I can’t help but always think of it as “In The Road”.
I would say he’s gone from a fervent atheist/agnostic liberal to a lying, immoral stain of a human being. He’s posted enormous bullshit about healthcare, and people live and die over health care issues.
Sounds like he got dumped.
I always vaguely assumed it was one of the subways lines in NYC.
I think your local boy, James Lileks, caught just about the worst case of that.
What crazy shit has Dave Barry been saying?
Actual real answer, in the interest of Fighting Ignorance: It stands for “Ineligible to Re-register” or “Invited to Resign”. It’s the term used for flunking out of Harvey Mudd College, where ITR Champion went to school.
I think, but don’t know, that the “Champion” part comes from his winning the ITR Games (scroll down), which is a sort of school-wide game/challenge thing that got its name from the implication that those who are seriously dedicated to the games risk flunking out.
I now return you to your pit thread in progress.
But not by reality.
Awhile back I was in his little religious/Atheist book club and we were discussing The God Delusion. The thread went on and on until finally he stated, “It’s as if I’m a lawyer and I lay my case out for months and the defendant just responds with, ‘Flying Spaghetti monster’.” To which someone replies, “No, it’s as if you’ve laid your case out for months and the defendant says, ‘your evidence also fits everyone in this room’”. He pretended he didn’t read that and just kept posting hand waves.
I’ve never wondered if he’d ever argue in good faith from then on.
What’s the basis for this claim? I think the opposite is true.
A lot of idealistic college kids are liberals. Then they go out and get jobs, settle down with families, and turn more conservative. I think that’s more common than the reverse.
What may be misleading people is that on this board it’s more common for people to turn left than to turn right. That’s because this board leans liberal, so there’s a cumulative influence over time, plus people who turn liberal are more likely to stick around than those who move the other way. But IRL, ITR’s direction is fairly common.
Agreed. People don’t have liberal, open grandparents - they have racist, bigoted, homophobic, sexist, nasty grandparents who they’re embarrassed to be around and have to be careful with the kids near. ITR is just like that.
That is as nasty, bigoted, and small-minded a remark as I have ever seen. That is just the ugly little yin to a conservative yang.
Your grand-parents may be worthy predecessors to you, but that is not always the case.
Are we in the Pit? Good. You disgust me.
People do have bigoted racist homophobic grandparents that they’re embarrassed by.
Just because you might not doesn’t mean that people don’t. Just by myself, I prove that they do.
Also, I’d like to say that this is not the trend:
Grandparents understand evolution, separation of church and state, are accepting of other races and sexual orientations, and believe women have a place in the workforce and deserve equal pay, and their grandkids believe evolution is bunk, that America is a Christian nation, hate minorities and gay people, and think women need to shut up and stay in the kitchen.
That’s not how things typically go. That’s backward.
It’s the newer generations who get with the friggen program, and the old assholes die off. And good riddance, by the way.
That’s not the issue being discussed. The issue is not about the difference between young and old people at any given time. It’s about the direction in which people tend to change their own opinions over the course of their lifetimes.
The suggestion being that despite you, for example, being currently a paragon of righteousness and a beacon of light to all around you, it’s just possible that your opinions may change over time, to the point where your grandchildren will be embarrassed of your existence and be eagerly awaiting your death. You never know.
Yeah, no. This is sort of like arguing that once I’ve learned arithmetic, someday I will think that one plus one equals 15. The odds are approximately the same that you will one day become a flat-earther who believes we’re at the center of the universe and that we’re all made of the 4 classic elements.
One doesn’t learn how an internal combustion engine works and then years later believe it is powered by invisible gremlins. Some advances in thought simply cannot be undone.
BTW I’m not considering mental illness for the purposes of this discussion. I’m talking about rational healthy minds intentionally choosing to become stupid after they’ve already learned what reality is.
No, this discussion is about how big of a tool ITR Champion is.
^Point.
My aside is derailing the discussion- my bad.
Let me apologize - I really flubbed the wording there and said something I didn’t mean to. My intent was not to say "all grandparents are bigoted’, and I apologize, because I obviously worded that wrong. I should have said “the stereotype isn’t…”
My intent was to poke fun at the idea that as people get older and wiser they get more conservative. You could very well describe it as “as people get older and more bigoted, they get more conservative”.
If I remember correctly, peoples politics don’t actually change that much as they age, from one study I saw, more the politics of the younger generations change. I have no reason to believe that is not true.
Reading the Civil Rights Act thread, do you think ITR thinks he’s clever with his obviously bigoted form of hijacking? It’s also amazing he keeps constantly bringing up drones, despite having scolded people in the past for not voting for politicians who support using drones exactly like they are now.
Exactly what kind of morality must you have if you think someone is pro-murder because they keep doing the exact same things you do?