Fail.
Reminder:
Please don’t do it again.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
To SA (still pitting myself here for engaging):
I don’t tend to broadbrush the way you do, with your “liberals” as an all powerful boogeyman. But just to give you an idea of how NOT undeniable your interpretation is, all the problems you lay at the feet of liberals I would lay at the feet of, well, not conservatives–your philosophy is more about demonizing people than examining process–at the feet of conservative policies.
Reagan-era deregulation and the general tone of capitalist greed that was a hallmark of the Reagan years has led us to a point where profit for its own sake trumps all other considerations. This has sent jobs overseas, and has resulted in higher prices for lower quality goods. Just for starters. This has had the effect of lowering the income of vast swathes of the American populace, while at the same time increasing their cost of living. Just to relate this to one aspect of what we’ve been discussing, this surely results in the pressure of frustration that leads many people to seek out, uh, unorthodox ways to earn a living. I.e., crime. You see crime as an innate, motiveless character; I see it as, in many cases, a desperate reaction to waking up and finding yourself in a hole you cannot dig yourself out of by working at McDonald’s. Obviously there are many many exceptions to this: you can name as many individuals who don’t fit this model as you like. I’m talking about general trends; digging up an anecdotal exception does not address the kind of cultural shifts I’m talking about.
Couple that with the uniquely American process–driven by the conservative philosophy that crime is individual, not societal–that the best thing to do with someone who’s already desperate enough to commit a crime is to warehouse them with another bunch of equally desperate people, let them reinforce their culture of frustration and antisocial behaviors among themselves–let them really set their criminal mindset in stone by making it the only perspective they experience–and then let them back out when they’ve served their time, blaming them exclusively when these obstacles turn out to be insurmountable. The conservative cry for longer prison sentences as a response to this is simply throwing good money after bad–it’s more of the same policies that have exacerbated the situation in the first place–and has no logical end point, beyond just immediately executing even the pettiest criminal as an acknowledgment that our present penal system does more to increase criminal behavior than to remedy it.
Even though I find these topics fascinating to debate, I’m not all that interested in debating them with you, SA; I’ve got a pig I’m teaching to sing. I simply offer the above as an example of the simple fact that intelligent people can interpret these things differently: that “undeniable” rarely has a place in these discussions. And that is why we turn to “cites,” to concrete, verifiable markers against which we can measure those varying interpretations. You deny those, which makes you unable to participate in a valid debate. This is sad; you’re obviously not stupid. It takes a certain kind in genius to maintain a house of cards of the scope and scale that yours has achieved. But it’s sad that you have footbound your intellect in the service of ignorance.
If you read the context, it was very clearly a joke, and taken as such.
It was more than that, and it’s obvious to everyone in this thread. Almost everyone.
You made some claims related to the death penalty. I made a post that pointed out that your claims were wrong. (And you said it was “dishonest”.) You made the same argument, but with different facts to back it up. You didn’t change the order, you changed the content. And you’re still trying to get off the hook without having to admit it.
You owe me an apology. I’m not going to hold my breath for it.
No, no, dude, do not mention working at McDonald’s around Starving Artist.
To all who complain about SA, where would we be without him? His beliefs/opinions may be slightly off-kilter from what most of us call reality, but I know I don’t want to be always preaching to the choir. There are precious few non-liberals here.
Just sayin’.
Is it better to preach to a choir or preach to a wall? He’s stated quite bluntly he’s not interested in rational debate or any kind of meeting of the minds. Since political debate is about the only thing on this board where political beliefs matter (or should matter, anyway), it’s hardly worth going easy on him because he’s a token conservative.
I almost hesitate to ask, but I’m fairly confident that I won’t get a meaningful answer, so I figure what the hell.
All right, Starving Artist, suppose you’re right and Liberalism is the cause for all of society’s ills. Obama, Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Roberts, and John Boehner all recognize your rightitude and decide to make you King-for-an-hour of the US. You’re not a genie; you don’t just get to wave a magic wand and make society better, but you get to dictate, let’s say, three or five policy initiatives that WILL get enacted into law. No filibusters, no vetos, no riders or amendments. Nothing. From your mouth to law.
