# Let's pit Dopers who engage in debate with Starving Artist **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 28, 2009, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389 "2009-10-28T02:33:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/381 "2009-11-01T01:48:58Z")
It helps if you read them out of order, and in a language not your own. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/382 "2009-11-01T06:05:39Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I get that you’re not interested in taking those steps, and that’s obviously up to you. But it is the expectation of GD as a forum, and in my view you have no room to complain if you particpate in the forum but fail to follow its norms. When did _you_ get all diplomatic? ---
**Author:** ![legalsnugs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@legalsnugs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/legalsnugs)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/383 "2009-11-01T10:28:05Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Lots of people in the “Let’s pit Dopers who engage in debate with Starving Artist” thread engaging in debate with Starving Artist. I swore I wouldn’t. I keep trying not to. But it’s like keyboard crack. Or a terrible train wreck. I just can’t look away. Back to SAA, I go… ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/384 "2009-11-01T11:13:54Z")
Seems to me that, with **Bricker** , no one is really disputing the substance of what **SA** is asserting any more–we’ve all long since decided that he’s pretty much full of self-serving shit–but are simply engaged in trying to show him that his technique in arguing his case is counter-productive. It’s like **SA** has nobly volunteered to destroy his posting reputation to provide a primer for noobs on “How NOT to debate, whatever your debating points are” and we’re all in this thread illustrating it with examples of his very unimpressive debating tricks and tactics that undermine his position: “Look at \*\*SA \*\*backtracking here, or strawmannng here, or overlooking his previously and clearly stated position here, or attempting to divert here, or weaseling here, or ad homming here…” and on and on. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/385 "2009-11-01T12:51:08Z")
> [@quixotic78](#): > > Eh, I’m like Miracle Whip – I don’t take no orders from anybody. Not **lissener** with his “Don’t talk to **Starving Artist** ” orders, not society, nobody. Another example of how liberal permissiveness has ruined polite society. ---
**Author:** ![quixotic78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/3ab097/32.png) [@quixotic78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quixotic78)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/386 "2009-11-01T15:26:30Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > He tried to explain the difference in murder rates between the bustling, urban metropolises of Mississippi and the bucolic wilds of Massachusetts. I pointed out the one tiny flaw in his argument. He called me dishonest, _but_ next time he repeated that argument, he left those states out. I noticed that, too, how he subbed “Vermont” for Massachusetts and “Texas” for Mississippi, with nary a mention about why he had made the change. And then some stuff about ghettos and projects that I guess we were supposed to know were included in the original question, despite a cloak of invisibility around them? It would have worked, too, if we were all illiterate. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/387 "2009-11-01T15:33:06Z")
How come nobody ever puts this much effort into pitting _me?_ I’m offended! ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/388 "2009-11-01T15:51:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > How come nobody ever puts this much effort into pitting _me?_ I’m offended! Fuck you. ---
**Author:** ![Mapache](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@Mapache](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mapache)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/389 "2009-11-01T16:35:01Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Some of you, only a few, I’m sure, but some…some of you, like me, know people who have actually had some contact with what we refer to as our “criminal justice” system. Well enough, at least, to gaze in wonder at someone who suggests that we coddle our criminals, that we are too easy, too “permissive”. > > Are we “punitive”? Well, that depends, doesn’t it, on whether the subject is an actual denizen of the “criminal culture”. It simply wouldn’t do to apply the same standards to white men in nice suits who may have, technically, “stolen” huge sums of money, or to have “violated” the laws that keep us from drinking their poison and breathing their industrial farts. > > Punishment is for criminals, they go to a place that mocks Darwinism, animal savagery is merely mindless, robotic. Human savagery is sentient, planned, ofttimes efficient, more often haphazard. The worst people thrive in prison, they get the respect and fear denied them elsewhere, they thrive where violence and fear