you bring the brie, I’ll bring the fruit.
Yum!
Fuck all this political shit, it’s Saturday night! Let’s just get together as human beings and have a good time!
My salad has spinach, butter lettuce, cranberries, walnuts, chicken, feta cheese and big ol’ helping of raspberry vinagrette dressing.
There’s plenty for everyone!
But you have to bring your own wine! 
Another quiet voice chiming in to thank you, Sam Stone, for saying what I wish I’d said. We have much political diversity in our family. Long ago we established the ground rule that all political discusion must be carried on with civility. The moment voices are raise or it becomes personal, we stop the discussion. There’s so much incivility in the political and religious discussions on this message board, that I read but don’t choose to participate.
I had figured on fava beans and a nice chianti…
I will happily agree with A) and B). C) has not yet been sufficiently demonstrated to my satisfaction, such that I can give them the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
I’m surprised that you accept B) but not C). Are we talking about the average Joe Republican/Conservative messageboard poster? What do you think they do want?
It seems to me that they are more interested in their own self-interests, not what is best for the country as a whole. I don’t think that makes them necessarily evil, just…selfish.
And every once in a while, you can actually find them confirming Darwin’s Finch’s small point, as when **Renob **repeatedly (in the GD thread about taxes) insists on keeping his own personal taxes to an absolute minimum and angrily refusing to concede that he benefits, directly and indirectly, from living in a prosperous country with social programs concerned for the sick and the elderly and the poor. His idea (and I’m just using him as a convenient example of a much more widespread stance that I see around me every day) is to forget utterly the larger context in which he earns his money and to want his taxes to support only those programs that he can see directly serving his own goals, like a huge army, to prevent another country from conquering the US and confiscating his money, or federal highways, to build and maintains the roads he personally drives on. But everything else? What use is it–it doesn’t do him any good (that he can see, touch, feel, on a daily basis) so he wants to pay for none of it. That’s a pretty, narrow, selfish, limited viewpoint, IMO.
Anyway, I’d rather restrict that side-topic to its own thread, but am using it here as an example of a political belief that has its roots in character, not ideology.
Maybe you’ve missed out on the past eight years?
The present Administration has done as thorough a test of the Republican approach to governing as could possibly be imagined under a two-party system. you can either believe the results, or not.
Look, the Dope isn’t an echo chamber. If conservative ideas were actually better, if they’d been working the past eight years, there’d have been plenty of opportunities for you to have the best of the argument.
But the record is clear. Iraq, whatever the truth of the situation now (and “the surge worked” is true only in limited respects), has been a fucking disaster, and rather than nailing down the victory in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, we were prepping for the war in Iraq and then invading, so Afghanistan’s been a 7+ year war instead of a one-year war. We had no idea about Russian troop movements toward Georgia because our spy satellites were focused on Iraq. It’s been the Disaster That Keeps On Giving - like Sarah Palin, only with serious consequences.
The right-wing response to this? “But The Surge Worked.” Plus the usual denigration of diplomacy. What enlightenment waits there?
And then there’s the domestic disaster that caused people to realize that, regardless of the parade of happy talk from the Administration, things in Iraq must be fucked. I refer to Katrina.
This Administration fucked the preparation, the immediate response, and of course the longer-term response. The GOP response, and the response of conservatives generally, has been to defend whatever the Bush Administration was doing now, while admitting that they’d blown things earlier on. But have they even asked for an investigation? Joe Loserman, who’s officially one of yours now, said while campaigning in 2006 that he’d investigate the Bush response to Katrina, but changed his mind once elected.
Again, I’m not seeing much potential for enlightenment.
‘The economy’ worked for some people during the Bush Administration, but the vast majority of Americans didn’t get much out of it, based on median incomes, poverty rates, and all that boring stuff. The chainsawing of regulations led to the current mortgage crisis. In the long run, if we want to buy stuff from the rest of the world, we’ve got to produce goods and services that the rest of the world wants to purchase in return. It’s hard to see how we’re making progress there, but ginormous tax cuts and the mortgage bubble helped Americans maintain the illusion that they could keep buying for a few years longer.
The conservative response seems to be even bigger tax cuts, even fewer regs, and of course the privatization of Social Security. Where’s the enlightenment?
Global warming is probably the biggest global threat of our times. The Bush Administration’s response has been to do essentially nothing. Much of the Right’s response over the past several years has consisted of denial. McCain, simultaneously being unaware that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, and having lost the thread that the primary problem is the carbon itself, rather than where it comes from, wants us to drill everywhere. (Hell, he doesn’t even realize that the ‘cap’ part of cap-and-trade is a mandatory cap on carbon emissions.) I’m waiting for the conservative outrage, but I don’t see it.