So what do you enact to “fix” society? Here, I’ll get you started. Your first policy can be “SA’s Education Policy.” (a) No one can graduate from… let’s say third grade until they learn the difference between your/you’re and there/their/they’re (and they have to do possessive apostrophes right, too). (b) No one can graduate from ANY grade until they’ve met the standards determined by a panel of experts for that grade. No “We don’t want to hurt Billy’s feelings, so he’s going on to Third Grade” (which I’m pretty sure doesn’t happen today anyways, but it never hurts to be sure). No “Damn, Billy is 12 in a class full of six year olds, and he’s hella disruptive, but he can’t add two digit numbers, so it’s second grade again.” You’re in until you’re ready to move on.
I guess your “Crime Policy” would be “Lock every offender up until they’re rehabilitated, no matter how crowded prisons get or what percentage of the population becomes incarcerated.”
Feel free to do Economic Policy, Racial Policy, Foreign Policy, Drug Policy, whatever you want yourself.
So there’s my gauntlet, thrown to the ground. It’s easy to say “Society sucks!” and blame whatever you want (Liberalism, in your case). But I bet you can’t even come close to “fixing” whatever is wrong with society, even if you get everything you want.
At the end of the day, you’re just a one-song jukebox, and you’re not terribly interesting.
Having a non-choir member is helpful if they provide valid challenges to your beliefs. This acts as a kind of evolutionary pressure, if you’re on honest debater, and helps you to see the flaws in your weakest points. It can also help you sharpen your position by giving you a chance to refine your arguments in support of the strong points.
SA provides none of that kind of symbiotic challenge: he simply denies blindly and refuses to engage intelligently.
His only benefit is that he makes the people who rush to his aid simply because they share his politics look stupid.
Sometimes talking to a wall helps you analyze your thoughts better. This is all serendipitous and I give SA no credit for doing so deliberately, but IMO he adds to the “zaniness” of the board. YMMV. I’m stepping out now, since I don’t want the role of SA apologist. My philosophy is live and let live*. Whose loss is it if he doesn’t listen?
[size=1]*Restrictions apply. Must be over 18 to enter. License and title may be subject to change without notice. This post is for information /entertainment purposes only. Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt at home.[/size=1]
Indeed it was.
If this thread has shown something (again) the those who complain the most about certain poster are those who constantly engage them repeatedly in debate even as they claim the opponent is delude, stupid a child/ an old person, and cannot debate the color of green grass.
Is it, as someone said, that some Dopers are so offended by others’ (real or imagined) stupidity that they cannot let it pass?
It may very well be a flaw in our character, and we thank you for your insight. Again, thank you for sharing.
I am going to explore a number of SA’s assertions in the comfortingly rigid and technical world of Great Debate. Anyone interested is cordially invited to join me at Unwed Teen Pregnancy in the 1950s, Part I of the Staving Artist Lecture Series.
No thank YOU, your skill at sarcasm is outstanding.
There is no fix. That’s the problem. The things that have gone wrong in this country didn’t happen by legislative fiat and they can’t be fixed by it either. It’s a societal issue and if the time ever comes that it does begin to get straightened out, it will be society that does it. And before that happens, society is going to have to realize where it’s gone wrong and become determined to fix it. But how we get from here to there I have no idea. The toothpaste is out of the tube. It’s like we’ve put the students more or less in permanent charge of the high school and now we’re talking about how to get them to start behaving like adults when they don’t have to.
That’s how I feel about most of the rest of this board. For five of the six years I’ve been here it’s been ‘Bush’ this, and ‘pubbies’ that, and what kind of assholes conservatives and Republicans are, and now that Obama’s in office the talk is all about what assholes the Republicans who oppose him are.
What got me started on all this in the first place were one too many declarations that Republicans and conservatives were just evil through and through, and that in fact they would have to be evil to begin with just in order to be conservatives and Republicans to begin with.
So I made a few posts outlining and decrying the ills that liberalism has created in this country and people have found it so shocking and outrageous that it virtually made me famous around here. They didn’t like it one damn little bit. They could go on in thread after thread in forum after forum about what dickweeds conservatives and Republicans are and everything is just fine. But woe betide anyone who speaks up about whatever harm liberalism has caused, and so the sniping began. People began to drop little shitbombs here and there about what I’ve said, almost invariably misstating, twisting or lying about what I said in order to make it appear foolish or ridiculous. So naturally I’d have to come in to straighten things out for fear that some unknowing poster would take them seriously, and then we’d be off to the races once more.