are survival skills. And of course they feed upon the petty criminals, the losers, the small time dealers, who, if they don’t already know how much we hate them, are soon to get the lesson. > > But punishment implies some rude sense of justice, if your grandson steals a nickel from your purse, you don’t break his fingers. But some dumb ass butt scratcher who can’t even shoplift without getting caught…he goes to Hell. And we nod with stern satisfaction at justice served. > > Charles Manson didn’t just happen, we built Charles Manson, layer by layer, year by year. The wonder isn’t that he happened, the wonder is that there aren’t more of him. > > But enough. What is this, really, but merely another galaxy of ignorance **SA** strings together like a daisy chain of dumb. Damn, 'luci, I wish sometimes you wouldn’t make the points I was about to make, and do so so much more elegantly than I ever could. (No I don’t, really, I’m just envious.) Anyway, I could add that SA was yammering about how liberals don’t see the long-term outcomes of their attempts to fix problems, so end up making things worse, while providing a perfect example of rightards doing the same. Maybe now he’ll try a Condi Rice imitation, “Nobody could have expected…” excuse, which is nonsense. LOTS of people expected, and said repeatedly, that imprisoning a lot of uneducated young people in horrifying conditions, with no hope of improving themselves or having any kind of a decent life once they got out, would be a very large problem when they did get out. And lots of people warned that the “drug war” wasn’t going to be won by locking up a million or so low level dopers, while leaving the guys in expensive suits and Rolexes mostly alone. And that locking up those million dopers was going to be very expensive. The righties didn’t listen, didn’t do anything to prevent the problems that were so obvious to the rest of us, and now we’re seeing the results. I might add that SA is also doing just what he blames the left for, which is refusing to accept responsibility: “It wasn’t us, those evil liberals made us do it!!” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/390 "2009-11-01T16:45:43Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > Fuck you. Well, that’s a good _start_… ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/391 "2009-11-01T18:09:02Z")
> [@legalsnugs](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by **Starving Artist** > > …Let’s say someone posts a cite from a book saying that teen pregnancy was actually higher in the fifties than it is now. Immediately this is suspect because I know that society is much freer now in terms of things that, for want of a better term, sexualize kids. (snip) > > This one is easy. “The rate of teen childbearing in the United States has fallen steeply since the late 1950s, from an all time high of 96 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in 1957 to an all time low of 49 in 2000. … Recent declines in teen birthrates, then, are attributable to reductions in pregnancy rates.” [http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html](http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html) > > “The 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s included the twentieth century’s highest teen birth rates (respectively 79.5, 91.0, and 69.7 per thousand). By 1960, nearly one-third of American females had their first child before reaching age twenty. The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s reversed this trend.” [Teen Pregnancy - Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society](http://www.faqs.org/childhood/So-Th/Teen-Pregnancy.html) > > Can you provide one single citation to anything that says different? One? Or can you provide any argument that the Guttmacher Institute cannot be trusted? Or will you simply disregard the cites without looking at them? He doesn’t need to [provide counter-citations]. Those cites aren’t _books_. So there. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/392 "2009-11-01T18:47:12Z")
**Starving Artist** said: [ul]Liberals are responsible for a country full of criminals with multiple felony convictions roaming the streets while still in their late twenties and early thirties. The result is rapes, robberies and killings that wouldn’t have happened in these people had been in jail where they belong.[/ul] [ul]Liberals, in a ridiculous attempt to keep from harming student self-esteem by failing them, have created an educational system where kids are passed from grade to grade whether they learn anything or not, with the result that these kids and their future families are doomed to life at the low end of the economic scale. And in order to make things fair for urban or ghetto kids forcibly bused to other schools and with poor study habits – if any – the curriculum was dumbed down to their level, resulting in lousy educations even for those who do achieve.[/ul] [ul]Liberals are responsible for the drug problem in this country, having embraced it like manna from heaven starting in the sixties and bringing us to all drug-related problems we have now: addiction and ruined lives; street gang involvement and growth; drive-by shootings; deaths deals gone bad; rapes, robberies, murders committed while under the influence of drugs, etc., etc., etc.