Let's pit Dopers who engage in debate with Starving Artist

The BBQ Pit
221

Only if you consider 'Republicans are evil and everyone who is anti-abortion hates women and wants to make them into brood sows and Christians are always deluded and I remember reading an article where they admitted it" to be not-prima-facie-ridiculous.

I am quite sure he holds those opinions honestly. But that doesn’t help very much - someone with that kind of hate is rather unpleasant to have around, especially if he repeatedly knee-jerks that hate into every blessed thread where Christianity, or abortion, is ever mentioned. Has he ever come up with a serious cite of evidence that anti-abortionists hate women? If he did, I missed it.

I don’t why this makes Starving Artist frustrating - it seems to be that the rest of the board cannot rationally debate with someone if they disagree with them strongly enough.

Well, duh.

Regards,
Shodan

222

Before you embarrass yourself any further on this particular road, feel free to educate yourself on what the post you responded to was actually talking about.
Your country never experienced it? Well sometimes it looks that way from here - certainly did for a recent 8-year period, and certainly does whenever you open your yap - but I can assure you, your country DID experience it and IS better off for it. In a way that places like Iran and sub-saharan Africa are not.

Now I do realise that you weren’t there at the time, but I hope you will still accept that it happened.

223

My hands had mittens taped on but my face is covered in scratches anyway! OoooOOOOOooOOOooOOOo*!!!*

Results 1 - 10 of about 242,000 for “tipping sacred cows”.

224

Well, there you go.

Max is right that the way SA writes somehow convinces people that he’s worth arguing with. When Der Trihs throws off a one-liner about how Christians all secretly want to rape and murder teenage girls, well, that brings the conversation to a halt. People ignore it, because it’s so obviously the product of a deranged mind. There’s no point in arguing with someone like that, and just about everyone can tell there’s no point.

Except something about the SA is different. Maybe that’s a tribute to him. He seems at first like he’s willing to listen to reason but he’s like a speak and spell. He’s got 20 canned posts. He doesn’t actually respond to what people say, he just spins the dial and pulls the string. And he does it with endless energy, he’s willing to “respond” at length, over and over, except without apparently reading anything anyone writes.

225

Yeah, I don’t want to sound like I’m defending Der Trihs. He’s an unpleasant person (at least in the context of discussing religion, politics, etc.), and his positions are twisted and wrong. All I was trying to say is that if you ask him why he holds one of those positions, the response will at least vaguely relate to the topic at hand.

But meaningful and reasoned debate DOES occasionally occur on the SDMB. Not often, but it does occur, and people do change their minds about things, and liberals do say nice things about conservatives and vice versa. Things are polarized, yes, but not as 100% polarized as sometimes portrayed.

226

I disagree. I don’t see anything that even seems thoughtful in his posts. It doesn’t take long to get to the part about how the American utopia was ruined by liberal hippies, who forced African Americans to accept civil rights way faster than they even wanted to, and how liberals are so nasty and rude that they even make conservatives sometimes say mean things that they otherwise would not say, because conservatives think liberals have bad ideas while liberals think conservatives are evil people.

I’ve never thought that an interesting discussion would ensue. I think penis is more likely to ensue than an interesting discussion involving Starving for Attention.

227

I has a sad.

I sense this is perfectly in line with your goals.

228

And this is exactly how bias allows people to see those on their own side as living in the ‘reality based community’ while people on the other side are a bunch of liars and idiots.

If Starving Artist posts something that you don’t agree with, you’re more likely to Google his facts or search for flaws in his logic. And if you find a fact that is wrong or even disputable, or if you can spot a fallacy of any kind, then his message gets filed under “more lies from the right”, or “more signs of stupidity from the right”. But if Der Trihs posted some wildly inflammatory, paranoid comment, or Diogenes says something flatly wrong like, “1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth”, you’re far more likely to just blow over it, because after all, the underlying point is one you agree with. So the poster on the right is a malicious liar, and the poster on the left is guilty of just a little hyperbole. Totally understandable, really.

Another problem is that there are whole bodies of research and sets of disputable ‘facts’ that both sides hold dear but which they disagree on. When a lefty on this board utters one of those disputable facts, every other lefty agrees with it, and it is the concensus view and therefore ‘reality’. Every right-thinking person should agree. But if a righty utters one of their own disputed facts, there’s an immediate pile-on, and cites from approved lefty institutions are provided to discredit the user, and then it is used once again to show that the user is a liar or an idiot.

For example, on this board a cite from CATO will be instantly dismissed and the poster ridiculed for choosing such an obviously biased and dishonest organization. But a cite from Media Matters is considered rock-solid proof. This despite the fact that CATO is a legitimate think tank that is not aligned with any political party, whereas Media Matters is run by David Brock, who has a long history of dishonesty, and is full of people who are little more than shills for the Democratic party.

