This is why there’s no constructive dialog to be had. People cast aspersions everywhere, especially in the Pit, but it’s not like the Pit is a magical place where what you do and say doesn’t matter and you can’t be held accountable for your actions. If you really want to change perspectives, I mean truly, you don’t make disengenuous arguments or argue in bad faith regardless of what the other guys are doing. You lead by example.
This is why I get so pissed off. Because octopus damn well knows that reality does not hew to these outrageous claims and still persists. I guess the truth - that some small subsection of liberals feel rioting is a correct response to racial injustice and that the rest of us aren’t outraged enough- does not feel compelling enough in its own right. He must catastrophize. He must lie. And no, whether others are catastrophizing or lying is irrelevant. It’s a matter of character. It’s about what kind of person you want to be. One’s personal benchmark should never be the status quo. That such an otherwise intelligent person could choose this rhetorical path over and over is so goddamned disappointing.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
“Half devil and half child” is probably a good description.
We need to treat these people like toddlers. For the last four years, they’ve been like a toddler who got hold of a loaded gun. They were a danger to themselves and others and we needed to get the gun away from them while trying desperately to keep them from pulling the trigger.
We can calm down a little now. We can focus on more ordinary things like making them eat their vegetables and going to bed at a reasonable time. They may scream that they hate us but we’re doing this for their own good as well as ours.
They may be trying to make liberals cry. But we’re not trying to make conservatives cry. We’re trying to make the country better for everyone, including the conservatives who are fighting us every step of the way.
The left doesn’t care about the Potato Heads - that would be the right.
As far as China, I suppose you haven’t noticed Biden’s Administration working to fix all the crap Trump broke worldwide. Don’t worry - FLOTUS’s “fishnet” stockings should keep you busy for awhile.
You are no longer allowed, Octopus, to conflate the Jan. 6 insurrection with any other incident(s). Period. Ever again.
I mean, sure, you can - you can still physically do so, unhindered by any second thoughts of the tedious and worn horse-shittery that’s become a sad, predictable-as-fuck staple of your so-called contributions here, but it would behoove you to acknowledge that NOTHING compares to the shit on the 6th, not even all your disingenuous claims of oh-noes antifa/blm protests that, for all you know, were just as much perpetrated/escalated by right wing provocatuers, as well as policemen, who not only stirred shit up in protests that had been previously peaceful, but also preventing protesters from going home.
So yeah, continue fapping away on those keys if you absolutely insist. Gotta make a living even if it’s in rubles, I spose
He engages people in bad faith. I’m not really sure that’s laudable. I wish we had more active conservatives who engaged people in good faith. And yes, it sucks to get shit all over because you have different views, but if you can’t endure that without becoming a reactionary caricature I don’t see how it serves anyone. It certainly hasn’t caused anyone to say, “Oh, yes, now that you’ve compared me to a terrorist I totally see your point!” It just further alienates people. That’s just not how you effectively engage people with different views from your own.
Look at some of the discussion going down in the Christian bookstores Pit thread, people are more than willing to engage and disagree over these issues without being inflammatory. Yes, even in the Pit.
There will always be people who are mean and unfair and nasty. At a certain point you have to step up and be the better man. That is the only way change happens. But I already made that point.
The thing that annoys me is that octopus often doesn’t seem to understand the arguments he is making. It seems likely that he is just repeating things he’s read on other sites without fully understanding them. This is why he often gets lost when people rebut what he posts.
As a counterexample, I often disagreed with Shodan but I always felt he was aware of what he was saying. He understood the weakpoints in his arguments and knew how to defend them. He could engage in an actual discussion of an issue.
I’ve been trying to generate a little empathy for conservatives on this board because I’ve personally never been attacked in this way, and the thing is, if I were regularly attacked in this way, I wouldn’t even be here. I would not want to hang out in a place where I didn’t feel welcome. I don’t go to Stormfront or r/redpill in my spare time. I just don’t understand that mentality. Because if you really have a motivation to change hearts and minds, you would have to do a lot of emotional labor. I would have to be a model liberal or model feminist in order to slowly, over time, be heard and understood. (I’ve done this in the past with certain issues here and it’s exhausting.)