The National Review Online created a new branch of their website a couple of years back, and is still going strong, called Planet Gore. Because, y’know, the only thing to do with Al’s ideas on the environment is ridicule. The National Review is of course Bill Buckley’s rag, the supposed intellectual heft of the right.
The one idea I can see that the right has contributed to the game is that we ought to be more open to construction of nuclear plants than the left has historically been. But you know what? The conservatives on this board have been able to win that point, because for once they had a good argument. It’s not like that one got shouted down.
Heck, I’d be interested to know of any arguments of significance on this board that the lefties have won by virtue of numbers, rather than by virtue of argument. If you know of any, Sam, please bring them to my attention.
You know, that’s why us lefties hang out here too.
But having hung out here and in the lefty blogosphere, I can tell you that there’s a fair amount of debate on many lefty blogs, much more than on most righty blogs. (Hell, most significant righty blogs, like Instapundit or NRO, either don’t allow comments, or, like Redstate, will kick you out for taking a left-of-center position too often.) While the level of agreement on basic principles is much higher in the lefty blogosphere than it is here, there’s still a lot of vigorous debate on a host of secondary principles and particulars.
Lefties, as a rule, like to argue. This has long been one of the reasons why nobody ever expected a high degree of unity from the left for the longest time.
Who says we can’t, or don’t?
Besides the recent Bricker threads (in which Bricker claimed that (a) the Palin threads here were somehow unreasonable (I’m still going ‘huh?’ on that one), and (b) on account of that, he was justified in voting against Obama because he’d failed to sufficiently enlighten his supporters, I don’t see it. And he earned that pile-on.
I’d spend a lot more time in places like NRO, if they allowed comments, because I’d love the opportunity to respond to the stuff that Jonah and Ramesh and K-Lo and the others say, and see if they’ve got any answers. I’m good for debate with conservatives; that’s one reason I keep coming back here. But like Atrios, I long ago got tired of hearing bullshit over the teevee, and not being able to do more than shout back at the screen. If the more ‘responsible’ righty sites (I ain’t going to Freeperville, thanks) aren’t interested in hearing opposing views, then fuck 'em.
I think you’re totally wrong here. As I see it, it’s all about the failure of Bushism, and the failure of the GOP and conservatism in general to put much daylight between it and the Bush policies.
The problem has really been that the things we’re debating have been artificially skewed so far to one side by the dominant presence of the Bush policies in our debates, that of course there’s only a few of you on one side, and most of us on the other.
Obviously if McCain wins, and governs on what he’s run on, then the current trend will continue - because insanity consists of pursuing the same failed courses of action over and over again, and expecting them to work this time. * As long as we’re debating Bushism or a close equivalent, it’s a pretty one-sided debate. We can’t help that. * There’s no way we can subsidize arguments that have largely been proven false by recent history.
If Obama wins, the center of debate will shift to the left, and there will be multiple sides to most debates again.
Here’s a quiet thank you to RTFirefly, for making an ever so pitch perfect post, since we are now apparently doing this kind of thing.
I second that emotion.
I thought of doing the “me too” thing, but I may have hit my quota with the nod to Knorf earlier. Excellent post though, Rufus.
I just feel that, if the Democratic party gave up on, or at least tried to compromise more, on the gun control issue, they would win a lot of converts. I think this would be a wise move, as I honestly don’t think the proliferation of firearms is a cause of crime problems in the USA. Nearly all crime is committed using weapons that the Democrats aren’t even trying to control, the assault weapon ban is ridiculous for this reason. Few gang bangers are using rifles of any sort, and the Democrats seem to realize that going after pistols and shotguns is going to alienate even more people. Cities that have tried stricter gun control (i.e. Washington D.C. and Chicago) have higher violent crime rates than comparably sized cities with less gun control. I think it’s time to admit that gun control is about as effective as the War on Drugs, and give it up. I think that if Obama said that he was no longer going to support any weapon bans and fight any attempts to reduce the availability of firearms to citizens, he would win in a landslide, then he could work on attacking the root causes of violence (War on Drugs, poor education in the inner city, and limited economic opportunities for the poor).
I honestly don’t believe that Obama is going to be able to take away my guns, even if he gets two terms, and I’m going with him this time because I think the Republicans have gone too far in nominating Sarah Palin to a position where it seems likely she could become president sometime in the next few years, but I would be more enthusiastic about that choice if I didn’t have fears that he might move us closer towards a situation where my children or myself might not be able to have guns in the future.
The best way to decrease violence in America is have an economic recovery which raises up the poor and middle class. I think more than just you and I understand that, a shameful cracka…, and I think Obama’s counting on that.