Political partisans manufacture their own reality. They do it through selectively choosing what they consider to be legitimate information, and they reinforce it through groupthink and living in an echo chamber of like-minded individuals.

Having Conservatives on this board is a benefit to you lefties. It makes you a little more objective than the clowns who spend their time on Daily KOS and the Democratic underground. Instead of creating enemies lists and trying to arrange boycotts of posters and being petty and vindictive, you should try honestly trying to understand the ‘underlying point’ of the conservative you’re debating with, just as you do with people on your own side.

Then you might find that the real ‘reality based community’ is the one that accepts that valid opinions can be found on both sides of the political spectrum, and that your political opposition isn’t just a bunch of ignorant troglodytes.

229

Are we all centrists on this bus? And is that the same place it was, or will be? No.

Friend Bricker is a conservative, he accepts the necessity of change but seeks a prudent and responsible approach. As one who is on the conservative wing of the extreme left, we can negotiate in a sensible and reasonable fashion, that is, what’s mine stays mine and what’s his is up for grabs.

Starkers is a reactionary, not a conservative, he wants to turn the clock back to a Golden Age that exists only in his own mind. Back then, he might have been a conservative, but that train has long since left the station, it has rung down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible, its an ex-train. (OK, maybe not my best analogy evah, but what the hell, fast and loose, lets rock!..)

If you were a centrist 10 years ago, you aren’t anymore unless you have moved left. I was a radical ten years ago, and I feel the tendrils of centrism creeping up on me. My views have always been unpopular, I got used to it, but now? not so much.

9/11 drove us, collectively, insane. It provoked Dennis Miller’s Syndrome, an irrational and unreasoning embrace of authoritarianism and militarism. We wanted revenge, we wanted to see bomb-laden jets lifting off from aircraft carriers carrying our righteous wrath to The Enemy. We didn’t care, couldn’t care, that our wrath was delivered unto the innocent. We were insane.

And the rightards rejoiced. They exploited that hysteria for every last ounce of political leverage, God damn their eyes! It was a revolting and reprehensible display of political opportunism, and I am ashamed for us all that it worked so well. But enough, that’s largely over, not even the bad shit lasts forever.

Yet so many of us persist in thinking that nothing is changed, we are all who we were. But that is manifestly not so. If you stand on precisely the same political ground, and the ground moves, you are not where you were. The wholesome, white bread and mayo world of Ozzie and Harriet never really existed, but now even the myth has vanished, it died when Dave came back from Viet Nam a drug-addled paranoid and joined the Hells Angels. The illusions SA sought to preserve have vanished, and he pines away for them, moaning about civility and politeness, weeping bitterly for a vanished sense of propriety, of order.

But the order was unjust, the civility a shallow mask for oppression, like a bigot who uses the word “colored” in polite company when he means another thing altogether, it was a lie. And me and mine and a lot of you worked to pull it down and stomp on it, hallelujah!

The ground has shifted, the Pillars of Heaven shaken, there are signs of change even in Texas, the most stubborn bastion of the rightard Taliban. The last election wasn’t the change, the last election was the manifestation of that change, it had already happened, and it continues to happen.

So, brothers and sisters, pals and gals, the time’s they are a-changing. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. But its time to look at the sign you hang around your neck, if it says “centrist” and it said “centrist” ten years ago, its time to reconsider.

“Life is change - how it differs from the rocks”.

230

So how’s the search for WMD’s in Iraq coming, Sammy?

231

How’s that giant failure of the surge in Iraq coming, Elvie?

Nice of you to bomb the thread though. It’s always good to have a reminder of who the worst posters around here really are.

232

Thanks, elucidator. Where you get your name from I guess.

233

Well, you know, it’s kind of hard to **literally **piss in someone’s cereal from all the way over here.

ETA: Although, considering the number of pages that comprise the internet, coming up with a phrase that has only been used a quarter of a million other times isn’t that bad.

234

Very badly. Have you been paying any attention at all? Yet? No?

If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, it isn’t the mirror’s fault.

Your attempt to claim that your constant stream of talking points, no matter how often they get shown to you to be factually false as well as badly reasoned, followed by your utter refusal ever to recognize that, but instead to claim to be just another harassed conservative with a different “opinion”, is all that is needed to qualify you as one of “the worst posters”. You’re no more honest than SA; don’t kid yourself that there’s anything more to you than your ironbound ideologuism.

235

That is a false characterization pushed by my opponents. I have repeatedly said that any good that religion does is overwhelming exceeded by the evil that it does; not that it does no good. Nazism no doubt did some good, by accident if nothing else; does that excuse it? If I walk onto a street and kill ten people at random, and one person happens to be a murderer, does that excuse the other nine?

