The good faith is appreciated. What you say concerning Veb is true. It is precisely for this reason that I seek action. Veb has years and years of high quality, reasonable and considerate posting, until suddenly she’s gone batshit. Coulter doesn’t call people “despicable cunts” or openly say that she hates them.
Veb does.
It’s like Cujo. Cujo was a good dog until he got rabies. Then he had to be put down for his own good and the good of everybody around him.
Coulter’s just bad.
Veb was good that went bad. Really bad.
Take her out back behind the metaphorical shed and do what needs to be done.
Scylla, you obviously have the bitch/rabid dog metaphor high on your scale, along with the over the top “take em down” attitude. I gotta say, that’s pretty nasty, too, if you’re trying to fight what you see as nastiness. TVeb does not have rabies, a disease that makes the brain act irrationally. She is a smart person, who, as you say, has contributed so much to this board. With this latest panoply of crazy-making politics, she is pushed over the edge angry, and is speaking up. I know she is, in her job, one who has seen the course of shoddy politics affecting her with intricate understanding. Enough is enough. She is speaking up. I don’t understand your meanness of extreme woodshed vengeance.
So many people I know are on that precipice, too, fed up to the boiling point. None of the people I know have been polled. I see a lot of what TVeb says as true, but have been in a holding pattern, trying to find what is true, good information. I try to hold true to my Buddhist belief in not getting too angry. But, these latest tactics are taxing me . And, honestly, I don’t know that holding it in and NOT going into attack mode is serving what I believe in when it’s not only push-n-shove, but outright lies.
For the OP, that Obama ad was disgusting; it really hinges on the photo of Obama caught in a sneering facial expression. That hooks in to a “terror to children”, reprehensible.
What do you do when you are a decent minded person faced with Cujo Pitbull analogies?
That’s a superior question, and thoughtfully asked.
I do not believe that either I or Bricker or our beliefs are to blame for Veb’s distress. It appears though that she has chosen Bricker myself (though I interposed myself) and Repbulicans/conservatives in general as the target for her ire and blame.
She really has been quite over the top and I don’t believe I exagerate at all when I qualify her words as hate speech. “Despicable cunts,” “contemptible human beings” “I hate you,” and such.
I think she represents a growing trend on this board and to a lesser extent a faction of liberal politics in general. I do not like this trend of angry hatred at all. So, I’m seeking to combat it. I’m trying to turn a negative into a positive. One of the finer people who I’ve come to admire and have genuinely learned from is now acting as one of the worst on this board. That’s bad. I’ll try to use it positively. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed.
She, and those who are acting like her are not going to listen to me. They are not going to respond to reason or suggestions of respectful discourse and debate from me. In fact, it seems like they are promoting open hostilities.
I think she and those acting like her have been getting a pass from more rational left leaning posters, who just don’t want to deal with it.
Sometimes though, if there is an elephant in the room and everybody’s ignoring it, the best thing you can do is introduce the elephant. Than it gets dealt with.
Your question was how does she react?
Here’s my guess. I say these things. I make these analogies. I introduce the elephant. Some people object to my analogies, or defend her. But, at the same time they don’t contradict. They defend her, not her behavior. Maybe they even concede that her behavior is inappropriate.
Now, if she reads that she’s hearing this and getting feedback not from me, but from people who she respects.
Likely, this shocks her into a reassessment of her own behavior, and positive results occur.
If it continues on, and I continue to highlight it, or ridicule it, other people may recognize it, and when they see it they may be more inclined to offer a suggestion that it’s not cool. They will become less tolerant, and address it, and such behavior will shrink as it no longer gets approval from those the person doing it does respect, but instead causes a loss of stature.
Well, we’ve kind of had our hands full dealing with the exact same sort of vile, hateful rhetoric coming from the right for the last ten years or so. I think you can appreciate that, given the choice between dealing with hateful, vile rhetoric that’s aimed at us, and hateful, vile rhetoric that’s aimed at you, the stuff that’s aimed at us gets a higher priority.
Especially since many of us /over the years have indeed specifically slamed over the top leftist posters while we continued to be called idiots, tree hugging traitors, Osama loving, Saddam apologistas by posters
here that still post bullshit w/impungity.
you want the head of an independant here? Let’s see you call out your consevative posters here.
Only metaphorically. It’s not about politics. It’s about whether hate speech is acceptable or not. The correction needs to come from a source she will respect.