[/ul] These items were posted not in attempt to debate because they are undeniable. Rather they were posted in an attempt to get people of liberal philosophy to take a look at the consequences of what that philosophy has wrought, and to counter liberal assertions that conservatives and Republicans must be evil – look at all the harm they’ve done! And the response from the illustrious Dopers in this thread? “ **SA’s** a lousy debater.” **SA** changed the order of a couple of states he mentioned. **SA** doesn’t believe in books. " **SA** said we said he said ‘perfect’ and we didn’t he and never furnished a cite. **SA** wants to go back to the fifties. Hahahaha. “Get off my lawn!” Etc., etc., ad infinitum. :rolleyes: Oh, yeah…with regard to criminals on the streets who ought to be in jail, **elucidator** pretty much said, 'Well, duh…, you guys have white collar crooks on the street." And he perfectly proved my point about liberals blaming society for criminals in the first place by claiming that WE created Charles Manson. **lissener** largely agreed, except to point out Manson was a bad example. I’ve got work to do today and don’t have time to take on all the cowardly hair-splitting and diversions that this thread is barfing up, but I think the above stands as a pretty good synopsis. Ta. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/393 "2009-11-01T18:58:24Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > These items were posted not in attempt to debate because they are undeniable. Nothing more needs to be said. ---
**Author:** ![legalsnugs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@legalsnugs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/legalsnugs)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/394 "2009-11-01T19:50:20Z")
Wow! Liberals are A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Simply the most powerful force EVAH!! No wonder republicans are so afraid! The only thing that could possibly make them even better is x-ray laser heat vision! (We’re working on that, aren’t we?) I am so impressed with us liberals. Kudos, all. (And thank goodness, republicans have never ever been elected to any sort of public office in these United States of America! That sure would have been funny!) ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/395 "2009-11-01T19:51:34Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > These items were posted not in attempt to debate because they are undeniable. The thing is though they are deniable. Other people, some of them almost as smart as you, interpret their observations of the world around them differently. Some of them even have objective data to support their interpretations. “I won’t consider or discuss varying interpretations, even with objective proof” is not the same thing as “undeniable.” You still have never answered a couple of things that are at the heart of my inability to understand your carefully–proudly–defended ignorance: When did this worldview calcify? What event forever sealed your intake valves? When did you stop learning, and why? I keep wanting to make an obvious joke like, “were you dropped on your head by a liberal” or something, because clearly there was some specific moment in your life when you stopped accepting data. Obviously you’d taken in data before that, drew your conclusions, and then–what? From then on, the conclusions drove the data collection, rather than, as with a sane person, the other way around. And I’m curious to hear your take on my interpretation of why the statistics that support the conclusion that the death penalty is not a deterrent, a conclusion which makes perfect sense to me but which is not even worthy of consideration by you. The interpretation I gave is completely honest, and makes perfect sense according to my personal observations of human psychology. You’ve offered nothing but that your conclusions are “obvious.” ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/396 "2009-11-01T19:54:20Z")
> [@legalsnugs](#): > > Wow! Liberals are A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Simply the most powerful force EVAH!! No wonder republicans are so afraid! The only thing that could possibly make them even better is x-ray laser heat vision! (We’re working on that, aren’t we?) > I am so impressed with us liberals. Kudos, all. > > (And thank goodness, republicans have never ever been elected to any sort of public office in these United States of America! That sure would have been funny!) I know it’s a long thread, but you should read it before posting, to look less retarded. ETA: Or at least, please explain your meaning. There are too many layers of sarcasm for me to have any idea what you’re saying here. My initial interpretation is that you’re trying to shame the people who’ve participated in this thread for beating down a conservative poster for purely political reasons. Is that what you’re saying? In which case, yeah read the thread. If not, again, please clarify. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/397 "2009-11-01T20:19:28Z")