Barely a day passes that I don’t come across yet another story of religion inflicting evil on the world. It’s baseless, and spreads misery and injustice and death. Why shouldn’t I despise it? Why shouldn’t I “dismiss” something that has no evidence for it and violates known facts, and generally plain old logic? Somehow I doubt I’d get bashed for “dismissing” fairies or the-moon-landing-was-a hoax theorists. Why should religion get the special treatment you want?

236

You’ve made this assertion before, and it’s simply not true.

Here are a few of the most recent threads where the Cato Institute (it’s not all caps, by the way, because it’s not an acronym) is mentioned.

Federal Pay Continues Rapid Ascent - Is this a problem? (the OP uses a Cato document as the stating point for the thread)
Do Credit Rating agencies enjoy First Amendment protection from being sued (again, the Cato Institute is the source of the OP’s information)
The Costs of Cap-and-Trade
How to deal with (sub)urban sprawl?

What is the Cato Institute all about? (and their position on global warming)

Of the first four threads, i saw one mention of Cato in one thread as a “partisan” cite, but the poster in question still agrees to see what they have to say. In the other threads, while some people disagree with the Cato position, i don’t see people dismissing the organization out of hand, or refusing to engage with its ideas.

The last thread is clearly somewhat different, because it deals specifically with the Cato Institute’s policies and origins. Unsurprisingly, some people in that thread accuse Cato of being an arm of capitalist big business, a shill for conservatives or Republicans, etc. Others, even people who are clearly not necessarily libertarians or conservatives, refute those assertions.

Also, when you make assertions like this about using particular organizations as sources, about the question of political partisanship, you need to remember that how the sources are used is also important.

For example, i think Cato publications often contain excellent facts and figures, and often contain very good information about legislation, policies, legal decisions, and other factual stuff. But agreeing that they offer good information, and that they even give some excellent analysis of that information, is not the same as agreeing that they should be heeded regarding the policies that derive from that information.

It is perfectly possible for people of different political persuasions to agree on many basic facts or developments, but to disagree on what this implies for future policy. For example, someone who supports rent control might be willing to admit that rent control sometimes leads to poor housing conditions by reducing landlord incentives to maintain buildings, and that it also raises the overall cost of housing by altering the market. But that person might also continue to support rent control because they believe that such control has other benefits to society that outweigh the costs. There are both positive and normative conclusions to draw in cases like this, and the normative ones, by definition, might not be a simple reflection of the positive data.

Also, in comparing Cato to Media Matters, it seems to me that you adopt an excessively narrow definition of political partisanship. One can be a political partisan without being, in particular, a shill for the Democratic or Republican parties. The fact that Cato is not aligned with either of those parties does not mean it lacks political ideology, nor does it mean that Cato is non-partisan in a broader political sense. Hell, the people at Cato themselves are very open and honest about their political beliefs, and would probably be very happy to admit their analysis of evidence and their policy conclusions reflect their particular political predilections. They have an a priori bias against government intervention in society and the economy, and it is reflected in their publications and their political positions. Nothing wrong with that, and i agree with them on more issues than you might imagine, but i’m not going to pretend that they are non-partisan in any real sense, because politics is not just about Republicans and Democrats.

ETA: I’m not arguing that no-one ever dismisses Cato or other libertarian/conservative sources, just that it’s nowhere near as ubiquitous as you suggest.

237

Cato exists to promote the particular non-reality-derived ideology that Sam does, therefore it’s a “legitimate think tank”. What a shock, huh?

But then, as he revealingly goes on to say, “Political partisans manufacture their own reality”. Unfortunately for an ideologue like Sam, reality has a way of existing irrespectiveof mere political views. Also unfortunately, his contempt for the very concept of factuality has prevented him from learning a goddamned thing in his long time here.

SA, on the other hand, does seem to recognize the existence of fact, he just consciously doesn’t let it affect him. That, ISTM, is actually a *more *honest approach than Sam’s, isn’t it (not that it takes much)?
BTW, I’d take Bricker’s little pout a bit more seriously if he could provide any actual examples of what he calls *my *“dishonesty”. Without it, considering the great frequency with which I’ve exposed his *own *basic dishonesty and amorality, that comment is no more than a childishly Shodanian “No u”.

238

Perhaps you could provide an example of Bricker’s “basic dishonesty and amorality”, while we’re playing this game?

239

Perhaps you could read GD and find out. Or do a search on just those words. I have no interest in spoonfeeding you. Besides, the thread is about SA - Bricker’s had his own threads.

240

Pot, kettle, something about a very dark color…