As I’ve said, you’ve been a true friend. I don’t ask for your support here, you’ve already provided it without my asking when I truly needed it. So, there’s no need to say “you want this, then do this.” If somebody’s behaving unacceptably towards you, show me who. I’ll back you. No strings. I already owe you that.
Scylla, I quite sincerely don’t give a shit how you or anyone else votes, and that includes Bricker. People can vote for the current Republican candidates with my blessing. Just voting so doesn’t earn my contempt though it sure doesn’t rate much respect either.
A lot of earnest people have believed the barrage of lies and slanders Rove/Shrub pumped out over the past 8 years. Some are probably naive, some probably don’t think much about the lies because betrayal hurts and others enthusiastically accept the slanders because it suits their personal prejudices or agendas. Others are just plain party animals: they vote Republican because they’ve always voted that way and always will. Right or wrong, it’s their party, damnit..
Democrats are just as prone to this. If you ever bothered reading a word I actually wrote, my work is hell currently in no small part to the insanely corrupt, wasteful state Democratic machine in Illinois. Neither ‘side’ is immune to blind, undeserved loyalties that can be damaging as hell. I can get peeved and impatient over that but not actively contemptuous. Most often it just depresses me.
My unreserved contempt leveled at Bricker is for his ugly, unrepentant hypocrisy. Bricker is a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them. He was an active, vocal supporter of Shrub/Rove all the way through that second election and past. There are so many examples of this administration’s deliberate slanders for political leverage, both of their political opponents as well as potential rivals. Politics, especially on the national level, isn’t for the weak. But under Shrub/Rove, by Bricker’s admission, assassination politics became the GOP’s main ploy, its preferred weapon. Anyone who didn’t fall into Rove/Shrub’s very narrow parameters were marginalized at best and often outright demonized. Unpatriotic, soft on terrorists, atheist, gay, liberal. Politics were rarely pretty but Rove/Shrub made them actively vicious.
I won’t even bother going into–again–how much damage that has done to the country and the political process–and ultimately even the GOP itself.
Bricker exposed himself ruthlessly when he blathered about how he respected Obama for keeping his word and running a clean campaign. My main reaction was mental whiplash. Now, after avidly supporting 8 ugly years of gladiatorial politics, Bricker suddenly put huge weight and signifcance to…ethics. In politics. By a Democrat. Ohhhhkkaaayyy. People can change. Who hasn’t made mistakes, done things regretted later? Stuff happens, right?
Wrong. Or not in this case, entirely ignored.
Bricker moved squarely in despicable cunt territory when he had the unmitigated, brass-faced gall to reverse himself again, claiming he no longer believed politics could be clean ever again, all because some Obama supporters were nasty. Which was ludicrous enough. Then came Bricker’s ultimate insult, his slap to the face: nobody else really understood the real value, the rather revolutionary decency of a clean, issues-focused campaign.
If you can’t see the overweening arrogance in that, Bricker’s unconscious, contemptuous dismissal of everyone who cared badly about at least rudimentary decency in politics while that slander-politics-playbook was codified, then there’s no mutual ground for discussion. But there hasn’t been for a hell of long time anyway.
Textualist, I presume, is a synonym for “original intent”, a doctrine which is a load of bullshit. The founding fathers did not have a single original intent on virtually anything. The post civil war amendments were interpreted to extend virtually all federal rights to all citizens of every state in all matters. (At this late date there are a few niggling exceptions). Does original intent exclude the views of the anti-Federalists? Or does it include them. The original intent of the first amendment, for example grants very broad freedoms under their original intent and very plain language and those rights were extended to all people in all states by the 14th amendment. But the Supreme Spineless have never (with the exception of Hugo Black who only dissented) allowed people to say whatever they wanted about the government. The ninth amendment is completely ignored by the Spineless nine and the original intenters because it grants people all rights not specified. And the original intent crowd hates people’s rights: witness Guantanamo Bay, free speech zones and unironic Orwell worship.
So yes, textualist means my way or the highway.
Never mind 232 years of historical facts, the original congressional charter (whose name I forget) the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the amendments, the debate framing all of those things tens of thousands of binding legal precedents, laws and customs and a major civil war over the lack of a right to secede from the union or slave ownership, if the Fucking Federalist Society and Antonin Fucking Scalia have a political agenda they want to call “original intent” they can make up history and shove it down our throats regardless of the value of precedent based on their garbage propaganda.
