You’re saying ‘the other sides’ position is to piss people off? So the troll here is the GOP?
Shodan has never had an idea in his life. He’s a big fan of some other peoples’ ideas. Sadly, not generally smart people.
Also, apologies for leaving you off the list as well.
FTR, nearly everyone is to the right of me, but I’d have listed xtisme, John Mace, and Sam Stone off the top of my head as conservative posters whose posts don’t make me think “Well.. that’s dumb.”
A couple of years ago Bricker would have been on that list, but he’s getting as bad as Shodan with the “one time, a liberal did that too” bullshit.
Nope.
People here have positions that piss off other posters. They do not hold these postions or post them in order to piss their opponents (this is true for most posters) but are not shy to defend their ideas.
I vote for Starving Artist in that category. Someone should invent time travel to send him back to the 1950’s just to shut him up.
Well, John is Libertarian. And Martin is definitely a conservative and a Republican (I just did a search to verify my sketchy memory).
Hell, I’ve had discussions with you a few times and they have been 2000% more fulfilling than with Shodan. It’s the difference between actually discussing and debating vs. throwing out random attacks and caricatures just to see if the other side can keep up before they get frustrated and give up. It’s more rewarding to debate the TV when Bill O’Reilly is on or yell at Limbaugh on the radio.
And as far as I know Bricker mainly gets criticized for pedantry and “gotcha”-style posts, not for the actual content (other than the tu quoques which do get old).
Lets not forget the OP, I do respect **SenorBeef **a lot. And when someone like him does take **Shodan **to task he should take notice, but there is very little hope that Shodan would learn something.
So,
Disregards to Shodan…
..as it’s the case on so many occasions.
If Shodon’s irrelevant, ineffectual, ‘Clinton got a blowjob’ clubbing is ‘his position’, I guess I can’t argue against him expressing it.
Imbecile spotting doesn’t have to be a political game though.
Hyde is definitely a conservative, and although I often disagree with him, I find his knowledge of history to be helpful. Sam Stone is more of a libertarian (although I hawkish one) than a conservative. Most of the conservatives on this MB are libertarian leaning to some extent, I think. We have very few social conservatives posting here. I usually don’t bother reading their posts, and I honestly don’t know who they are-- the closest I can get is a poster or two whose username starts with “s”.
Airman Doors is pretty cool as well. And as far as religious posters go, well the obvious example would be Polycarp.
So, that’s one vote of confidence from Gríma Wormtongue.
That cuts both ways.
If that’s correct, then you have a valid point. (Based on a quick search, Martin was actually the subject of two lengthy Pit threads back in 2006, but I don’t see anything since.)
I agree that these are the focus of attacks of Bricker. But the question is whether the attacks are ideology-motivated or not. Even a biased attacker looks for the weak points. Do liberals who fit the same profile get attacked in the same manner? And are the attackers primarily leftists?
No, although you might be stupid. I said, that right now, American conservatism is being run by the most extreme elements of the right. That isn’t saying there is no value to conservatism, it’s saying that right now the people speaking for conservatism are jumping the rails.
If Democrats were being run by the most shrill and insane members of the left it would be the same. But right now the left is moderate and the right is so far right there by dragons.
Again, you didn’t understand what I said. Hopefully this post will clear things up for you.
Well, I mean of course they are. A few leftists get attacked by leftists on these boards (gonzomax being the obvious example, although Der Trihs and Dio both got hammered, deservedly, from all sides from time to time).
But it shouldn’t be surprising that folks are more likely to “attack” the “other side” than people that they perceive as being on “their side”, even those that don’t really help their side of the argument very much.
I’ll admit I am much more likely to question a post that seems dodgy if I disagree with the underlying position than if I agree with it. I don’t think this is “a good thing”, but it’s not really unusual or surprising either.
IIRC, Shodan certainly did keep beating the “There were so WMDs in Iraq!” drum long after every other DopeCon had put down the stick.
It’s part inevitability, part tragedy, part fascinating case study. Take any person—or mongrel dog, or ferret, or any of the lower apes—expose it to nothing but talk radio and Fox News, and kick it enough to make it good 'n mean, and you’ll eventually end up with something very like Shodan.
All of us serve some purpose; for some, it’s to serve as a cautionary tale.
I’ll admit that when Shodan posts to a non-political thread it can be quite likeable. Unfortunately it rarely posts to non-political threads.
And…I knew that I knew that name from somewhere. So I looked it up.
Quote, Wikipedia re Shodan
Seems pretty apropos.
:rolleyes: Shouldn’t you be out chasing the Billy Goats Gruff?
When it comes to anything related to partisan politics, Shodan at first glance appears to be functionally retarded. His “arguments” rarely relate to the discussion at hand (apart from a low level keyword correspondence, e.g. “maybe if you liberals didn’t love taxes so much the liberal media wouldn’t have invented global warming!”)
The trick to understanding his posts, however, is realizing that he’s not trying to have a discussion. At all. He is there to prosthelytize his political views, nothing more. He isn’t trying to learn anything, he doesn’t care if what he says bears any relevance to a thread or matches reality in any way, he just wants a chance to repeat his views. Think of him like a spammer and it all makes sense: the more people respond to him, the better. His message is getting attention, hooray! People are calling him a dumbass, awesome! He’s sticking it to the liberals! Woo hoo, look at 'em go!
Responding to Shodan in political threads is like replying to spam emails. It only makes things worse.
It’s especially unseemly for the mentally deficient to bash the mentally deficient. Anyway, to reply to the OP, you both seem to be pretty consistent in your retardation. I don’t want to spoil your pitting, though, so I will refrain from rating your relative retardation levels.
Mostly because he doesn’t have man-hands.