While I agree that any “assault weapons” ban is purely cosmetic and will have no affect on real crime, I don’t think it’s a show stopper for most of the “undecided” demographic Obama needs to win the election. It’ll definitely turn single-issue voters away from Obama, but lacking any vehemently pro-gun rights history, he would only have a small percentage of those votes in any case.
On the other hand, it’s a red meat* issue for some on the left side of the aisle, so from that standpoint it energizes that section of the Democratic base. They were going to vote Obama any way, but this just makes it more likely they’ll actually vote instead of staying home.
For people like me (OK with self defense and hunting, but not a gun enthusiast), it’s not a factor at all.
*[sub]Or maybe tofu…[/sub]
Well said,** RT.**
Some pop psychology:
I have never been clear on whether it’s the disagreement with their positions that bugs Republicans more or the fact that their positions are disapproved of. We(liberals) had to put up with some of their positions and decisions because of their being in power, but we never approved of those decisions. Somehow this wasn’t good enough. Now that that balance of power may change, IMO, the Reps look back with some bitterness that their idyll didn’t last (and didn’t work). To admit this is anathema to them, so they not only play the victim card, but stay actively hostile to those whom they deign unworthy to replace them. Or something like that.
End of pop psychology.
For all his eloquence and civility here, Sam Stone(post #29) is still just pointing a finger. Where is the ownership of the conservative’s part in the snark? Most of us enjoy some good snark and I don’t want that to end (necessarily), but too much is too much, no matter what side it comes from. Despite the change in tone, Sam is still castigating “us” (or attempting to) from some perceived higher ground. All that he said can be as aptly applied to the conservatives here (and in RL in general)–if that is what he meant, I missed it.
Thanks (to you, and Hentor and ETF and eleanor too!), and welcome back!
I missed the wine-and-cheese party in this thread last night, but if anyone wants to join me for coffee out on the back deck, y’all are invited! Hanna passed through yesterday and washed the world clean, and this morning, it’s one of those picture-perfect mornings: sunny, clear, dry, the perfect balance of warm and cool. Everyone grab a cup of coffee, spread some cream cheese on a bagel, and keep me company. 
That is what he said. Of course in this thread he was speaking to Obama supporters because that is the intended audience of the thread, per the title.
But he made it clear in the first two paragraphs that he was speaking of both sides.
If you want respect, if you want posters to listen to your side of the argument, you first have to give those things. I’m not seeing it from either side on this board (with Sam’s posts here being the exception) ; it is more strident and obnoxious from the Obama supporters this election, though, probably because of the decided tilt to the left of the board.
Here’s the problem. Let’s just look at what’s happened on the SDMB since September of 2001. We’ve given consideration, as a group, to the following ideas, and some of the board’s most respected left leaning members (not me) dispassionately discussed their merits and treated them as respectable and arguable concepts:[ul][li]the idea of nuking Afghanistan and Pakistan,[]the practicality and effect of decimating the population of Afghanistan in the Roman sense of that word,[]the idea that we should deliberately stay ignorant regarding the grievances and aspirations which generate recruits for terrorist organizations,[]the idea that our country should torture suspects and deny them due process,[]the idea that we should invade a country which had never attacked us, depose its leader and occupy its lands because we suspected they might have nerve gas and might want to develop nuclear weapons.[/ul][/li]Fuck that shit. How we handled these ideas on the 'Dope was infinitely more thorough than they were handled in the national press, but it reflected the same legitimization of the absurd, and our country and the world have suffered greatly because of that American inability to reject stupidity and thuggishness.
My advice: If someone comes up to you holding out a dog turd and expecting you to buy it, don’t take it from him and examine it for quality. Push the dangerous lunatic away and keep an eye on the sonofabitch.
The problem on the SDMB (and probably this type of environment in general; I doubt it’s exclusive to the straight dope), is that moderate comments get completely ignored. People have learned - consciously or not - through a reward system of being paid attention to, that the more extreme the comment, the more plentiful the responses. It doesn’t matter if the responses are positive or negative, just like some kids are just as happy to get attention for doing something bad as for doing something good. There is no room for moderates here. The funny thing is that in the real world, most people are moderate. That’s what kills me when people try to act like this board is an accurate representation of life offline.
Bingo!
Someone can post a careful analysis of Jewish influence in american media and get no responses.
Someone else can post “Jews control all media!”, and get a ton of responses.
Maybe not the best example, but the overall point Cisco is making is correct.
It reduces the motivation of many posters to post long, well thought out, posts. If you’re just talking to the wind, why post? And it increases the motivation for extreme, black-and-white, statements.