Refusing to actually argue for one’s position and just engaging in transparent bullshit to deny that one holds the position or that there are arguments against it is a hallmark of what those in power do. One of the issues that the left and the larger Democratic Party has is they love to take power in ultimately meaningless places - like this message board, or academic humanities departments - and the more it becomes clear that they don’t know how politics works in the places where it really matters, the more they double down on flexing their ability to impose their worst irrationalities in the little fiefdoms they do control.
Three of the most prominent examples of this:
*The CRT threads, on this board, and the larger discussion, in which the people opposing the left-wing race ideology have made it perfectly clear what they object to and where it is going on, and the only response they get it “what you’re upset about isn’t CRT, which doesn’t exist outside of law seminars, you’re making this all up.” This has become gospel in insular leftist spaces, meanwhile Democrats are already taking massive losses in school board elections and are about to lose control of Virginia, a state where they should be a 60-40 majority if it were not for this issue, because they don’t understand that the fallacies they tell themselves don’t work when other people get to vote.
*The Hillary Clinton campaign putting all its chips on Donald Trump being awful to women, when Hillary is married to a serial rapist and has made a career out of defending and enabling him. The repeated response to people asking why either candidate deserved to win if the election was being conducted based on who is less of a sex pest was “you aren’t allowed to notice that. Shut up.” Hillary forgot that she wasn’t in power yet and that doesn’t work.
*Repeatedly losing elections, up to and including the Presidency and control of Congress, over the past 10 years because of swing voters saying, loudly and clearly, that they don’t like Obamacare because it has massively increased their health insurance costs, and responding to that with “you aren’t allowed to notice that. Shut up.”
It’s no surprise that during the Trump era, when Republicans held real political power and used it for every dark impulse Republicans had, the left wing of the Democrats responded by strengthening their hold on meaningless para-cultural institutions and flexing their ability to exclude anyone else from those places. The national political situation is somewhat different now, but more importantly, maybe some self-reflection is in order as to the general wisdom of a strategy that involves a huge overfocus on shit that doesn’t matter and a tendency to isolate one’s self in groups that reinforce delusions about what the electorate wants.
These are the sum total of @Snowboarder_Bo’s contributions to the thread. Are these any more useful or constructive than @octopus’s posts? I don’t believe so. Conservative posters are expected to put up with this sort of thing without complaint, while the majority insist they need the Pit to complain about people they disagree with doing very similar things.
If you think sneering is so bad, why is an entire thread just to mock someone ok? iiandyiiii said that the Sam_Stone thread was just about mocking. You posted 5 times in that thread. Why is mocking someone for 900 posts fine but sneering at people who are insulting you not ok? I’m sure you’ll make up a rationalization, but this is a double standard.
First off, this is classic well-poisoning. You asked me a question about my post, which is fine. But then you poison the well by saying that any response is clearly just a rationalization—i.e. untrue. This is a dishonest style of debate, and you should stop.
If I ignore that part, then the answer is this: You need to read what people actually say. There are three important words in that quote that you seem to be ignoring. “if you think.” So I am not talking about my own belief. I am pointing out the flaw in his belief.
And, here’s the thing: You just did the exact same thing. You were debating my argument, even though you did not agree with it. So you clearly do understand the concept of arguing with what someone else said without claiming it yourself.
So the only good-faith interpretation is that you didn’t read my post carefully. I will give you a chance to apologize for that.
As for the topic of whether we need the Pit, that is clearly a topic for a different thread. You should not attempt to hijack this one to push your own hobby horse. Though I will say this much: you quoted someone else, not me. I’m not required to defend other people’s arguments.
There is some truth to this, but there is also truth to what @The_Librarian is saying. The reality of argument is that this is a balancing act. That’s what makes this so hard.
What both of you are describing are factors in the aesthetic of debate. You aren’t talking about who is making the more sound argument. You’re talking about how it “looks” to the reader. And, when you start going that direction, things get a lot more complicated.