So yeah, I keep saying many of the same things over and over again, but that’s mostly because people keep making fun of or falsely characterizing it over and over again.
Still, if you take the number of times I’ve said the same thing about liberals and compare it with the number of times other posters have said something bad or insulting about conservatives around here, I think you’d find the ratio was something like 1,000:1 or more.
So I’m hardly the one-trick pony around here.
I seem to come in for a lot of what lissener call ‘engaging’ around here for someone who isn’t very interesting.
And at least some dialog on these issues is finally begining to take shape, with a few other conservative posters starting to say some of the same things, and with Bricker having started the teen pregnancy thread in Great Debates.
Pretty good given the nature of this place, I’d say.
For the record, since SA has accused me over and again of lying: leaving aside the dung drenched straw clown he is attacking so vociferously, what actually happened was that I posted about my experience of him dismissing book learning out of hand. I then said in a subsequent post:
I did not say that he always dismissed book learning out of hand. I had already spoken of an experience and that is what I was referring to. I then, when challenged, proceeded to provide a cite to that experience.
No doubt SA is capable of being in favour of book learning when it suits him. and I never said any different. Perhaps he is capable of being in favour of book learning when it doesn’t suit him. I can’t think of an example. Can anyone? What is in no doubt is that he has dismissed book learnin’ out of hand, and that is meaningful. Just as I said it was.
Now of course SA goes on in the cited post to cover his ass by saying that of course while he certainly didn’t want his daughter marrying the book I’d mentioned, he wasn’t against books per se; why, some of his best friends are books.
Meaningful his action was, and meaningful I said it was. His words subsequently less so in my view.
You didn’t elucidate what you meant and you didn’t give any background history. You simply said I opposed book learning and posted a cite when challenged that said nothing more than that I said books are only as good as the quality of their contents.
You were not only dishonest in that post, but you are being dishonest now with both your explanation and your terrifically unfunny attempt to correlate my view toward books with those of racists, and you continue to try to portray me as a person with some sort of animus or disregard for books when all you have to base that on is my disregard for (or rather lack of acceptance of) a book you cited.
That’s extrapolation that reaches all the way to lying if you ask me. If you can’t cast someone in a negative light honestly, then you defeat your own purpose. In other words, a person can’t be all that bad if you have to invent lies or engage in deception in order to make him look that way.
And really, if you want to understand why SA is a fruitless waste of wear and tear on our collective mousewheels, you need go no further than this comment. I guess the smartass internet response would be to say, “and how is that working out for you, SA?” but let’s be serious for a moment.
Looking at it from a rhetorical point of view, it is trite that verbally “smashing” your opponents to cause them to give up their point of view just never works. It is dumber than a bag of hammers to think that it might. It just causes people to draw back from your position, and cleave to their own. You get more bees with honey and all that. Further, from the point of view of techinique, SA is incapable of utilising third party verification (an absolute fundamental of persuasion) but thinks instead that his opponents will accept his assumptions if only he asserts them often and loud enough. Frankly, he doesn’t even seem to understand this technique, let alone seem capable of applying it (I suppose it’s hard to understand a technique when you are too stubborn and opaque for it to work on you, yourself). There are any number of aspects of politics and world events that right wing people have been able to educate me about by citing at me on these boards. SA doesn’t have sufficient basic capability for that ever to occur.
Looking at it from a practical point of view, when one’s “smashing” is as physically damaging to one’s opponent’s person as is the flying spittle from the lips of a grumpy raging reactionary old man, one really cannot hope to intimidate anyone by it.
Looking at it from a tactical point of view, if he batted for my team I’d pay the opposition to sign him on.
Looking at it from the point of view of experience, you can only assume that SA is quite incapable of learning, given that steadfast application of his “smashing” has resulted, over years and years, in precisely no one giving up anything or showing the slightest indication of doing so.
Uh…you did notice where I said I meant that tongue-in-cheek, didn’t you?