That’s the *Berkely Barb * scenario, championed by Scylla - the Boards lean left because Cecil got his start in an “alternative” newspaper. Maybe. I am entirely content with the notion that the Board tilts in whatever direction because the self-selecting sample selects for intelligence. Well, duh.
Dopers are brain-geeks, Cecils columns are irrestible catnip for the brain-geek, the kind of pal or gal who gets a distinct shot of endorphins every time a new fact snuggles into their synapses. The only thing more fun than knowing stuff is knowing more stuff. Utility is of no importance. Most of the facts I have rushed to tell someone else were interesting, but of no practical application whatever.
Brain geeks are suckers for books like 1001 Interesting Facts About Nothing in Particular, they snap them up off the shelves with eager hands. I think it might have been my son, the Err Apparent, who first suggested checking for a Cecil website for new columns, avoiding the risk of getting hit by a truck before the next collection comes out. Didn’t know a message board from a surf board.
Anywho, the upshot is that a self-selecting sample of brain-geeks simply has to be deviant in terms of intelligence, intelligence is their primary *form * of deviance (ahead of sexual deviance by a, ah, nose).
I’d be willing to bet the **Mace Munchkins ** shoe bill for a year that twice as many Dopers know what Mensa is than in the population at large. I make so bold with “the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces.”
You’re missing the third possibility: asking for a left wing blog is not stupid, while asking for an open registration, unstructurally biased right leaning message board is stupid. There’s nothing stupid about asking for an intelligent blog of a particular political leaning because blogs are personal, and reflect the particular person running them.
This may be a good point which I missed because I only know the 'dope online, not being in the States.
Wouldn’t it be possible to say “I don’t know of any” without being so insulting about it, though? Or, here’s an even better idea…if you don’t know of any, don’t post anything at all!
Maybe so, but the fact that most people seem to be using ‘liberal’ as a synonym for ‘left’ suggests to me that this leftward lean has a strong perceptual component from the American perspective. ‘Liberal’, in Britain, means ‘centrist’ (more or less), so people don’t tend to use it as a synonym for ‘left’ (they say ‘left’, or ‘socialist’ or some such).
What impresses me about this comment is that it avoids all the issues in the post it’s responding to.
Your comment doesn’t even address the minor question of whether there’s *more *anger on one side or the other. Sam and I obviously agree that there’s plenty of anger on both sides, but we disagree on that point. You can’t even be bothered to pick a side on that relatively trivial question.
And it certainly doesn’t address whether one side’s anger is more about substance or not - you know, how the country is being run. Because I can tell you right now that if we liberals were getting our way on all the issues - getting us out of Iraq and instituting a saner approach to Islamic and other terrorism, instituting universal, single-payer health care, implementing a carbon tax to address global warming, putting teeth into protecting a worker’s right to unionize, repealing the Bush tax cuts, and so forth, we wouldn’t be particularly angry at conservatives; we’d hardly be thinking about them most of the time. We’d be focusing on ways to continue to improve this country.
It’s just the way we are. To us, the true enemy isn’t domestic conservatism; it’s that bad shit happens to a lot of people who didn’t do much to bring it upon themselves. Life’s never going to be completely fair, but we liberals can see that there are lots of ways to make it a good deal more fair than it is now. And we’d just like to get on with it.
And while I’m about it, kiss my ass till I bark like a fox, Sam! You got an OP on Global Warming up in GD. You come in carrying a fifty pound sack of snarkapples, and then get your ass handed to you for bogus/biased citation and general nincompoopitude. So what do you do? Defend your baseless opinions, or your half-assed citations while smarter people eat your lunch? No, you sashay over to the Pit to give me a load of shit about how much better a person you are than I. Got my faults, Sam, its a long list, but gutless ain’t on it, go a whuppin’ comin, I stand for it. You, not so much, Sam Stoneless.
Oh, charming. Liberals would be oh so happy if only the conservatives would just get out of the way.
I don’t buy it for one second, and I wouldn’t imagine it would be so if the wording were reversed. People aren’t like that.
Several Democratic politicians were nicknamed “Happy Warriors” because they went about their life with a considerable amount of cheerfulness and optimism - think Al Smith, FDR, and Hubert Humphrey. That does not mean that they couldn’t be stirred to considerable anger by what they considered unjust, or by another politician they couldn’t stand.
I wouldn’t characterize you as a Happy Warrior. But maybe you could work at it.
Well, yeah, we’d be happy if conservatives stopped fucking everything up. Does this somehow surprise you?
“If” the wording were reversed? Did you miss the part where Republicans were in control of two branches of government between 2000 and 2006 and were still mad at the left? You don’t need to imagine what it would be like, because we’ve already seen it.
Oh, and that ‘happy warrior’ label? Did you maybe wonder why it hasn’t been applied to anyone in 40 years?
Like you wouldn’t be happy if liberals would just assimilate into the conservative mindset. I recall all those GD threads in which you claimed Democrats would win elections if they would only adopt Republican positions. :rolleyes:
Right. You are myopically focusing on the government (a common failing of liberals, you must admit) and missing the area where conservatives are most pissed off and where liberals have far broader influence - the broader society and especially popular culture.
Look for the most acrimonious public debates, and the angriest debates on this board, and you will see that they generally involve these themes.
What a load of crap. The idea that conservatives should just shut the fuck up because they had a 6 year run in Washington is nonsense. There are plenty of conservatives who are quite unhappy with the way the US had been run for the last 60 years, and you know as well as I that you can’t get your cake in Washington without a 60 vote majority in the Senate. And the big conservative hot button, Roe v Wade, is still precedent the last time I looked. Conservatives didn’t get a whole lot from Bush’s term, other than a fucked up war and a 2 new Supreme Court Justices.