Consider this: why do Creationists love to set up debates with evolutionary scientists? Their arguments themselves are garbage. But they know they can use the aesthetic of debate to make it look like they’ve won. Either the person will refuse to argue, which seems like they won, or they do the argument and the person engages in disingenuous debate and still looks to those who don’t listen to the actual words like they won. Most often they use something called “gish gallop,” which just says a lot of non-sequiturs and makes it hard to argue.
But that’s not the only technique you can use. I continue to invite everyone to watch (or read the transcripts) of The Alt-Right Playbook Not because everyone who uses the tactics described therein are part of the alt-right. But because the rise of the alt-right is a great example of people using the aesthetic of argument to push an agenda that is reprehensible to the majority of people. (Again, the alt-right is ultimately just a rebrand of white supremacy and neo-Nazis. You can follow the trail back to them.)
They utilized how we liberals had this naive approach of thinking you could just prove someone wrong with facts and logic. They take advantage of our need to point out when something is wrong to be able to push their own platform. And, once there, they use psychological tricks to make it seem like they are the ones winning the argument. They often even trick the participants in the argument by giving them one thing to argue with, then getting them not to argue with something else they implied but didn’t quite say.
There is merit in not getting to deep in such arguments, not acting like you have to debate everything. For example, I just avoided Heff’s trap of getting me to repeat the Pit thread debate. It’s off-topic. But I still probably engaged in ways I shouldn’t have.
(And, no, I’m not saying she’s part of the alt-right. But she is using several disingenuous tactics. That’s what my whole response to her is about.)
What we want on this board is to minimize the amount of disingenuous argument, because such argument only harms our goal of fighting ignorance. Sure, we could argue back disingenuously, but then who wins is just based on skill, and not because one side or the other is actually, factually correct.
When it comes to disingenuous argument, especially when done repeatedly (so you know it’s not an accident), sometimes the only winning move is to not play.
No, it is not. You saying so doesn’t make it so. It is just my posting my opinion of your words. You should stop telling me how to post.
But it’s clear what your belief is. You told him he was sneering and then said that’s “shit” someone else does. You’ve made your opinion about sneering super clear. So while you’re challenging his belief, you’re also adding your own on top of it.
I’ve read your post VERY carefully. There are posts of yours that I’ve read over a dozen times and tried to respond in the past. The fact that the logic is so tangled and you tried to deconstruct everything to the point that it doesn’t have any meaning doesn’t mean I didn’t read it.
You’ve now accused me of something I didn’t do. I read your post super carefully. I’ll give you a chance to apologize to me for accusing me of something I didn’t do.
I’m not posting about whether we need the Pit in this thread. I’m responding to your post about people sneering. I don’t have a dog in the fight about whether the Dope should have a Pit, so again, you’ve accused me of having a “hobby horse” when it’s not true. I’ll give you a chance to apologize for the second time for accusing me of something I didn’t do.
Well obviously. One cannot evaluate the soundness of arguments that haven’t been made. The look of the thing is all that’s left. But you only addressed half my statement. You might have been involved in these debates for years and have a very clear opinion with a sound basis in facts. But not everyone has. Although it may sometimes look like it, the world isn’t divided into two sides with strong and fixed opinions; there are also a lot of people who have generally accepted what they are told and don’t know much about any given subject. Those are the ones you have a chance of convincing.
And besides that, not every subject has been so exhaustively discussed and researched as climate change. In fact, that is rare. On other subjects, it may well be you who has uncritically accepted what you are told, and never looked into it further. It’s always a mistake to assume you have no more to learn. Even if the debate ends up reinforcing your original opinions, it is still beneficial to test them and understand the arguments for and against. Even if you don’t change your mind, it can give you a better understanding of your opponents, rather than the pantomime-villain caricature (‘they just want to hurt people!’) that is so commonly put forward.
How are creationists doing these days? One doesn’t hear much about them anymore. All that debating doesn’t seem to have helped them very much. But seriously, if people don’t listen to the actual words, there’s not a whole lot you can do.