> [@](#): > > …Liberals are responsible for a country full of criminals with multiple felony convictions roaming the streets while still in their late twenties and early thirties. The result is rapes, robberies and killings that wouldn’t have happened in these people had been in jail where they belong… Its kinda like a reverse Columbus, sailing off to find whole new continents of ignorance… > [@](#): > > It’s not what he doesn’t know that scares me, its what he knows for sure that just ain’t so. - Mark Twain > **[Incarceration in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)** > > Incarceration in the United States is one of the primary means of punishment for crime in the United States. In 2021, over five million people were under supervision by the criminal justice system, with nearly two million people incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. It has 5% of the world's population while having 20% of the world's incarcerated persons. China, with more than four times more inhabita Peruse this. Please note, as best you can, that the proportion of our people in prison has gone up an up and up. Are we safer? Applying this stern remedy that you are so enamored with, are we safer? According to you, no, no we are not. People in Europe have far less people in prison, are they _less_ safe? No, apparently not. How very odd. What accounts for this odd disparity? Is it drugs? No, everybody everywhere has the same menu of drugs available that we have, plus some local favorites that nobody anywhere else even tries. And they don’t even have the good sense to imprison them with nearly our enthusiasm, dope fiends roam the streets, pillaging, plundering, raping…no, actually, no, they don’t. Liberals! That must be it, liberals! We have more liberals in America, poisoning our culture and degrading our discourse… Well, no, actually, what we call a “liberal” here is a centrist in most of Europe, indeed, whole governments have been dominated by liberals, with no recorded incident of catastrophe. They are plentifully supplied with liberals. So, there you have it. Its a rarity in political and social discourse, the glaringly obvious. Mostly, these things are more complex, you seldom get such a stark discontinuity between position and fact, but there it is. More people in prison, you cry, and we will be safer! More people in prison, and we are not safer. Pour gasoline on the fire, you say, and it will put the fire out! We pour gasoline on the fire, and no longer need to pluck our eyebrows, nor be waxed bikini. Is this new information to you? You have not examined these numbers, have not wrestled with their implications? That you are utterly, completely and provably wrong? (Aside to the Doper congregation: We may have to re-examine one of the fundamental tenets of our faith, that ignorance can be fought, and that it can be fought with information. The patient before us has toxic levels of ignorance and nearly terminal cognitive dissonance, and has been offered frequent infusions of information and fact for six years! to no noticeable effect! What is to be done, if we are to fulfill the Primel Directive…?) ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/398 "2009-11-01T20:25:35Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@legalsnugs](#): > > > > Wow! Liberals are A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Simply the most powerful force EVAH!! No wonder republicans are so afraid! The only thing that could possibly make them even better is x-ray laser heat vision! (We’re working on that, aren’t we?) > > I am so impressed with us liberals. Kudos, all. > > > > (And thank goodness, republicans have never ever been elected to any sort of public office in these United States of America! That sure would have been funny!) > > > [@lissener](#): > > > > I know it’s a long thread, but you should read it before posting, to look less retarded. > > > > ETA: Or at least, please explain your meaning. There are too many layers of sarcasm for me to have any idea what you’re saying here. My initial interpretation is that you’re trying to shame the people who’ve participated in this thread for beating down a conservative poster for purely political reasons. Is that what you’re saying? In which case, yeah read the thread. If not, again, please clarify. I thought it was in response to **SA’s** bullet list of super-duper evil things undeniably caused by liberals. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/399 "2009-11-01T20:47:55Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > I thought it was in response to **SA’s** bullet list of super-duper evil things undeniably caused by liberals. Yep. Bit of a hair-trigger there, **lissener**. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389/400 "2009-11-01T20:48:08Z")
I think you’re probably right. If that’s the case I apologize. But irony and indirection don’t always make for clear communication. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-dopers-who-engage-in-debate-with-starving-artist/515389.md?page=21)