feel that’s a complete explanation for why he’s such a standup guy in City of Heroes compared to his persona in GD and the Pit.
Don’t be an obtuse moron.
By the time Der Trihs made the comment that got the OP so riled up (post #41), the thread was about the merits of, and the reasons for, gun ownership. Probably the last person to directly address the issue of the woman joining an opposing political organization was Zebra, in post #21.
So, for better or worse, it had become a gun discussion, in the Pit. Whether you agree with Der Trihs’s position or not, the fact is that his comment was pretty typical of the sort of insults that often emerge during gun discussions in the Pit.
I made no comment on whether i thought his attitude was right or wrong, good or bad. I was simply pointing out that starting a new Pit thread about an insult in an already-existing Pit thread as basically a stupid and pointless exercise.
No, save some black people for when we reinstitute slavery.
Leftover bullets? No problem - shoot the atheists twice.
Regards,
Shodan
Diogenes has offered that excuse for him before as well. I reject it.
Let’s say someone from the Left Behind boards joined the SDMB. Let’s also pretend they popped into any thread that was about liberals, gays, or GWB-bashing and telling everyone they’re going to Hell. Keep in mind, this person really believes it.
Does anyone honestly believe this person wouldn’t be banned for trolling?
Sure they would, but that is “being a jerk” in a way that saying that Christians and Republicans and Americans and the other groups Der Trihs hates* are evil hatemongering whatever is not.
But hatred of those groups is OK (on the SDMB).
As an aside, is the Left Behind messageboard still active? I used to be a member.
Regards,
Shodan
*I know there are a lot of such groups. Maybe he should change his screen name to Legion.
My personal observations, sorry; I did qualify that with a “seems”.
Of course that person would be banned as a troll. But that doesn’t make the person a troll.
What’s wrong is not that Der Trihs hasn’t been banned as a troll, but that practically everybody else with unpopular opinions are banned as trolls.
I’m not banned as a troll.
I said “practically”.
Indeed. His original statement actually had some merit and in light of works like Hitler’s Wiling Executioners, it’s actually quite plausible that a fascist government will recruit citizens on the basis of:
[ul][li]Group A, who you’re already inclined to dislike though have grudgingly tolerated, is to blame for all that’s wrong in the world[/li][li]If you start killing members of Group A, not only will you not be punished for it, you’ll actually get an approving governmental pat on the head.[/ul][/li]
Historically the role of Group A has been played by any number of ethnic or political categories. It is a perfectly valid concern that the “well regulated militia” could, in a moment of crisis, turn against other citizens.
That said, Der Trihs should have stopped there. His posts to this thread undermine his own argument, which is a shame because it’s an interesting argument. My guess is that if the U.S. government went fascist and was put down by a well-armed citizenry, it is extraordinarily unlikely that civil rights would be fully restored. There’d be several years of settling-of-accounts first.
I never stated that they would resort to violence for the defense of these groups. I said my friends wouldn’t go out hunting people that had “objectionable” beliefs or lifestyles as posited by DT in the source of this thread.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that DT collects pit threads as a way to validate his existence.
And while the right wing observation has some validity, I have noticed that my circle of gun owning friends is increasing in the number of lefties. I’m pretty sure that most of them aren’t spies for the lunatic left, but I’ll wait until after the inquisition to state that as a fact.
How so?