As for the alt-right, I hardly think they are the only ones engaging in disingenuous argument. What else is repeatedly mischaracterising your opponent’s position, as in a certain infamous video? And in todays world of internet and social media they don’t need to debate progressives to get their message out. Refusing to debate just means their message goes uncontested. And that is exactly what is happening.
Do you believe nothing they say can ever be true, that their criticisms are never valid? That’s a very ideological belief, if so. It’s the elements of truth that draw people in, and lead them to turn their back on liberalism, because those on the other side are unwilling to consider or debate different views. And without debate, it’s much harder to untangle truth from falsehood.
@Babale, my searching was not successful. Shodan was a prolific poster, so it is coming up with a lot of irrelevant stuff, and when I do find a post all the links are broken due to the transfer to Discourse. Perhaps you could find and link me to the post where Shodan was told that the next misogynistic comment would result in a ban?
You say that I have no right to demand that you stop engaging in a disingenuous way. Yet then you did that exact same thing. You argued I was being disingenuous, and said I needed to apologize.
You claim you read my post. You claim to read a lot of my posts. Yet you claim to know that I hold a position that I obviously do not.
I have sneered at people quite often in argument in the Pit. I did so in this very thread to octopus, for example. I also continue to participate in arguments where people have sneered. So obviously I do not think that sneering makes argument impossible.
You accused me of hypocrisy. So you clearly do not think such accusations are bad. Yet you decided to blast me for accusing Sam of hypocrisy.
You say I can’t tell you how to post, but you were telling me that I shouldn’t have posted in a particular thread, and that I shouldn’t have said something I did to you.
I have every right to tell dishonest people to stop being dishonest. I have every right to point out when you are actively degrading discussion. I have the right to point out that you were poisoning the well, because that’s the only possible way to deal with a well-poisoning. And I have every right to defend myself from those who are willing to make up shit I didn’t say in order to attack me.
I also have every right to do what I’m about to do now. It’s been building up a little while, but this nonsense is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You provide nothing of value to this board, and only seem to want to stir up trouble these days. And you’re even willing to go after me, even after I defended you from people who treated you like shit. Turns out they were right.
You don’t care for me, and I don’t care for you, and I don’t think I will lose anything if I can’t see what you have to say anymore. Goodbye Roo. Hope it’s worth alienating everyone to argue against shit people didn’t say.
(And, no, hiding your profile will not stop me. Funny how you love to bring up posts from the past, but then try to stop people from easily being able to see what you’ve posted in the past, huh?)
No more long moralizing screeds from you about my posts. No more posts from you arguing with multiple people that my posts are bad. No more veiled threats about how I’d better not post anything you might find insulting. . . or else!
Sweet!
I’ll probably keep reading and responding to you, so no change on my side about you, BigT. Since you don’t speak for everyone as you seem to think, there might be some people, even after your big departure from reading my posts, who might still read my posts. If not, that’s OK too.
However, having said that: I’m fine with not having to have the same debates three thousand times. For such settled subjects, I’m in favor of the boards saying, in effect, ‘we’ve been over that way too many times already. You can’t make that claim here any more unless you can convince the mods that you’ve got something genuinely new to say about it.’ People who don’t already have their minds made up can go read the old threads.
So far, there’s been minimal polling on the Virginia governor’s race, and what polling we’ve gotten has mostly been by pro-Republican and/or right-wing outfits (“The Trafalgar Group,” “WPA Intelligence”), with the one exception of a poll by “JMC Analytics and Polling” (not sure why, but Wikipedia lists this group as Republican, which I don’t believe is the case). So far, those polls have all shown Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe leading Republican Glenn Youngkin, but but by relatively small (2-4 points) margins.
I will have to say that yours is an argument by popularity that is, as pointed many times before, based on lies and Orwellian talking points.
That the result is to misguide a number of Republican parents is clear, that this effort is endangering the lives and the livelihoods of many teachers and professors, and many of the ones affected are minorities, clearly shows that this is seen as a good result by guys like you.