So I just don’t understand the drive to say unpopular things in a hostile environment just for the sake of saying them. I could understand it if the attempt was to engage in constructive dialogue but that’s obviously not happening here.
An unpopular voice in a hostile environment casts a wide shadow. Your average Doper conservatroll isn’t witty or erudite enough to stand out in one of those ‘other’ fora, but here they get all the attention they crave. Entire threads devoted to them. Their pick of nemeses eager to help erect the crosses they climb on to satisfy their delusions of martyrdom. What’s not to love?
Oh, please of course you are correct. Billions of dollars of damage, burned courthouses and police precincts, molotov cocktails hurled at law enforcement officers, peoples civil rights violated by unhinged mobs don’t compare to a unruly mob acting for a few hours that are actually investigated, critiqued, and prosecuted. One the Democrats like the other Democrats and Republicans don’t.
And you really think that all that antifa and burn and loot crowd were right wing provocateurs? If so, it’s definitely a good time to invest in various foil companies. To supplement the rubles.
There you go again, certifiably lying again about the Democrats liking that (Virtually all progressives I know understood why the violence happens, they did not approve of it). So yes, you still have a point. And in the gaming world still.
So… you’re saying that we do not, in fact, silence him? Well, I’ll be.
I will admit to missing that guy.
I’m also pretty sure that no police precincts were burned. Police station? Sure. An entire precinct would be a lot of territory. I’ll note that at least one precinct station was burned by a boogaloo boi.
People have provided cites to refute these claims in the very thread. Not cites that say all BLM protesters are innocent lambs. Cites that overwhelmingly show liberals and democratic leaders were against all violent protests/actions, that many of the violent incidents involved right wing agitators, that criminal charges were pursued against BLM protesters for committing acts of violence and other misconduct.
Just fucking once, cut the shit, acknowledge and admit the above to be true you lying fucking IMBECILE.
Why would a fucking troll admit to this? Of course he’s a lying fucking imbecile. That’s what he DOES in order to get his jollies; posts complete bullshit in order to wind people up. That’s it. That’s all. That’s who he is.
There was a court case recently where a reporter that was working one of the protests got arrested. The charges were thrown out, but the idea that no one was arrested at the BLM protests is laughable.
This forum has become an echo chamber. In part due to the presence of the Pit and in part due to inconsistency in interpretation of plain English. Social pressure and online bullying tactics in order to enforce ideological conformity is a tool used far too often in a society that nominally was founded on the ideals of liberty.
In the pit especially, most of the regulars who initiate the pittings for purpose of generating snark or just because they are emotionally damaged psychopaths aren’t posting in good faith. There is nothing good faith about calling folks child molesters, Nazis, bigots, trolls, produce molesters, etc. The reason those tactics are employed are to drive folks off or to coerce them into agreement. Bone, right before he quit being a mod and quit the board altogether had a very appropriate rant directed at an especially vocal subset of the Pit regulars.
You know the infrequent conservative voice who advocates for due process, who advocates against extrajudicial punishments, who advocates for basic fundamental liberties is not the problem. The problem is the disingenuous ideological zealots who not only demand ideological conformity but also demand congruous ideological fervor. There is a reason I label these folks Robesspiere-esque and Humpty Dumpty esque. They are a profane hybrid of ideological purists while being completely disingenuous with what words actually mean.
Left wing radicals, which these folks mirror, have been responsible for an order of magnitude more death than Hitler and crew. Yet, because the left has always used noble sounding goals as the Trojan Horse the illiberal methods and dangers is always underestimated. However, as we see, the power is immense. It can deplatform the sitting president of the US. Smaller players are silenced out of fear of doxxing which leads to real violence. If you, in general sense, are content or happy with the way social media, forums, etc. are used by a radical fringe to enact illiberal policy under the fig leaf of social justice or economic justice you have to either be naive or malignant.
Yeah, that’s just not true. Want to see some montages of the mostly peaceful mini Dresdens? Or mostly peaceful unplanned shoe donations? Or encouragement, during a goddamn pandemic, of mass civil unrest?
