If you’d wanted this to be an acceptable thread title, you should have put it in " " speechmarks, to show it for the quote from someone else’s article - referring to someone else’s opinion - that it was.
You know the reaction you were going to get with a thread title like that, so I frankly think your behaviour was deliberate and inexcusable.
I am also amazed that december is 59. In all honesty I thought he was a high school student of about 18 or so. And I swear to god this is not me trying to be sarcastic or derogatory, I genuinely believed (had formed the impression) until this thread that december was much younger.
I have to be honest - I have no idea how December can post such crap, yet continue to get away with it.
His consistently racist, hate filled ignorance is made all the more offensive by his casual attempts to dismiss it all with an “ah gee, I didn’t mean to be insulting”.
I am so fucking sick and tired of december. In his latest How much blame does Europe deserve for financially supporting suicide bombers? he just goes on and on taking it as a given that Europe is supporting terrorists. For two pages people have been asking him to answer exactly how does Europe do this and isn’t it true that the US also has provided support to Arafat. He just doesn’t get it. Never answers the questions.
december you are an idiot if you think I am going to condemn Europe of something which I do not even know what it is. You know fucking well you do not have an argument. Several people have told you Europe does not provide more help to Arafat than the US. You have provided no evidence of any wrongdoing. You have provided zero evidence that any European money was used to support terrorism, mush less with European knowledge.
You are a disgrace to those of us who are slightly more intelligent and who believe the US and Israel are in the right. I find myself continually arguing with your idiotic posts. Grow the hell up. It’s never to late to mature.
Actually, I think december serves a valuable purpose on these boards.
The point of the SDMB, inherited from the Straight Dope in general, is to fight ignorance, yes? Well, it’s a message board: We can’t really go out and fight it on its own turf; we have to wait for it to come to us.
And who brings us these wonderful, heaping piles of ignorance more reliably than anyone else? december, of course.
No, I’m not talking about borderline-insane ignorance, like that propagated by seethruart. Nor am I referring to one-trick ignorance, like JDT. I’m also not counting the stubbornly abusive ignorance of the infamous Australian twins.
No, I mean to say that december provides an important service: He represents exactly the thoughtless, ideologically blinkered individual who we should be targeting with our ignorance-stamping efforts. He himself may be immune to logic or contrary citation, but I guarantee his missives represent a very common body of thought that doesn’t get expressed much around here. The regular swatting-down of his ridiculous theses cannot go unnoticed by the countless lurkers who may nurture those views themselves.
And the best part is, he’s generally polite about it, even if the ideas he brings to the table are often hateful and stupid. If you think of him not as an actual person, but as a simple conveyer belt bringing dumb beliefs to the Straight Dope Shredder, you may be able to read his posts without popping a vein in your forehead. He’s reliable, he’s regular: he’s the postman of ignorance.
Although I almost never agree with a single word he posts, I, for one, think the board would be poorer without him.
(By the way, by “ideologically blinkered,” I don’t mean to imply that only right-wingers are burdened by ignorance. Ideological blindness affects people all over the spectrum. december provides an example in the abstract rather than in the specific.)
Cervaise said:
“No, I mean to say that december provides an important service: He represents exactly the thoughtless, ideologically blinkered individual who we should be targeting with our ignorance-stamping efforts. He himself may be immune to logic or contrary citation, but I guarantee his missives represent a very common body of thought that doesn’t get expressed much around here. The regular swatting-down of his ridiculous theses cannot go unnoticed by the countless lurkers who may nurture those views themselves.”
And Cervaise gets the prize!