I would not characterize left wing politics as meaningless. BLM protests galvanized the left the same way that Tea Party protests galvanized the right. The latter lead to obstructionist lunatic fringe of the GOP and ultimately resulted in the Party of Trump. Left fringe issues don’t seem to be having as dramatic of an effect on the Democratic party and progressive politics. QED: President Biden, not President Sander.
This is a reasonable point. It’s unclear where Democrats and progressives go in 2024 and beyond. I very much doubt there is a strong desire to move further left or for more progressive activism to out flank the right’s lunatic fringe. I fully expect a protraction of argument about whether or not Jan 6 was an insurrection and whether being vaccinated or unvaccinated is more patriotic. CRT will continue to be a secondary issue nobody understands but continues to exploit for their own side. To distract from all that will be lots of talk about doing something about the rise in crime but nothing will actually be done about it because Republicans want to make sure it remains a “Democrat City Mayors” problem, and progressives can’t exactly go begging the police to do something about it - too soon after all that defund the police business.
Let’s face it. The only thing that matters is a thriving economy and low taxes. Taxes are lower thanks to Trump, and as long as the economy is swimming in record profits, nobody is going to be doing anything but talking about the relatively trivial. I just hope they pass the infrastructure bill and do the projects and improvements it promises to make.
Wow, there’s some wisdom there. I just used my ignore list for the first time in a decade, for four of the most sneeringly dishonest posters left on the board. Let’s see if that makes my experience here better.
I’ve found it to greatly enhance the experience. I started using ignore for the first time ever (in my internet experience, as my time on board is not so impressive) and never looked back maybe a year to a year and a half ago. Occasionally, I put someone on ignore just because they’ve really pissed me off in a thread and I need a commitment device to help me break contact, but those people usually come off.
The board’s population of “race realists,” Trumpists, and transphobes, however? Ignored and never looked back. I don’t owe those people any kind of engagement.
Just a nit about that, I have seen elsewhere that this talking point from the right is a bit simplistic and avoids the reality that it is a problem also for Republican City Mayors.
On social media and in political speeches, some Republicans and pro-police groups say last year’s calls to slash spending on law enforcement have led to a dramatic rise in killings in cities overseen by Democrats.
The increases they cite are real, and several big cities did make cuts to police spending. But the reductions were mostly modest, and the same big increases in homicides are being seen nationwide — even in cities that increased police spending. At the same time, the rates for burglaries, drug offenses and many other types of crime are down in many cities across the country.
Y’know, I should have used the word ‘comparatively’. The Tea Party wasn’t my cup of Tea either. I keep lazily calling myself ‘conservative’, but I’m not. And I’m damned sure not a populist. The only things I really agreed with them on were economic conservatism and the need for a robust military. But I am pro-LGBT, pro trans rights, pro drug legalization. Socially I’m a classical liberal. Paul Ryan was my idea of a good Republican Senator, but not perfect. When he checked out of politics it symbolized the switch to a different type of Republican party that I am much less fond of.
But I will be honest with you. The reason I wind up on that side of the debate so much is that from my point of view the Democrats have shifted into a party even more dangerous, and are advocating policies right now which are just insane:
While facing major labor shortqges, giving people more money to stay home than they would earn at work, and doing it with borrowed money, is crazy.
In a current situation of serious inflation caused by manpower and resource shortages coupled with high GDP growth, it is a serious error by any economic principle to borrow trillions of dollars to start optional infrastructure projects. Every resource they employ, people or material, will be competing against other necessary uses, driving up prices even further. Borrowing money to pump an economy that’s already overheating is just nuts. Keynes would be aghast at the thought.
At a time when we aren’t sure how much inflation is transient and how much is due to inflation of the money supply, it is crazy to essentially print money to do it. Those treasuries being auctioned aren’t going to lenders; they are going to the fed, which gives the government the cash with a few ledger entries. You are doing this at an unprecedented rate.
At a time when Global Warming is a serious, immediate crisis, it is crazy to build out a nationwide train network that will consume massive resources and emit massive CO2 for decades before it is even operational, and possibly be obsolete before it finishes. This is a global warming self-own.