The law is not just politics, it is the principles specified in the Declaration carried out by juries acting in good faith. Worship of propaganda by seditious societies and the destruction of the jury system takes away liberty from the people themselves.
As for McCain, I once thought and bought the Straight Talk crap. He’s now accusing Obama of instructing first graders how to have sex? McCain doesn’t have honor anymore. He’s hungry for power.
It’s most likely he’s just an eloquent and well trained troll, but there is also the possibility that for a few short political moment that he actually and truly believed that politics could be decent, and then realized he had exposed himself and only cloaked himself in trollery so he wouldn’t have to face the world and himself as having even for a moment bought into that hippie “give peace a chance” stuff. He’d rather look like a troll then as someone who considered decency in politics seriously, if even for a minute.
Wealthy people care about taxes because if you have enough surplus coin, you can invest it and make much more coin without lifting a finger. Let’s say a person making over $250K a year somehow manages to scrimp and save and get by on just $125K a year, and saves/invests the rest. Over eight years, that would amount to $1 million. $1 million invested in some of the banks around here would return 5 percent, which means over the course of a year, you’d make $50,000 – more if the interest is compounded quarterly – without lifting a finger.
However, taxes cut into those potential profits. If you’re taxed at 10 percent on that million, you LOSE $50K if it’s invested at 5 percent. That’s why the wealthy tend to constantly seek high-returning investments with as little risk as possible. (Generally there is a tradeoff between risk and returns – the higher your returns, the greater the chance you might lose the money you invest).
The lower taxes are, the easier it is for the wealthy to make money simply by having money. And that, my friends, is what capitalism is all about.
Actually, this is completely wrong. If you invest an after-tax million at 5% interest, you pay $5K in taxes (assuming your 10% tax rate). You only pay taxes on the gain, not repeatedly on the principal.
I’m holding them back, and giving you one last chance to make amends.
Okay. Not feeling the urge to kill. That’s a good sign.
Ok.
Ok again. You know, that’s a pretty clear explanation. I would seriously ask that you answer the following question:
Do you think the “despicable cunt” part strengthens your argument or weakens it? How does it help?
I’ll tell you how I feel. Let’s say I (hypothetically) objected to Obama because I thought he lacked the experience, had poorly articulated policies that needed fleshing out before they could be evaluated, and his ideas concerning foreign policy were naive.
You and I have something to talk about, if you wish to engage me, don’t we?
On the other hand, suppose I say “That fucking nigger is totally clueless.” We don’t really have anything to talk about, do we?
I don’t think that that there are any circumstances under which that becomes acceptable. I don’t think it’s acceptable if I direct it at Idi Amin. It would say more about me, wouldn’t it?
I don’t think it’s the “N” word that makes it that way, makes it hate speech. I think it’s the attitude behind it.
I don’t think what you’ve said could be made worse if you’d called Bricker a “spick.”
You raise several debatable points, some of which I think are false, some of which I agree with to a degree and others which are subject to multiple interpretations.
I think Bricker is basically a good person. I think both of you generally demonstrate a higher degree of rationality and even temper than I do. Bricker did some of what he did that you strongly object to out of anger at the actions of other people. He escalates it a step further. Doesn’t make it right whether or not he has some justifictation. You are responding to Bricker’s actions in kind and escalating it further still. Whether or not you have some justification, doesn’t make it right.
Bricker apologized, and I don’t think he did it for anybody but himself. Which, is as it should be.
If your ideas are superior to Bricker’s the fact is you don’t have to resort to this shit. Gaudere and Davidb have proved that to me. You have proved that to me. Remember my Amish rant?
Now at this point in my moralistic lecture, my total hypocrisy is starting to make me sick. But, I knew I was wrong when I was doing it. Therefore, I know that you know your are wrong because you are better than me in this respect. If I knew it, you have to know it.
That’s why I left for 6 months. I decided I would only come back if I could make my interractions more positive. With several… notable… failures, I’ve more or less succeeded.
I’ll tell you one thing I know for certain. The evil things that I do poison me. They stick with me, and lessen me. I become more callous. I feel less. It gets easier to do evil things the more I do them. After a while, you stop noticing. You dehumanize yourself by abandoning empathy.
Once you do that, it’s easy to use hate speech. After all, they deserve it. They have it coming. That’s the path that allows some to lynch, or use the ovens, or torture, or install a glass ceiling. They deserve it. They have it coming.
We =all have it coming.
End of hypocritical moralistic lectures. End of drama. End of issue. I’m gonna move on now.