I have to hand it to the folks that try to debate and reason with december. Y’all are better folks than I. I generally try to avoid reading OPs or posts he’s written because when I do read what he’s written it usually gives me a headache, and then I have to go lay down or something. But I do believe that december does represent the powerful forces of ignorance. It is my sincere hope that december’s managing to learn from his encounters with Dopers and that those lurking actually manage to learn something as well. Of course, some of them lurkers probably think that since the SDMB is a bastion of Commie-pinko-facist-liberal-hippie-freelovin’-devil-worshipping heathens [giggle] that we’re just picking on a good-hearted, kindly, elder gentleman who’s got a penchant for conservative editorializing, illogic, and stuff. [sigh]
Actually, I see the dopers as a wonderful, diverse, collection of individuals with differing opinions. And I have no problem with anyone that wants to tear apart any opinion that December presents. I have vehemently disagreed with his opinions and will most likely continue to do so because that is what I love about this place. I learned a valuable lesson my first week here when I got flamed for attacking a poster rather than an idea. And it was pointed out to me by some of the of the people in this thread. So when I see people being called names like asshole or troll because people disagree with someones opinions, I think it is sometimes misplaced frustration.
Does a troll usually believe what they are saying? Are trolls consistent or do they say things solely for the purpose of disruption whether they actually agree with their inflammatory statements. December has never struck me as doing this. I have found him to always be rather pleasant, something I do admire considering all of the names he is called. I have seen him not always take the expected position as when he admits that he doesn’t agree with everything Bush or other conservatives are doing. There are many here who are not willing to do that. Whether or not he will be swayed or change his positions will remain to be seen but I won’t take it personally if he doesn’t. This would be such a fucking boring place if we all agreed with each other.
musicguy said:
“Actually, I see the dopers as a wonderful, diverse, collection of individuals with differing opinions.”
Bless your heart. Hon, that was sarcasm I was using. Although it really wouldn’t surprise me if there are some folks out there what does think us Dopers are exactly as I described.
I understand you were being sarcastic. But the quote did provide a segue into my post.
And unfortunately I think that a lurker could very well be turned off by some of the perceived or real hatred toward december. From the outside, some of it could look pretty ugly.
I disagree with just about every single opinion december posts on this messageboard, but I find the implicit accusation that the mods are in some way playing “favourites” with him by allowing him to continue posting here quite offensive.
There are probably many posters (myself included) with whose opinions the mods do not personally agree; if that was grounds for banning, most of us wouldn’t still be here.
Are december’s thread titles - at times - deliberately provocative? I think they are (as are those of several other posters), but I have total confidence that the mods/admins will pull him into line if they think he’s pushing the envelope too far in this regard.
The greatest strength of this community is our ability to respect opinions and posting styles vastly different from our own; those who post unpopular opinions get challenged on them by this community - that is reason enough for people not to post unpopular opinions for “fun”.
I don’t think that many of december’s attitudes are vastly different than those of other people in his age group, and I - for one - am glad that I can now put his comments into a context which takes into account the times in which he was raised and how different his life experiences will have been from my own.
Say what you want about December’s arguments, the fact is the guy’s manners pretty much impeccable. This, despite the fact that he routinely gets gang-debated in every forum he posts in. You’ve got to admire that kind of tenacity. And yet he never blows his top and starts insulting people.
Unlike, say, ElvisL1ves, who routinely drops into threads just to hurl a drive-by invective blast, and then he’s off on another mission.
Personally, and without getting involved too closely here, december always reminded me a little of John the Cyberian, a.k.a. John John and a few other handles he used during his endless cycle of posting and being banned - this goes back several years, and there probably aren’t a lot of people who remember who I’m referring to.
Their fatuous brand of conservatism and limited range of interests are quite similar, as is their “debating” styles (coy and provocative behavior - the linguistic equivalent of a dog putting his paw on your foot - , relying heavily on skewed and/or biased data, etc.)
By some wild twist of fate, they are also approximately the same age and live in approximately the same place.
Other than this minor point of interest - that I see a few intriguing similarities between december and another endlessly nattering, conservatively-minded troll, now explicitly banned - december is really not worth all the time and attention devoted to him, in my opinion. Though I am sure he enjoys it capitally.
Although it really wouldn’t surprise me if there are some folks out there what does think us Dopers are exactly as I described.