In the meantime, Democrats are shutting down functioning nuclear power plants and closing pipelines at home while Biden gives the green light to Putin’s massive Nord 2 pipeline which will increase the flow of fossil fuels to Europe and give Russia more economic power over them. Insane. It’s like they believe global warming isn’t really a thing, but a ‘crisis’ they can’t let go to waste.
Opening the border had serious consequences that were predictable and that the right was specifically warning against. Biden did it anyway, and it’s a now a large humanitarian problem, with far more kids in detention than there ever were when AOC dressed in white and cried at a facility fence.
Biden’s fixation on an Iran deal and minimizing the Abraham Accords is ruining the very excellent start at a better Middle East which was one of the good things Trump did. And he’s already started with the extrajudicial bombings you all hated so much when Republican governments did it.
Joe Biden, your standard bearer, is one of the authors of the crime bill that devastated black communities. He’s one of the authors of asset forfeiture laws. He’s a drug warrior. He’s a serial prevaricator as bad as Trump. He cheated in school, lied about his past, stole speeches without credit, and has been on the wrong side of every major foreign policy decision I can remember. The first gulf war, the good one? He was against it. The second gulf war? The bad one? He was for it. The bin laden raid? He was against it. The humanitarian disaster that is Libya? He was one of the architects of it. He’s a global interventionist with poor choices for where to intervene.
I could go on. Democrats have gone off the rails just like Trump Republicans have. The trillion dollar ‘infrastructure’ bill is bad enough, but they want to push through another 3.5 trillion in new entitlements and benefits (Bernie wants six trillion) - paid for with printed money at an historically outrageous level.
Do you know who inflation hurts most? The retired and the poor. Do you know who is isolated from it? People who own lots of assets. Democratic policies will drive up inflation, make income inequality worse, and hurt the people they claim to be helping. Real wages have already declined 2% because of inflation. But everything Democrats want to do is pushing the inflation accelerator to the floor.
The Democratic ideas behind CRT and related philosophies are pushing back race relations by decades. Their tax ideas will cripple the economy. Their spending risks triggering structural inflation or stagflation. Their climate plan is incoherent and won’t make anything better but will push more industry to China. Their refusal to uphold the law is breaking down civic trust and making it harder to govern. They act like money is unlimited, spending crazy amounts on unnecessary things while we are told we need crash programs to fix global warming.
During a pandemic, the Democrats opened the border to hundreds of thousands of people without quarantine and distributed them throughout the sourthern US.
The Democrats are now the party of censorship and domestic spying. They are the authoritarians, not Republicans. You’ve lost people like Grenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and Matthew Yglesias over it.
Both parties have gone insane, but the Democrats’ insanity is currently far more dangerous, especially since they want to blow up more norms of governing to achieve it, and they are the party in power.
What makes the Democrats even more dangerous is that they have a sycophantic media behind them offering nothing but softball questions and hero worship, and social media moguls willing to act as their fascistic censorship shock troops to hide anything bad going on.
All of this is heading for a very bad end.
If the Democrats were the party they were when Bill Clinton was around, I’d be voting Democrat. The current iteration of Democrats is far to the left of that (they’ve gone way farther left than the Republicans went right), and it has picked up a whole wing of obnoxious Jacobins who I wouldn’t support if you put a gun to my head. We have the same crazy thing going on in Canada.
The Republicans have their crazies, but the Republican craziness won’t drive the country into the ground like the Democrats are trying to do.
Oh, I’ve no doubt crime is up regardless of party affiliation of fill in the blank (city/mayor). I’m simply commenting on how it’s being played by each side. I am hearing Democrats as well as Republicans wring their hands about the rise in crime. I am listening to chiefs of police in various cities saying that the problem lies not with police but with various recent changes in other law enforcements branches. Police chiefs are saying that “judicial activism” and “lack of transparency” by district attorneys offices are leading to more violent criminals being released. Is that an accurate criticism? Are there additional factors related to social pressure and mental health crisis due to the pandemic? Maybe all of the above. It will take time to sort out.
Parting is such sweet sorrow.